Toronto Underground Cinema - Raptor Costume Revisited!

The Toronto Underground Cinema's 2011 pinup calendar features the lovely Sam in my Raptor costume pieces! The hood and gloves are my original designs :)

PHOTO CREDIT: IF YOU FALL PHOTOGRAPHY + TORONTO UNDERGROUND CINEMA 2011. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Adventures in Silk Screen Alternatives!

For some time, I had been reading about using Butcher's Paper as an alternative to the time consuming and frequently frustrating process of throwing a screen without a light table. While in Winnipeg for Christmas, my dad picked up a few meters from a client and surprised me with it! I was so excited to try it out, and I have to say it's amazing! Other than the tedius requirement of manually cutting everything out, I've found you can reuse them a few times if you are careful :)

The Long Awaited Epic Blog Post of Jurassic Park on the Silver Stage! The end.

It was an amazing experience to be involved in such a phenomenal and epic undertaking. Everyone who supported the insanity of my month and a half 30 costume design insanity and all the extremely talented people I worked with and encountered on the way, thank you :) x

The Long Awaited Epic Blog Post of Jurassic Park on the Silver Stage! Pt. 6 - Main Characters

Initially we expected a guy to act as Robert Muldoon in the shadow cast. But as soon as we laid eyes on Rae, 'Sexy Muldoon' was created on the spot. On top of being an extremely hot ginger, she used the increasingly large weapons we provided her with ease and acrobatic flair that would shame ol' Rob. Her costume consisted of a khaki button down short sleeve shirt, matching shorts, a bush hat and knee high socks. I made a leather harness from scratch for her to wear instead of the typical canvas vest. It was the first time I worked with leather but I had a substantial stockpile here so I decided to give it a try! And from the looks of things, I pulled it off:)

Some live shots:

Denis Nedry and Robert 'Bloodsucker' Gennaro as played by Charlie and Trevor!

Nedry's costume included the token garish Hawaiian shirt, khaki pants and a white tee. Charlie also included knee-pads under his pants because he practically smashed his knee caps open during some of the first rehearsals!

Some live shots:

Gennaro's character as the 'bloodsucking lawyer' character could only be punctuated by some snazzy sock garters that I made from scratch and tailoring his pants to short shorts. On top of that, Trevor had a genuine Jurassic Park tie from when the movie actually came out!

Some live shots:

And last but not least John Hammond, Ray Arnold, and Dr. Ian Malcolm as played by Kris, Jeff and Nigel!


Hammond's costume had a detailed button down shirt, light khaki pants, and a straw fedora. Alex Hurter of the Repo! Shadow Cats constructed a kick ass bamboo cane with a glowing amber orb on top for Hammond to wield as well.

Some live shots:

Ray Arnold had an official Jurassic Park labcoat as seen in my earlier post as well as a tee that I screened a fake tie with a snake on it (in lieu of Sam Jackson's character in Snakes on a Plane) and pocket protector. I don't have any good shots of it but you can check out Jeff totally rocking the part and smoking throughout his performace in the shots below. 'Hold on to your butts!'

And we can't forgot the epic and erotic stylings of the proclaimed 'Rockstar' Dr. Ian Malcolm. He spent most of the performance shirtless and writhing around on stage..

The Long Awaited Epic Blog Post of Jurassic Park on the Silver Stage! Pt. 5 - Main Characters

We had an exceptional cast with a variety of characters to play. I stayed true enough to the costumes in the film in order for the audience to be able to recognize which characters they were looking at but added interesting little details or accessories to make them a little more unique!


Tim 'Timmy' and Alexis 'Lex' Murphy as played by Shaggy and Nadia:

Timmy costume had a denim button down short-sleeved shirt, a striped jersey t-shirt, khaki short, knee high socks and of course, rainbow suspenders! He carried around a giant illustrated childrens dinosaur book and had an elmo backpack that held the really awesome 'night vision' googles Chris, our excellent prop/set designer designed. Over the breast pocket of the denim shirt I designed and made a nametag specially for Timmy..

Lex's costume in the movie was pretty simple so I went with a little more punk style, made her striped armbands and had a sideways navy baseball cap. I thought it would also be fun to add something interesting to her tanktop so I put Raptor Jesus on it! Yay!

Some shots of them in the live show. Lex's shirt is wet due to the erotic Long-Neck sneezing scene:

Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler as played by Brian and Emily:

Dr. Grant's costume included a dark denim button down shirt, khaki pants that were rolled up quite high, a red bandana and a rattan type hat. Instead of having a Raptor claw on his person as seen in the movie, we opted for a large purple dildo! In order for Grant to easily carry this around, I invented a dildo holster called "The Cockster" which his belt threaded through and allowed the dildo to hang from his waist.

Dr. Sattler's costume included a coral 3/4 length sleeve shirt, khaki shorts, a blue tank top and a canvas safari hat.

Some live shots from the show:

The Long Awaited Epic Blog Post of Jurassic Park on the Silver Stage! Pt. 4 - JP Brand

The overwhelming and very visible Jurassic Park brand is innate in the movie and I thought it appropriate to represent this in the shadow cast as well:) All of the actors on stage that were not the main characters had as much JP branding as I could cram on them! This is Max, modelling the lab technicians coat:

I illustrated the ID tags as closely to the ones in the movie as well as the personal tags for the main characters. For everyone who didn't get a character one, I made them an honorary tag as a keepsake for them:)

Some shots from the live show:

The Long Awaited Epic Blog Post of Jurassic Park on the Silver Stage! Pt. 3 - Trannysaurus Rex

Our amazing director Alex Woodside stepped forward last minute to fill the shoes of the Drag T-Rex or as I fondly refer to her, Trannysaurus Rex. This involved a wide range of acrobatics, screaming and general molestation and he pulled it off immaculately! I don't have photos of all the costume pieces for this unfortunately but I do have some great shots of him in action!


I wanted to do something different for the Rex head because scale wise, compared to the Raptors it would have been quite larger. Instead of trying to do the obvious and just scale things up, I decided on a totally different route and made a Rex Fascinator, or little hat to sit on top of the head that had a thin elastic band to keep it on around the neck. Then I made a neck corset out of red faux leather and added a row of teeth on the top of it. Additionally, the costume had a white elastic harness like the other dinosaurs. Unfortunately I don't have any detailed shots of the collar or harness but you can see how it looks in the live shots.

Some shots of the live show and full costume: