Local Lizard

I do cosplay sometimes. I watch a lot of cartoons. I may or may not be an actual lizard person.

[zydthelizard]

Rowan and Isla

Elementals at the Carolina Renaissance Faire:

[zydthelizard]

Dr. Curtis Connors - The Lizard

Given I had a realistic reptilian mask already, doing a cosplay of The Lizard seemed like a given. See first attempt below:

While not terrible, it was missing some things. I didn’t have anything for my hands when this was taken. No tail. Those pants were old and really uncomfortable. And the clothing in general was just too clean and nice looking for a guy who turned into a lizard and started running around in storm drains. 

I had put this aside for a while, but I’ve had the urge to bring him back better. My town started a small local comic con, and I wore my Moon Knight costume there. The Lizard wasn’t in any place to be worn out. While I got a lot of compliments, I didn’t place in the contest. They called out the top 5, so I was among the ~20 other contestants. But I noticed that every costume was relatively human, and while there was some very impressive armor builds, there was nothing in the way of much makeup or mask work. So the plan next year is to stand out a bit more.

To that end, first, I’ve gotten some matching lizard hands since that first picture was taken:

I’ve begun the preliminary planning on making a tail, but that is far and away the largest thing I have to worry about. Will likely post more on that later:

I’ve added some rips and tears into the black t-shirt and lab coat. Once I get a new pair of purple-ish pants that actually fit, I’ll tear those up too. Then I can work on adding some dirt and grime to them all so that he doesn’t look so clean.

Lastly, most of the time when you see The Lizard, he isn’t wearing shoes. He just has bare lizard feet. As of now I don’t really feel like making feet. I did see these, which were part of a commercially available Lizard costume, and honestly they don’t look that bad as a base to build off of. I don’t think too much attention will be on my feet anyway, they just need to pass at a glance:

Unfortunately they’re sold out everywhere, and the only place I see them is on sketchy auction sites I’ve never heard of. I may see if they come back into stock anywhere around Halloween, but if not then I’m not sweating too hard over just wearing shoes. 

[zydthelizard]

Forest Elemental Shoulder Reconstruction

The shoulder piece for the forest elemental Rowan was taken from my older costume, Jarad vod Savo, former lich lord of the Golgari. That piece was fairly beaten up, and frankly I wasn’t all that happy with it in the first place. A look at the left shoulder of it is below:

The moss was mostly falling off of the foam base, and the piece of cloth I had glued underneath to look like tattered vestments just didn’t look that good. The foam was also entirely too large, sticking from my frame too much.

I trimmed the foam back, removing extra mushrooms as needed, I also ripped off the hanging cloth, and replaced it with a type of halloween decoration called “creepy cloth,” which performed a few functions. One, it resembled moss itself. Two, its net-like properties helped keep the original moss in place, and make a sort of layered effect. Three, it did a better job of portraying the vestment idea. I also added a row of broken antler pieces along the edge of the shoulders, for extra detail and their resemblance to the horns of the mask I use with the full costume. The reconstructed right shoulder is below:

Here is the whole piece, with one side rebuilt, to show the improvement:

And then, both sides rebuilt:

And lastly, how it looked when worn with the full costume:

[zydthelizard]

Zyd and Kerai at the Carolina Renaissance Festival. 

Masks by Composite Effects. 

[zydthelizard]

Zyd the lizard. 

Mask by Composite Effects