I want to think some more about the cyberpunk costume. One of the things that was said at a steampunk costuming panel at Dragon*Con last year was that when making a costume, you should design your character first. An airship mechanic suggests different ideas and accessories than a gentleman adventurer. This strikes me as good advice. Since I am designing my costume from scratch instead of cosplaying as an existing character, coming up with a character concept gives me a framework to build on. It will allow me to decide what kind of clothes the character would wear, what gear and accessories he would carry with him.

So the first thing I need to do is come up with a character. There are several archetypes in cyberpunk. The ones I am interested in are the street samurai, fire support, infiltrator, and the street mage (Shadowrun adds magic to the cyberpunk genre). Hacker is another major archetype in cyberpunk, but that’s too close to my normal life to be interesting to me. Actually, I think I will go ahead and drop the street mage too. Magic is an unusual addition to cyberpunk, and I think without a whole runner team going with me, people might not recognize a street mage for what he is.

That leaves me with two combat based archetypes, and a sneaky bastard. I do so love playing sneaky bastards in paper and pencil RPGs. You can get into (and sometimes out of) so much more interesting trouble than the beat sticks, and I love surviving by skill and wit rather than brawn. The combat archetypes would be more recognizable at a convention, though. But I ought to be able to combine multiple archetypes. The standard bad ass hero has a whole host of skills and abilities, so an infiltrator/fire support character would fit in just fine. And now I’ve talked myself into making the same character I’m playing in Shadowrun right now.

So the concept now is a character who shoots stuff and has a bag of tricks for getting into and out of trouble. That is much more concrete than a generic cyberpunk costume.

Now that I have a concept to work with, it’s time to start thinking about what it will look like. There are a few things to keep in mind when designing any kind of costume for a convention. First, you are going to be wearing it all day. So make sure it’s comfortable to wear and walk around in, without heavy pieces you’re going to have to lug around all day. Second, cons are crowded. Moving through a crowd with large, delicate wings or a giant Sephiroth sword is difficult. Plan accordingly. Thirdly, include pockets, pouches, or some other method of carrying around your assorted keys, wallets, and other goodies you acquire when wandering around the con.

With that in mind, I want to think about the base costume for a bit. By that I mean the general outfit, as separate from the accessories, such as guns and headsets. I don’t want to look like a soldier, so lots of body armor and full BDUs are out. And while I’ve been calling the archetype ‘infiltrator,’ I am envisioning more of a likeable scoundrel with a bunch of tricks up his cybernetic sleeves rather than a stealthy, covert-ops type character. So the outfit doesn’t need to be subtle or commando-ish. One of the ideas that I had when I first thought of the doing a cyberpunk costume was to have a sleeveless long coat. Dusters and trench coats have been a hallmark of the adventurous since the Hollywood western, and the Matrix used them to good effect. And sleeveless because it’s punk. I think this will have a very good chance of being in the final costume.

The question is what to wear underneath it. My first idea was to wear a jumpsuit under the coat. The plain utility of a jumpsuit seems suited to a cyberpunk outfit. Another idea is to wear BDU pants with a T-shirt with a cyberpunk type logo on it, like the Laughing Man icon or a Shadowrun corporate logo. I think either will work. If I can find urban camo pants or a good digital camo I will choose the BDUs over the jumpsuit. I'll need to look around and see what I can find.

Footwear will be the standard heavy black boots.

That will make up the core of my costume. The next step is to think about what gear and accessories I want for the costume. I'll tackle that in a later post.