Gaping hole costume for Halloween 2009

This year for Halloween I tried to do a see-through hole in your body costume:

Gaping hole costume

It worked okay, but not great. The biggest problem was that I didn’t have a gadget lying around the house that could output live composite video. Both my normal video camera and my digital camera had exhausted batteries that wouldn’t recharge, which is a gadget fail on my part. And while my Flip video camera is tiny and it can output pre-recorded video through a composite cable, it can’t output live video (?!). Lame. I didn’t care enough to buy a new battery-operated gadget that could send out out live video. I settled for projecting scary Halloween images and video, but it wasn’t the same as a hole going right through your body.

I found a plastic “Roman centurion” breastplate for $10, but that led to the second problem: the breastplate was too bulky. I trimmed the breastplate down a lot, but it still was too substantial:

Gaping hole costume

Next time, I’d go with just cardboard and duct tape. On the bright side, the costume was comfortable and quick to take on and off. It wasn’t that hard to make, either. Just a little bit of cutting and duct tape did the trick:

Gaping hole costume

I might circle back to this idea down the road, but I think it’s safe to call Halloween 2009 a mixed bag.