Anbu - Naruto



Cost: $40
Time to Make: 40 hours
Timeline of Construction: June 2005


Pictures




Information

I'm not exactly sure what inspired me and my friends to Cosplay as Anbu. Pan, Sakura and I really liked the look of the Anbu uniforms and we thought it would be fun to Cosplay as a team for a Naruto photoshoot. It took us around a month to make these costumes. We started them not long after Anime North that year. It was the first year that I had a summer office job and I can remember taking parts of this costume to work and sewing it on my lunch break and on the subway. My Anbu costume is probably one of the most impressive costumes that I own because of the way it was made and how it turned out.

We decided that the best way to make it accurate was to use foam as a base for the vests and arm guards and we had to shape fabric around the foam and glue it down to keep the shape. The vest has quite a bit of detail to it so it took a while to make the straps, sew proper seams and add the fake pockets. We sewed pillow like casings for the arm guards, which we used to encase the foam, and then we glued the ends shut (since we couldn't sew through foam). We then attached straps by gluing velcro to one side so they would stay on our arms. It was a struggle to find decent black gloves for the three of us because we all have fairly small arms and hands. We ended up finding gloves at a lingerie store and we altered the seams so they were a comfortable fit. The silver piece on the top of the hand on our gloves was made using stiff cardboard which we had to glue onto the gloves as we wore them.

Pan found me the pants at Value Village and I only had to alter them slightly by adding the white bandages around my right pant leg. I later cut up the pants for my Anbu Sasuke costume to make them knee length. Pan also picked up a turtleneck for me that I altered by cutting off the sleeves and I hemmed the arm holes.

Pan and Sakura made the pattern for the sandals, which were covers, and we used foam around the top of the shoes to give them a bit of definition. My mother made me go to a garage sale the morning of the photoshoot and I found a really neat green parasol there. I ended up buying it and bringing it to the shoot. It was a great prop for photos. As a group we bought an interesting patterned fabric to use as scarf accents for our costumes that I think looked really pretty and added some flair. Pan painted on my Anbu tattoo using eyeliner and the black wig I'm wearing with this costume was the same wig as the one for my Kagome costume that I borrowed again from Pan. We ended up doing a wig switch-a-roo and Pan borrowed my Yzak wig and Sakura borrowed Pan's blue Husky wig. We had a great time at the photoshoot.

Events/Conventions this costume was worn to
Summer Naruto Photoshoot on June 25th, 2005

Photo Credits
Chibik3r0 and Pan


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