I had forgotten to mention that I wrote a full How- To on my Kali costume on the Instructables site.
Kali Instructable link

There are some interesting comments in the thread. Some very polarizing opinions. I suppose a little controversy is always good, at least it gets people talking.
I’m not too sure what I’m going to do with my time now. I’ve been thinking about doing some straight up canvases, I think it may be time to switch it up a bit.

Kali

Originally uploaded by nicemag.

Here is my completed Kali costume. As the goddess of death and destruction, I lived up to her name by causing spillage and poking people in their eyes. I like that one of the flickr comments is that type of behaviour “is so Kali”.
I pretty much destroyed the costume in the process of wearing it. The arms were too temping and everyone wanted to grab them and move them around. They were built to sustain a good deal of abuse, but my friend finally finished one of them off at the end of the night. The nice part was that I could remove the bottom injured set and continue wearing the top set separately. I’m really glad I spent the extra time to make the arms removable. It’s too bad you can’t see my shoes in this photo – they were awesome! Some people thought I was Shiva, Ganesh and Medusa, but quite a few people totally recognized I was Kali. More photos on my flickr site.
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Photo credit: Nik Thavisone
www.nikthavisone.com

Kali Costume Parts

Originally uploaded by nicemag.

This costume is so crazy. What was I thinking? All the parts are fabricated, but it’s turning into a big job to put them together. I’m going with the blue shoes by the way.
I will have to come back and add more step by step photos after I’m finished. I’ve been working on attaching the arms to the costume so that they are secure, movable and removable. This involved a whole lot of velcro and elastic. That part I’m good with. I’ve been unhappy with the colour of fabric I was using for the body suit, so I changed it with a couple of light dustings of spray paint to make it more of a grey-blue than a blue-blue.
Tonight I’m making the hands for the arms, attaching the various accessories and finishing the arm-skirt. After that, I can relax and bling it out with lots of gold and jazz.

fuck yeah

Originally uploaded by nicemag.

This is the severed demon head to be held in one of the arms. I’ve actually added a tonge and hairy eyebrows. I just need to add some ears and earings. He will have a spinal column and a trail of bloody crap that will hang down into a bowl held by the lower hand
I’ve got the main outfit sewn up, and started in on the belt of severed arms. I’ve also got all of the arms jointed at the elbow. I need to hinge them on the back and work on getting the full range of mobility. I’m still pretty sure it’s going to work. It makes sense in my head anyhow. So, I should be posting with much more frequency, cause I’m on a role.
Not too sure what’s going on with the soul-collector. It could be really awesome, but I don’t think anyone wants to wear it. It’s on the backburner now.
so yeah…

This is the Hindu goddess Kali. She is goddess of death and destruction, and represents the ferocious and aggressive aspects of the female.
I fucking love her. She is my inspiration for my own costume this Halloween.
I will be creating a costume that has six arms; four are false and two are my own. Each false arm has an elbow joint and a rotation axis at the shoulder. This will allow me to operate the arms and move them in several directions. These arms are the most complicated part of the costume, so they are dealt with first.

These are the templates I used to cut out the lower and upper arms from blue foam. These are sheets of foam glued together. I used the dimensions from my own arms to calculate the length and width. I added a few extra inches because I’m carving the blocks down after.

This photo shows the areas that will be cut away to form the elbow joint. This idea was based on action figure toys and the way those arms basically work.

This is a tool that is bent to fit the curve of the arm. I then removed a section of foam so it fits tight into the other piece.

Here are both pieces fitted together.

I drilled a 1/4 inch hole through all the foam when it was positioned together. This photo also shows some of the shaping I did to make the foam look more arm-like. I’m not too concerned with realism, as I will be covering these arm with fabric and possible adding stuffing to help shape. I used my hot-wire tools to achieve this shaping and regular sand paper.

This is joint with the section of 1/4 inch doweling inserted. I coiled wire around the dowel and wrapped it a bunch of times on each end so it would hold it in the hole. The arms can swing freely now and the peg stays in place.

Here’s the completed arm on approximately the angle it will be used. I like!

Drywall screw and elastic create the flexible joint. Forget about using a stapler/gun, it won’t work.

Sketchy Styles,

So, once the 4 arms are shaped and jointed, I’ll work on the shoulders and creating the axis that they will swing on.
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