Curious about Skull Kid's undersuit?
There you go. I didn't paint it or anything, though Skull Kid's limbs do seem tree-like in some illustrations and the official figures.
It's good to think about your costumes critically! What went wrong, what could you do to improve them?
The most frustrating thing about all the pictures of Skull Kid that I got at MCM Manchester 2016 is that I was wearing that very, very useful but totally eyecatching stupid branded kit bag in all the pictures. I could take it off for every picture, but that's a hassle.
Not having a bag at all would be unthinkable! Where would I stash my con swag t-shirts, my bottomless pile of wonky hand-drawn 'Hi I am Skull Kid' cards, and other stuff?
I resolved to make myself a new satchel, kit bag, or -something- just so I wouldn't have that damned bag in all my pictures.
Making a simple drawstring kit-bag is very easy. You need a sheet of material that's larger than double the size of the bag you want to create, and a large amount of sturdy string.
You fold the material in half and sew it along two of the remaining edges with right sides touching, so it forms a pocket.
Then you turn the open edge of the material -down and then up again- so it forms three layers. This way lets you sew onto the fabric backing of the pleather, rather than having to use a non-stick presser foot. I wasn't sure how I was going to set up and thread the string at this point, so I just sewed a generous empty channel and left a large gap so I could insert it later.
When you evert the bag again, you can trim off the excess S-shaped hem to make it neat.
The kit bag has the string threaded through an eyelet in one of the far corners. In my bag, I've done a square of dense zig-zag stitching instead. I tried using metal eyelets, but on my test material (testing is good!) the material warped and stretched and the eyelet fell out.
With the channel in place and the faux eyelet sewn, thread the rope through the casing, down through the hole, back to the casing. Tie a knot by holding the two ends of the rope as one and tie.
I haven't painted or printed a design on it yet. I figure just swinging it about to give it some age would look fine. Triforces all over every little thing is kinda predictable, and Skull Kid doesn't have many motifs. I suppose the glove swoosh could work. Some random squiggly thing would probably be even better since he'd have made this out of random scraps he found or stole (and then went back to his little treehouse to whip it up with flawlessly straight stitches on his electric sewing machine).
I only had a few go-to poses for Skull Kid, and they got kind of samey after a while. What I need is some props!
Majora's Mask Skull Kid doesn't have a flute as far as I know, but Ocarina of Time Skull Kid does! There's no reason why you can't mix 'em up and have your MM Skull Kid playing the flute too! Or maybe you could make some of the strange instruments that Link's various forms get. Don't forget Skull Kid steals the Ocarina of Time right at the start.
He's also got the fairies Tatl and Tael if you want a challenge. How would you get them floating? Would they be illuminated? Up to you! I haven't tried them yet.
My flute is simply a piece of bamboo I found in the shed in July. I clamped it into the workmate, sawed it to length, wiped it down, and drilled some holes in it in flute-like positions. You can't really tell in the pictures, but I really try my best to play it like a flute... except I can't see what I'm doing so I have to feel for the holes with my fingers to get it the right way round! Also I have no sense of proprioception, so I can't tell whether I'm lifting the mouthpiece of the flute to my mouth or not.
And speaking of mouth, don't even think about trying to play this flute. It's full of grit and awful things, since it's been in the shed for literally years before I decided to re-use it.
Written by Matt Carr! mrdictionary.net nonsense.
Questions? E-mail 'em to me, skullkid@mrdictionary.net!
Twitter @SkullKidUK - Facebook facebook.com/mask.smith.cosplay