_________Renamon

_________Costume Stats

Character Name: Renamon
Series: Digimon Tamers
Specifics: original gijinka/human form version
Cost: about $200
Time: 40 hours
Started: November 2003
Completed: May 2004
Worn: Anime North 2004

_________Reference

_________Information

In 2001, I made a Renamon costume. Being one of the first costumes I made, it wasn't very good. So I promised myself that once I figured out what I was doing, I'd make a new one. And so, in late fall I started collecting materials for a brand new Renamon costume. My old costume was made of polar fleece, and so I planned to make the new one out of polar fleece as well. I bought the yellow fleece I needed, but I still had purple fleece and white fur left over from last time so I used that.

Since this costume was of my own design, I had a lot of creative liberties. I sketched out a bunch of versions and then choose one and stuck to it.

The dress part was a first and really really time-consuming. I'd never made anything like it before. It was also my first encounter with zippers. I had some help from Amanda with pinning (since I really couldn't do it myself), and she helped me shape the bottom half of the dress. Thank you Amanda! ^^

After getting the dress to fit, I sewed in invisible bra straps to give it extra support and to keep it from slipping off. I then sewed fur to the top and bottom of the dress. I hand-sewed all the fur to make sure it would look right.

I made little wing-things and stuffed them before attaching them to the back of the dress. I also made Renamon's tail, but it weighed down the costume too much, so in the end, I didn't use it. ;___;

The fur color was pretty straight foreword and only took about an hour and a half to make. I used snaps to take it on and off.

The gloves were tricky. I sewed pipe cleaners into them to give them shape, so they're fun to play with. ^^; I found embroidered ying-yangs at a martial arts store and sewed them onto the gloves.

The ears are almost exactly the same as the ones I made for my first Renamon costume. They're stuffed and have fur hand-sewed to the ends. I wanted the ears to sit over my ears, because otherwise they'd look like alien head things or something. The problem with that is that I couldn't sew them to the wig. I tried differently things (including taking apart a par of earmuffs), and eventfully settled for sewing the ears to a black strip of fabric that goes around my head.

The wig is my infamous "god-wig". I sewed snaps into it so it snaps to the black fabric the ears are attached to. This keeps both the wig and ears in place.

I wasn't originally going to wear tights underneath, but once I thought of doing it, I couldn't think of not doing it. And so I went out and bought black tights. The boots I got on sale with my winter boots. They were perfect for Renamon and made me seem a lot taller, which is good considering how tall Renamon is. ^^;

Overall, this costume turned out great. ^^ I'm so happy I got to re-make it. My first version looked like nothing compared to this.

_________In Progress

_________Misc

At Anime North 2004, I wore my Renamon costume on the Friday and the Saturday. My friend Blue Rose dressed up as Rika (she made an awesome Rika!) and my friend Becky made an adorable Terriermon costume, so we had a mini Tamers group. ^^ It was sooo much fun to wear these costumes together. People would recognize us but they had some trouble remembering what series we were from. ^^; Yay, Digimon!

On the Friday on Anime North, Amanda put makeup on me for my costume. I'm not a huge fan of makeup, so I didn't wear any on Saturday. If you're wondering why my makeup-ness is inconsistent, that's why. *heh*

Also, I was wearing this costume when I was filmed for YTV's Vortex with Paula (who's awesome, by the way ^^). You might want to keep an eye out for that. ^_~

_________Images

Anime North 2004