_________Naruto

_________Costume Stats

Character Name: Naruto
Series: Naruto
Specifics: main orange outfit (pre-TJ)
Cost: $80 (wig and headband not included)
Time: ~60 hours
Started: March 2006
Completed: May 2006
Debuted: Anime North 2006

_________Reference

_________Information

I told myself I'd never make a Naruto costume. It's been done to death, I don't look like Naruto, and for me, the costume was pretty challenging. Despite all this, I fell head over heals for Naruto and decided to make it anyway. ^^;

A lot of people comment that his jacket is easy to make. These are lies. Well, for me at least. I have a lot of trouble making costumes that look like actual clothing since I still haven't figured out how to make patterns yet.

I started patterning out Naruto's jacket in March. I made some progress and made a prototype, but I didn't like it very much. In April, I was at a used clothing store with a friend of mine and spent $5 on a sweatshirt to gut for a new jacket pattern. This made this costume easier, but not easy.

There are a lot of little parts of Naruto's jacket that you have to negotiate. He has panels of orange and blue that need to be sewn in a specific order, so needless to say, I spent a lot of time just planning this costume.

I put a lot of effort into making his costume accurate. This meant that I had to install his zipper inside out in order to have it flip over with the collar. Moreover, I managed to track down an orange zipper with silver teeth in the size I needed to make my costume even more accurate.

It took me fives days straight to finish his jacket. It took a lot of trail and error to get everything right. I also hand-sewed a lot more than I should have. The entire blue detailing in the top of his jacket was done by hand, and so were all the little details.

The details were fun, but time-consuming. I made the target red swirl on his back by hand-sewing pieces of felt together, and then hand-sewing them to the costume. As for his detail swirl-thing on his arm, I made it out of felt, twine, model magic modeling clay, brown fabric, red and white paint, and two fasteners. It took awhile, but the results were worth it. It came out great. ^^

I got the fur for the collar from my friend, Amanda, and used her sewing machine to put lines into the collar. Sadly, as soon as I added the collar to the costume, the collar seemed to shrink in size. ^^;

The pants were pretty painless. I didn't want to fold up the bottoms, so I made cuffs for the bottom of the pants, which gave them a clean look. In case you were wondering, I did the same for the cuffs of the jacket as well.

The bandages on the leg were hand-sewed on. The kunai pouch was patterned by me, and hand-sewed together by my friend Kira. The headband is the same as my Anbu Naruto headband. I ripped it off of the black fabric it was on and glued it to a new blue headband. The wig remained unchanged.

The shoes were a challenge. I bought sandals will soft soles, and then made a pattern for coverings. I hand-sewed the coverings to the sandals by sewing through the soles. The sandals have zippers in the back so they can easily be taken on and off.

And I think that's about it. I'm very very very proud of the way this costume turned out. It's accurate, comfy to wear and a lot of fun. ^^

_________Misc

At Anime North 2006, I wore my Naruto costume alongside my friend, Blue Rose, who makes a great Kakashi.

For CN Anime, I was joined by Sakura and Becky as Sakura and Sasuke to complete our little Team 7.

_________Images

Anime North 2006




CNE 2006
These photos were taken by the wonderful Kevin from StillVisions.




CN Anime 2006