For the first time in...a long while I had the time at the end of this October to make myself a fresh costume for Halloween! This year has involved a lot of diving headfirst into podcasts--most notably, The Adventure Zone, a live-play tabletop podcast run by the illustrious Brothers McElroy. One of my favorite characters from recent storylines was Duck Newton, a Monogahela National Forest Ranger getting in over his head with some supernatural goings-on around the (fictional) town of Kepler, West Virginia.
Assembling the USFS Ranger's uniform was a lot of fun research and eBay scouring. My workplace connections at Formlabs helped a lot with printing the badges and nameplate, too: all I had to do was give them a paint job. I bought the Pine Guard badge on the McElroy's online store. The hat is a US Marine campaign hat.
One of the best parts of portraying Duck is all his magical tools of the trade. I had a more elaborate plan for his uncoiling, talking sword--"Beacon"--that involved a mouth that could be puppeteered by squeezing the hilt, but that fell by the wayside when I went overboard with the "Flymaster," a magical jetpack given to Duck by a magic, giant, talking cat.
I love fantasy sometimes.
I love fantasy sometimes.
This character is admittedly rather obscure, so I was gunning for the "Who the heck are you?" category at the workplace Halloween Party. No dice, but I'm still pretty happy with how Duck turned out, and might bust him out for some future Cons or other nerdy gatherings.