Last night was prowling about in the local Goodwill trying to figure out a costume for tonight’s Studio Crawl. I have been mildly depressed lately that I haven’t really built a good Halloween costume in ages, and was poking about the aisles hoping to be inspired.

I began thinking about props I could use, and my bright green parasol came to mind. It was bright green, it was Asian in design, and suddenly…that was it! I would go as an Eastern dragon and tote along my parasol! I was quickly galvanized to scour the Goodwill for any bright green article of clothing I could find.

I put together the costume last night and the headpiece this morning. For the headpiece, I used a ball cap and created a dragon face on top with foam and feathers and the like. The bill acted as the dragon’s snout, and I was quite pleased with the whole outfit! I even made three-claw gloves out of some purple mittens (it was nice to fire up the sewing machine again). Pictures to come soon, I’m sure.

Anyway, I joined up with Edmundo, Carlos, and Rich, and we invaded Schell Games as the League of Awesome. Rich had put together a fantastic steam punk time travel monster-hunter get-up, with a brass-plated gauntlet, a steam-powered shot gun, and other such fun gadgetry. Carlos was a mime, and Edmundo was a classic Frankenstein monster. The details in their costumes was delightful, and the Studio Crawl was great fun.

There were other such fun costumes from other IGDA members at the Crawl: Beast in scientist garb, Michael Cera’s character from Juno, a Tonks and Lupin duo, and a FANTASTIC Phoenix Wright getup (the guy just modeled his hair out of flat fun-foam, it looked great!).

All in all, a great night, and a refreshing one at that. Having a venue to go all costumed up is just the spark I needed after several years of dull or effortless costuming on my part. I feel very much in the Halloween spirit.