Ah, Farscape! Wonderful, wonderful show. It was intelligent, and it assumed the audience was too. More than once the episode would reach the first commercial break and I would be amazed at how much plot had been packed into the first 15 minutes. Sadly, the SciFi Channel cancelled Farscape at the end of its fourth season, leaving fans with a cliffhanger ending. Grrrrr...
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Captain Bialar Crais: The villain turned uneasy ally, Crais enjoyed one of the best character arcs on TV. On the left we have actor Lani Tupu in his costume; on the right, my friend Andy. Many people had commented on how he resembled Crais, and finally I got around to making the costume for him.
The jacket is based on Folkwear's "Belgian Military Chef's Jacket." The skirt is pleather and attaches with velcro so Andy can wash the jacket. The front breastplate is made of stiff pleather; the stippling pattern was achieved by spraying glossy acrylic spray through hockey jersey fabric onto the pleather. The patch at the neck is made of craft foam, and as long as you don't look too closely it passes quite well for the tooled leather of the original. |
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Furlow: The villain who stayed a villain even when she was pretending to be your ally. She was a minor character who only appeared in a few episodes, but she also was that rare thing, a woman who wasn't a little tiny stick person. The actress is Magda Szubanski.
The coveralls were purchased and then dyed gray. I also dyed the fabric used for the trim and neck wrapping. I prefer to think of the uneven dye job I did as being a deliberate attempt to achieve some variation in the color, rather than an error in using a dye pot that was too small. So there. The hat was made from a baseball hat with the brim cut off; I got it nice and dirty out in a parking lot. The "metal" bands are strips of craft foam painted silver. The wrench is spray-painted styrofoam. I made the tool pouch from pleather left over from the Crais costume and black webbing fabric. A cheap pair of safety goggles and some see-through gold trim went into the eyewear, which allowed me to go on stage wearing my glasses underneath (and avoid replicating Furlow's funky contact lenses). Yes, it's a wig. |  |
The best comment I got on this costume: "You're not fat enough to be Furlow."
Both costumes were entered in the Masquerade at Shore Leave 2002. The Crais costume won Third Place in the "Recreation Uniform" category. Also, they were entered for Workmanship judging, which gives the judges an opportunity to look closely at the details and reward work that wouldn't be noticeable from stage. The judges make up the workmanship award names on the spot, and I was given what they called the "Bipolar Costumer" award for having made both the Crais costume, with its clean lines, and the baggy, dirty, rumpled Furlow. I was pleased; I appreciated that the judges saw something about them that I had not. I had been thinking of them as separate costumes and didn't consider the way they represented a range of techniques.
More Pictures!
Four Farscape costumes were entered in the Shore Leave 2002 Masquerade. Naturally we all posed together. Here we have Aeryn Sun, a Peacekeeper, Crais, and Furlow.
These pictures were taken by Christopher Neufeld and posted on his site, http://caliban.physics.utoronto.ca/neufeld/shoreleave24/July13_MASQ.html. I have posted copies here with his permission.
Guess what? Andy is a ham! By the way, here you can see his hair; we achieved the tight Peacekeeper hair braid with lots and lots and lots of black hairbands.
At United Fan Con 2002, Andy got the chance to pose with Lani Tupu.
