Costumes,  Video Games

Dance Central 2 – Kerith & Jaryn (The Glitterati – Street Style) [COS]

The Glitterati - Dance Central(For more photos of these outfits, check out our the Glitterati costume page! And to see our entry on our Glitterati crew outfits made later in 2012, check out this entry!)

Last Fall, Dance Central 2 was released for the Xbox 360/Kinect. Right off the bat, Nate and I were disappointed that one of our favorites (Oblio) wasn’t a returning character from the first game. After playing for a bit, we realized that there was a crew of two characters that were starting to fill the void we felt for Oblio. Those two were Kerith & Jaryn – The Glitterati. They had just the right amount of snark and a set of fun songs to make us pay more attention to them and then finally to make us realize that they were our favorites in DC2. THOSE QUIPS. THAT INHERENT CREEPINESS. We couldn’t not love them.

The costume ideas started brewing when we unlocked their Street Style outfits and we decided to try our hand at them for Katsucon 2012. We were going to start working on them earlier than we ended up starting, but due to getting everything together for the table at MAGFest and then a family emergency right after MAGFest, we didn’t have a chance and we ended up starting these costumes roughly three weeks before Katsucon. This was not good since Nate had that vest to create and I had to put a jacket together from scratch. XD There are a good number of things we’re planning to remake or fix up on these costumes, but for the amount of time we had to make them, we are proud of them and had a lot of fun wearing them!

The Glitterati makeup test
Makeup tests!

We’ll go over the details by twin. ;D

KERITH:

The pants and shoes were easy enough. Nate already had a pair of black dress shoes and the pants he picked up from a thrift store where he also purchased a black button-up shirt. Since Kerith’s collar on his shirt is not like your everyday dress shirt, we took the sleeves we cut off of the shirt and used the fabric from them to make the bigger part of the collar (which stands up with interfacing). The two smaller parts of the collar are the pointy pieces of the original collar we had to cut off to make the top of the shirt more open/lower cut. We added a piece of the purple fabric I used for the lining in Jaryn’s jacket to the inside of the front of his shirt where Kerith has a hint of purple. It doesn’t stay flat correctly while Nate’s wearing it and that’s something we have to fix since it was one of the last things we added and we were in kind of a rush (no more starting costumes three weeks in advance!)…

The Glitterati - Dance Central The vest was the big part of this outfit. He knew he wanted to make it out of something that wouldn’t fray when we cut all the holes in it – also something where we wouldn’t have to hem every hole we cut so again, it wouldn’t fray. We discussed vinyl first, which is kind of what the vest looks like in the game, but cutting circles in that would’ve been very time-consuming and they probably wouldn’t have come out as round. He finally settled on craft foam! He knew he would easily The Glitterati - Dance Centralbe able to cut the circles in the foam with an x-acto knife. I helped him make a muslin mockup of a vest pattern and I sewed most of the pieces together in the fabric so we could use that as one big pattern for the craft foam. We kept the shoulders of the mockup apart and cut out the whole vest in craft foam, then Nate used a cookie cutter to make all the circle patterns before going over them all with an x-acto knife to cut the pieces out.

After finishing the circles, he sprayed the vest (interior and exterior) with a couple layers of purple spraypaint, then a layer of pinkish-purple, then finally aThe Glitterati - Dance Central layer of glossy sealer. I sewed the vest collar for him, which was interfacing sandwiched between two layers of a silver fabric. The pieces were cut from a paper pattern of Kerith’s collar shapes that Nate freehanded. Since we didn’t have a lot of time, we didn’t really measure the pieces so he had drawn all three (five technically, lol) of Kerith’s collar pieces, but only the top two (on either side) ended up fitting on the vest – we were okay with leavingThe Glitterati - Dance Central the third off because it looked fine without it, but it’s definitely something we want to fix when we have more time to fix up these costumes! The patterns on the vest collar were done with the sewing machine. We added the bias tape to those pieces and the vest and connected the collar to the vest the day we left for Katsucon. Again, we really want to have more time to fix these costumes up and we wish we hadn’t had to put this one off until we did!

Nate’s Kerith wig was cut as we were putting on the costumes Saturday at Katsucon (again with the rushing). Luckily, we had practiced the makeup once beforehand so we kind of had the hang of it. His watch was $12 at Wal-Mart! Kerith would be ashamed because he probably pays $93874920384 for one.

Kerith - The Glitterati - Dance Central

 

JARYN:

As far as my wig, I cut mine the night before the con so I was a little ahead of him – just a little, haha. At first, I didn’t really like it, especially how I rushed to style it at Katsucon (*shakes fist at hairspray*). But I realized if I don’t try to keep it in one place and fluff the bangs out a little, it looks much, much better and I have grown to like it a lot. I tried to get the little short hairs correct that she has between her temples and the point of her bangs, which is what drove me nuts and what I didn’t like once I was finished cutting it. I was going crazy the night before the con, I tell you. XD But looking at the later pictures we took, I really like it and will use this wig for all future Jaryn costuming — yayyyyy don’t have to redo that part! But onto the other parts I do want to fix!

The shorts and shoes were both purchased pieces (THANKS EBAY!) while the shirt and jacket I made myself. I had no prior experience sewing vinyl OR making a whole jacket, so there was that with three weeks before the convention. But we’ll get to the jacket in a bit – first, the shirt!

The Glitterati - Dance CentralI had a pattern for a turtleneck that I used to make the shirt and I didn’t attach sleeves to it. I knew I would be in that jacket all day anyways and I knew the vinyl would get pretty hot so I just left them off and hemmed the armholes. The fabric I used was spandex and polyester and was a little lighter in color than I wanted it to be. The polyester dye I purchased to make it darker wouldn’t work (and I realized this after I bought it) because the heat of the water I would have to use for the dye to work would make the little plastic sequin things melt off. So I left the fabric the color it came as and it grew on me later. Once I sewed the shirt pieces all together I did all the cutouts. It wasn’t until I looked at the whole shirt when I was trying it on that I thought the cutouts I made were too big. This is something I want to fix when I remake the shirt. I was thinking about doing something to the inside edges of the cutouts as well (hemming, adding trim, something) – but luckily the fabric didn’t fray and I just ended up leaving them the way they were – even if they were too big!

The jacket, much like Nate’s Kerith vest, was my big hurdle. Like I said, I had never sewn with straight-up vinyl and had never made a jacket, so the whole thing was daunting to me! I cut all the pieces for the jacket out (as well as the purple jacket lining) and pinned some of them together (getting help pinning some other parts of it from bethiichan – who has made many amazing jackets :3) and then pretty much just went for it. I didn’t use any interfacing where the pattern told me to since all the pieces wereThe Glitterati - Dance Central vinyl. I kind of had to fudge the sleeves since the pattern had them ruffled/gathered at the top. I stared at it for a while and ending up just shoving the sleeves farther into the armholes before sewing them (I cut the pattern out bigger than I needed it) – it actually worked out, very much to my surprise and was definitely a relief! The lining is only sewn into the jacket at parts since the jacket was way too long before I hemmed it. I ended up cutting both the jacket and lining shorter while they were on my dress form, hemmed the bottoms of both separately and then sewing them together at a few places in the middle.

The crappy thing with the vinyl was that I couldn’t sew on it. I knew I didn’t have time to do all the tricks and magic stuff to help sew with vinyl and get it through the feeders on the machine (tissue paper, etc.) so a lot of the stuff I wanted to do to the jacket like add more of the white trim just never happened. I hot glued most of the white trim on (except for the edges on the front) and the thinner white details are fabric paint, which actually worked really well. I also made the belt for the jacket but didn’t have time to actually attach it. Since I couldn’t sew through it because of the vinyl surface and hot glue didn’t work very well for vinyl to vinyl, I ended up having to go without it for most of the time we wore the costumes. I also wanted to take the jacket in some so it wasn’t as baggy on me. But for being my first jacket and my first adventure of sewing with vinyl, I was very proud of myself. Woo!

Although, I do want to remake the jacket and as much as Jaryn’s jacket looks leather or vinyl in the game, I might try to find something that’s not vinyl but is still shiny and kind of has the appearance of it. That way I’ll be able to do all the detailing work that I want to do on it easier than messing with vinyl. And I’ll be able to add the belt! XD

Jaryn - The Glitterati - Dance Central

Overall, we were very proud of these – especially with the timeframe we had. We love the Glitterati way too much and we were so happy to show that at Katsucon. Our favorite moment was the girl that asked us if she could get a photo of the Glitterati doing the clapping pose to show her friend because her friend would “totally pee her pants” – we laughed so hard at that.

Currently, we’re working on the Glitterati’s crew outfits and since we love them so much, we also might be making an original design Glitterati costume as well (you know how we love to do that all the time with characters, hehe)! So look for those soon as well as another Dance Central costume set which should be done very soon! ;D

The Glitterati - Dance Central