Thread by @szechuan

A few months ago, my friend Adam asked me to cosplay with him at New York Comic-Con. I have never cosplayed before in my life, but I thought, if I was ever going to try it, this would be an amazing opportunity.

Friends weighed in with costume ideas, some easier to pull off than others. But for me there was only one real option, my very first feminist role-models from childhood. The Angel Interceptor pilots from Captain Scarlet.

Bear in mind, I’ve never made anything like this ever, let alone a SPACE HELMET. I bought a motorcycle helmet on TradeMe for $2. It sat there as inspiration. It needed windows. I thought, if I knew anything about tools or fibreglass I could cut holes in its sides. But I didn’t.

Then I googled how cosplayers make plastic things. Cosplayers are fucking amazing, y’all. Look at this stuff. So I ordered some WORBLA. Love that word. WORBLA. worbla.co.nz

No lie, working with Worbla was NOT as easy as the youtube tutorials made it look. Also I am very dangerous with a heat gun. None of this worked, at all, even a little bit. I even managed to ADHERE the worbla to the fibreglass of the helmet.

I realised it was too wobbly to BE a helmet, it needed something rigid to hold it all together. So I decided to try papier-mâché. My brother makes amazing papier-mâché costumes for his daughters every book day, how hard could it be?

The internet will tell you vaseline will stop the papier-mâché sticking to the mold. THIS IS HOT GARBAGE LIES. I had to chisel that shit off. There are bits of paper that will still be stuck to this helmet when alien archaelogists dig it out of the scorched earth.

Back to the drawing board. I covered the helmet in TINFOIL and started all over again. I had a bottle of wine and a full series of Netflix’s Blown Away, and a pad full of paper because I’d run out of newspaper and flour and water. ROUND TWO.

I was really pleased with this attempt and it looked cool when I cut the window holes - but it was quite lumpy and cratery like a moon. And I wanted it to be SMOOTH and ROUND. Like a helmet not made from NOTEPAPER.

So then I learned you can make your own homemade “gesso” from mixing PVA and water and talc. The website said “wear a mask” - I was all pfffft who needs a mask for some baby powder. (Spoiler alert: wear a sodding mask)

I slapped that stuff on, and when it dried, ROUND. NO LONGER CRATEROUS. Or a little bit craterous. But I decided to embrace the imperfections.

I took the gumboots we bought at the last minute in the East Takanini Warehouse for PHAROS - these are the only gumboots I’ve found that comfortably fit my giant calves. I sacrificed them to the gods of cosplay, and covered them with white acrylic LEATHER PAINT.

I tried to think about how to make these tubes on the epaulettes. I thought maybe foam would work if I sealed it. Then my brother was all “they LIGHT UP in the show you should make them LIGHT UP" and I rolled my eyes and started googling LED cosplay.

Next I relocated production to my parents' house where my mother is an amazing seamstress and my father has a workshop full of TOOLS. We melted new WORBLA! Turns out, two pairs of hands makes that shit easy. FIND A COSPLAY FRIEND. Tell your parents they're making a space helmet!

Fabric! A Jacket pattern! Gold boot trim and trouser pocket! Mum’s sewing machine got a workout.

Gluing in the windows was a bit tricky. Everything was round and uneven! I only have so many fingers to hold things down! So we used a bag of VERY HEAVY SAND we borrowed from a neighbour to weigh it all down while it was drying.

The epaulettes continued to distract - until we went to a party store and found THE PERFECT COMPONENTS.

Add some seed lights? AND HEY PRESTO.

The helmet needed some wire for a mic, some silver buttons stacked on buttons for the outside, and some webbing and foam on the inside.

The belt needed a nice gold cover. The boots needed trim! Aliexpress came through with the insignia patches for the sleeves!

All that was left was to transform me into Rhapsody Angel - with a wig so outrageous friends and family failed to recognise me in the photos.

And TODAY I got to walk the floor of New York Comic-Con with the King of Cosplay @donttrythis and it was AMAZING and I loved every second.

I didn’t think anyone would recognise my character but the first person who saw me as I walked out of my hotel in midtown yelled "GERRY ANDERSON, MAN. NO ONE REMEMBERS CAPTAIN SCARLET ANYMORE!" So there you go. You'll find people who love the same stuff you do everywhere.

One final clip, because I’m so proud of my light-up epaulettes.