My first attempt at game character costuming, back in 1998. I was heavily into Final Fantasy VII at the moment, and as I doubt I could have pulled off my dear Sephiroth, Vincent was a good second choice. I forget if it was this one or the next that I sent in to RPGamer for their Halloween contest... I won first place, and got a copy of Pokémon Red.

Slightly different pose. The costume itself is rather half-hearted, compared to recent efforts - the shirt's just a turtleneck I already had, which you can tell is faded a bit from the black, and the boots don't have the brass toes on them... if I ever wear this again, I'll be making a new shirt and adding the brass to the boots. However, I'm extremely pleased with the claw - it was my first experiment with sheet brass, and went tremendously well. It was held together with those little brass paper fastener things, which look enough like rivets to work, and the wrist/hand segment actually was jointed so it could flex. Actually, the part over the arm and wrist was a separate part which I slipped over a black glove with narrow brass points glued to the fingers, and held in place with a black rubber band across the palm.

Action shot! I actually took pictures of a lot of different poses in this, but most of them didn't turn out so well. Plus, I was having trouble not laughing, because my parents were taking the pictures, and had absolutely no idea who I was supposed to be. It felt a little silly, but then, it's all good to me.