Buggy the Clown

Oct. 2023

After watching Netflix’s new live action series of One Piece, I was inspired to make my own Halloween costume based off one of the main villains.

Buggy the Clown stuck out to me the most because during my childhood, I dressed up as a pirate and a clown on separate occasions!

Photos by: Keaton Punch

This DIY costume simply turned out too incredible for me to show it off with one photo, so I created two more epic photos!

The first piece I focused on was his coat. I found this large white lab coat at the thrift store and also picked up fluffy white faux fur from the fabric store. The coat was slightly too big for me, so I tailored it myself to be more slim fitting. I used a mixture of fabric paint medium with watered down acrylic paint to give the coat that olive green color. Then I cut strips of the white faux fur and hot glued it to the edges to finish the coat.

The vest was fun to make since the front and back halves are actually two different dress shirts that I modified together! I wanted the stripes to have a little dimension to them, so I cut up strips of red and white shirts to hot glue onto the front of the vest. I topped it off with thin black acrylic paint stripes. Then I cut several long strips of black fabric that I hot glued to the edges. I completed the vest by hot gluing the belt on front. The large lower belt was made separately.

The hat was the most difficult part to make. The foundation of it is made from EVA foam. The shape was very challenging to maintain. Once I cut it down to the right size, I stretched and hot glued red-orange fabric onto it. The skull emblem on the front was sculpted out of more EVA foam. Lastly, I hot glued pieces of a blue wig to the top of the hat.

I set up my photoshoot at home, making use of my ultra short throw Epson projector to have real backgrounds from the show projected on the screen behind me. I placed a large softbox to the right side for my key light, and had my Nanlite PavoTubes nearby for edge lighting.

Camera: Panasonic Lumix GH5

Editing Software: Adobe Photoshop