Vito Raliffe's Blog

I originally posted this in the Neoseeker Photo Album thread, but wanted to post it here for easier finding/viewing:


Okay, as I said in this post, I am posting the rest of the Halloween 2008 stuff. I will also be writing a lot. I understand many of you will skip to the pictures, but before saying my costume is inaccurate, please read!


For Halloween 2008, my brother and I decided to go as Two-Face and Nurse Joker from The Dark Knight. This is the first time we've done anything for Halloween in over a decade (Batman voice), so it was pretty cool, but also stressful and expensive (MY costume anyways, surprisingly).


For my Nurse Joker costume, I spent several weeks watching low-quality YouTube videos and bootlegs of the Nurse Joker scenes to get every detail down as best as I could. The hardest part was the nurse uniform, because as it turns out, it's a British nurse uniform! Who would've known? This made things much harder, as finding a site that has these uniforms AND that ship to the US was extremely frustrating, but I eventually did.

I ordered a British nurse uniform that was pretty much identical to the one in the movie. All I would have to do is have the pink trim added along with a left pocket. I received an email a couple of days later saying they were out of stock. After much more stressful searching, I found a better one, this time with a left pocket, so again, only pink trim would need to be added. I emailed them and asked if it would arrive by October 31st, and they seemed pretty confident, but also stated that there is a very small chance it would arrive on November 1st. I took my chance.


And failed! It did indeed arrive on November 1st. So instead of becoming severely depressed about all the time and money that I wasted, I took an emergency trip to this Halloween store nearby a couple of hours before I was supposed to go to Austin, TX with my brother and our two friends to "party" (which meant showing off our costumes along with everyone else). I went to this store before, but now they had a costume I never saw in stock before, the "Twisted Nurse" uniform, which is a blatant rip-off of Nurse Joker. The guy on the cover even had white make-up and a red wig on! I came across it before in my Internet searchings, but it was garbage, so I had ignored it.

Despite this uniform being horribly inaccurate to the real Nurse Joker uniform, and the one that I ordered, I got it anyways.

Now I had all the parts: The wig, the uniform, the corset belt, the surgeon's mask, the silver nametag, the Harvey Dent sticker, the nurse watch, the nurse pin, the nurse flashlight pen, the nurse clogs, and the custom made Joker socks. All ordered from separate places and different times for the same purpose.

The problems with the nurse uniform I had were: No left pocket for flashlight pen or watch. No pink trim. Giant red buttons in the middle (which I tried to conceal as best I could with the belt), and for some reason, the front of it was completely opened up. No buttons, no zipper, no nothin' (Sal Maroni voice).

I closed the front together with Spirit Gum (adhesive used for prosthetics), quickly added some pink trim (couldn't do arms in time, collar only) with a pink marker, which I made fade better with the uniform by dabbing it with a warm wet towel, and used some duct tape to attach the flashlight pen (which fell off, as you can see in the pictures below it isn't there). The watch had a pin you used to attach to the uniform anyways, so that wasn't a problem.

The result:




Once I had everything together, I didn't care that my nurse uniform hadn't arrived. I decided to make it the best night it could be, and it was. My night wouldn't have been any different with the other uniform, and honestly, I doubt anyone would've known the difference.


Now onto my brother's Two-Face, which I started on at the post linked at the top.

As I said, for the make-up the materials were nothing more than liquid latex, red/white/black clown paint (it was the same white I used for my face), and crushed up Rice Krispies. I got this wonderful recipe from an awesome girl who goes by the name of Shichi at cosplay.com, who had done a tutorial on her Live Journal page.

I did a test run on my arm (old pics incoming!):




Taught my brother how, and then we did a test run on him a couple of days before Halloween:






We used some super secret photos from the movie, and photos from this INCREDIBLE action figure that was done. It was like, the most detailed, most-closest-to-its-movie-counterpart action figure I had ever seen.

Here is how it's done:

Put liquid latex on. Let dry some. Throw crushed Rice Krispies on there. More liquid latex over Rice Krispies. Let dry some. More Rice Krispies, etc. etc. until you are satisfied with your Rice Krispie-ness. Then, paint over everything with red clown paint, then cover it all with white clown paint to make a pink color, so it looks like vomit, and then add black to darken it and make it look like charred remains. That's it! I think we did pretty damn good, especially considering Aaron Eckhart had NO make-up on, and just these CG markers down the middle of his face (from our super secret photo collection that is widely available on the Internet if you know where to look).

We used a bald cap to keep my brother's hair down for the burnt side, and were actually able to cut the bald cap in half and put it on a wig head I had from one of my three separate wig purchases when I was trying to get the closest one for my Nurse Joker. This saved our asses, and there was NO way we would have been able to do his face AND his head/neck on Halloween night. We just threw the already completed bald cap on, did the face, and left.

As for the suit, my brother purchased a cheap one from Wal-Mart, and used a lighter to burn it. It turns out suits get pretty stiff after they are burned.

Now, I am about to post the final Two-Face pictures. Please note that my brother and I both agree the test run was better. This is because due to my brother's work schedule that day (he is a Captain in the Army), he didn't get out until waaaay later than planned. We had to do a rush job. The parts we don't like about the final version are the eye, and the way he kept his mouth open. The eye was just a rush job on liquid latex with marker, which I thought was a bad idea and didn't expect to work, which it didn't. To keep the left side of his mouth open, he used Spirit Gum and the tie clip that came with his tie from Wal-mart bent in half. Over the night it ended up opening all the way, instead of just leaving half his mouth open. Sadly, we didn't take many pictures at the beginning of the night! (not big picture-takers anyways). Most of these pictures were taken after we ate, where he had to remove the liquid latex just to eat (the liquid latex eventually formed into a giant, solid piece), and he would quickly throw it back on for the pictures:

At the beginning:




After he had to peel it off and put it back on (which is why it isn't fully stuck to his head like before):




The coin, which is an EXACT replica of the one from the movie (same year and everything). My brother did the "Bad side" like from the comics and Animated Series:







Now, for the actual details of the night, we didn't get to leave for Austin until around 10:30 PM (due to the make-up process for my brother. Simple, but time-consuming), and didn't get there till around Midnight. We went with our friends Richard and Hilary (husband and wife, both in the military, naturally), and went to 6th street, which as it is in many cities, is the busiest street there. As it turns out, this was the perfect time to come, as this was when everyone started to come out.

It was totally not what I expected.

There were HUNDREDS, and HUNDREDS, and HUNDREDS (maybe even well over a thousand!) people there, the majority of them dressed up, all around our age (college students and what not). It was incredible. I had never seen anything like it before. And not to brag or sound like an asshole, but me and my brother's costumes were some of the very top ones. This isn't based off my own opinion, but those of everyone around us. Literally every couple of minutes, we would get stopped because people would want to take pictures with us! And in between those couple of minutes when we could walk freely without being stopped, people were giving us nods or high-fives, or saying "Awesome costume", "Yours is the best I've seen!" (to me) or "Wow, that is incredible, how did you do that?" (to my brother). It felt almost as if we were stars from the movie itself. There were also several girls who said we were hot, which would be cool to know, but we also find it kind of disturbing seeing as how we had currently looked (fetish for clown nurses and burn victims? D: ).


We also saw a lot of great costumes ourselves. There were a lot of normal Joker's of course (who Richard went as), but I did see a couple of nurse ones (even with my inaccurate uniform, I was still the best :coolcat: ). I saw one other Two-Face, who had great burn make-up as well, but was going more for the Animated Series look (my brother missed him. He could only see out of one eye after all). I also saw the Riddler (who my brother also missed), which was awesome. We gave a little nod and thumbs-up to each other as we walked by. Batman villains FTW!

My favorite costumes of the night (and the most original ones I saw) were Michael Vick (he had the jersey on, along with two fake dead puppies slung over his shoulder), Kratos (the guy was super ripped, so he pulled it off well), Optimus Prime, the Riddler, and a girl dressed as Padmé Amidala (the arena costume from Episode II, before she got the mid-section ripped off for the horny teens in the theater). She was like, one of the only girls I saw who didn't dress super skimpy (some would use the word slutty instead of skimpy, but I wouldn't cause I am nice and liked their costumes very much :). I couldn't stare too long, as the bottom of my nurse uniform was barely covered, and I was only wearing my usual boxer-briefs underneath. I couldn't sit down the whole night either! Now I know how girls feel!).


And that is pretty much it! We walked on that street for hours, having our pictures taken, and giving nods to other people with awesome costumes. Eventually we all went to IHOP, which you can see here:




This was the first picture taken by our waiter. I don't know WTF he was thinking when he took it, but I made him re-do it later. He was the most odd waiter we've ever had, but still a cool guy. You can see my brother putting his "mask" back on (I don't like using that word because it wasn't really a mask, it just formed into one as the make-up and liquid latex dried!), and that is Hilary (Richard's wife) on the right dressed as a pirate chick. The guy on the far left is Carlos, a guy who we met there while waiting to be seated. He is the most suave rockstar-type dude I've ever met, and I know he gets da ladies 24/7. After us going our separate ways when we got seated, he jumped into the picture with us when he saw the waiter with the camera.


The following is the picture I made the waiter re-take when he asked "Is there anything else I can do for you guys tonight?":




I look fat in this, and yes, I'm drinking milk! I love milk. Plus, what is more disturbing than a Nurse Joker drinking milk at a restaurant? On the far right is Richard. He went as normal Joker, although more than a few people thought he was Beetlejuice. My brother had to put his "mask" back on again, but there wasn't a lot of time to get it adjusted.


After eating, we went back to the hotel, and had the valet take our picture twice right before bed. I love the lighting in these pictures!:







That is it (for real this time)! It was an incredible night, and I am so truly thankful everything still worked out in the end.

PS- I will probably post a picture of my socks later.


PPS- I think I will take advantage of the new Blog feature here for the first time as well, and make this long-as-hell post a little more...permanent!


PPPS-


THERE WON'T BE ANY FIREWORKS!!!