Questions I never really found an answer for.

Dark Jedi

Active Hunter
Well, its October. The time of year when the weather changes, midterms are in full swing, I enter my yearly depression for being a Cubs fan, and most noticably I have pretty much everybody I know on campus asking me the same basic question:

"Hey. I know your really good with the costumes. I was thinking about doing a [enter character] for halloween because [enter random reason]. I was wondering if you know of a good way to do it."

While I usually have an answer for this question. I have been asked a few about costuming in general that I am not to sure about. So I figure I bring it up for discussion here.

Questions about Costuming

1. How many reproductions of a prop can you make before the studio comes and finds you? Case in point; many people who have built a proton pack will often say they cant mass produce them because of lincencing issues or copy rights or something along those grounds. However, how can there be storm trooper armor and other costume parts being run and sold by people in the community if they are not licened by their respective studios?:confused

2. How often do people generally make a new one? Right now I have made a dirrent suit every halloween, but I have see plenty of people here work on a particualr suit for years at a time.

3. How many do people keep on hand? Usually I am forced to sell a pervious costume to pay for the next one. Although I hope to discontinue this practice soon, I cant picture having a whole room of suits.

And this one is pretty stupid, but I do get asked and I cleaned it up a bit for here.

4. Have you ever recieved a phone number (dating context, not buisnssness) while you are in costume? Oddly enough, I have received more numbers when I had a lightsaber in my hand than any other time of my life:lol:
 
1. Legally you could make just one of a certain item for your own personal use before the owners of said copyright could sue your pants off. The reason why some people get away with it and other don't comes down to just the individual copyright holders decision to sue them or not.

2. This I think is going to come down to a question of money. In a perfect world I would build a new costume every week or month. The reason you see some people work on costumes for years at a time might be because their finances limit how fast they can get peices of said costume. The other thing, they might have a finished wearable version of a costume but then decide to upgrade parts for better peices thus dragging out the "Finished" costume for years to come (this was the case with my boba for example).

3. At current I have somewhere around 7-9 different costumes in my house with about 3-4 more in the works. I have sold ones that I no longer wanted, or had intentions of completly upgrading, or just to fund other projects. Again this comes down to the individual person. I would prefer not to sell any of my costumes considering how much time and money goes into each and every one of them but sometimes it just happpens.

4. I got an e-mail address for a girl that I actually went out with a couple of times while I was in my 300 Spartan costume. Other then that no.
 
I'm currently working on 3 different costumes right now, and to be honest, I have no idea where I'm going to put all this stuff. :lol:

I would really love to display the stuff I make (and all the toys I have in storage), but that won't happen until I move out and can geek-ify the heck out of the house. :D
 
I don't know about other licensed works but the reason that Lucasfilm doesn't sue all the Star Wars people is because of the charity work that the 501st does.
 
I'll need to eventually sell a costume or two for the reason you mentioned; I just don't want to have to store all of them
 
I don't know about other licensed works but the reason that Lucasfilm doesn't sue all the Star Wars people is because of the charity work that the 501st does.

That, and I'm sure that Lucasfilm doesn't mind all the free advertising by those dressed up in costume.

I dont think they care about the Charity thing (publicaly maybey) but for them its easy money. See the recient South Park episode, the raping of the stormtrooper.

To quote Mallrats "Why but the cow when you get the s3x for free?"
 
I am deffinitlly the guy whose finances are low and slow. Ive been working on my for almost 3 years now!! But to see how far ive come is really cool.
 
1. How many reproductions of a prop can you make before the studio comes and finds you? Case in point; many people who have built a proton pack will often say they cant mass produce them because of lincencing issues or copy rights or something along those grounds. However, how can there be storm trooper armor and other costume parts being run and sold by people in the community if they are not licened by their respective studios?:confused

I think that varies widely depending on the license holder and how aggressively they pursue things.


2. How often do people generally make a new one? Right now I have made a dirrent suit every halloween, but I have see plenty of people here work on a particualr suit for years at a time.

I'm never not working on something new. Sometimes that's another part of the Fett suit, which I've been tuning for years. Other times it's a totally new project.

3. How many do people keep on hand? Usually I am forced to sell a pervious costume to pay for the next one. Although I hope to discontinue this practice soon, I cant picture having a whole room of suits.


I've got a lot. Boba, Rex, Tusken raider, X-wing pilot, rebel fleet trooper, BSG green BDUS, Jayne from Firefly, Jason Vorhees, Jack Harkness... I think that's "all" at the moment.



4. Have you ever recieved a phone number (dating context, not buisnssness) while you are in costume? Oddly enough, I have received more numbers when I had a lightsaber in my hand than any other time of my life:lol:
[/quote]

I've had a variety of... propositions... offered while in costume.
 
1. How many reproductions of a prop can you make before the studio comes and finds you? Case in point; many people who have built a proton pack will often say they cant mass produce them because of lincencing issues or copy rights or something along those grounds. However, how can there be storm trooper armor and other costume parts being run and sold by people in the community if they are not licened by their respective studios?:confused

As has been mentioned, it pretty much boils down to how aggressively the respective IP holders pursue what they perceive to be violations.

It usually breaks down to scale, as a rule of thumb. For example, a friend and myself are setting up a run of Firefly props. A small run of the Sheriff's badges from the episode The Train Job. This friend is the curator of the Firefly Archive and has quite possibly the most extensive collection of privately held Firefly memorabilia anywhere, including Vera and Boo. :) So his badges will be cast directly from the screen used prop in brass.

Now, as he's doing a small, limited run, he's probably going to be safe. If he were to set up a foundry in China and start importing them by the freighter load... not so much.

Even the largest runs of stuff I've seen here and elsewhere were what would be small potatos in the "real" world, so there is that to consider, as well as the fact that while we, the community, are doing what we do, it's like free advertising for them.

That's my take on it, anyway.
 
The magic number is $10,000.

If you post and make a "list" basically laying out the fact that you are making over 10k in profit (10 suit run for 1000 dollars), paint a big red target on your head. That means it is legally worth the money to spend to come after you because of the money you are making off the name.

Yah its in their choice to sue you but its not worth suing if you're making 100 bucks off something and it takes 10k in cost to come after you.
 
I don't know about other licensed works but the reason that Lucasfilm doesn't sue all the Star Wars people is because of the charity work that the 501st does.

That, and I'm sure that Lucasfilm doesn't mind all the free advertising by those dressed up in costume.

I was going to say the same thing. Lucasfilm probably thinks the charity aspect is nice. But they want the advertising more then anything.
 
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