Creating the perfect Halloween Costume for Tracer of Overwatch (Part 2)

Here it is. Our costume inspired by the Overwatch character Tracer for our 7-year old son. It was quite the creative endeavor, greatly aided by duct tape ...

The core elements of the character: the bomber jacket, the power-pack, and the goggles.

For the power-pack, we took the two battery-powered lights I had acquired and put them inside two white Chinese take-out containers. Tracer's pack is blue, so we experimented with coloring the container with a blue Sharpie and also putting some blue paper inside of it.  Then we duct-taped them onto cardboard, with slots in the back to reach in and turn the lights on/off.  I actually re-cut the cardboard after I took these photos, to make the foundation shape an X rather than a diamond, so it was easier to duct-tape onto the straps ...


For the straps, I criss-crossed 2 lunch box straps and hooked them together on the sides, then duct-taped the power-pack onto the straps. By then moving the hooks on the bottom/sides of it, it became somewhat of a vest that we could unhook and take off for riding in the car.

To create the jacket, I used an old, lined, brown Lands' End jacket (or was it L.L. Bean? Who can really tell the difference, anyways) and turned under the hood to make it look like a collar. Then I sewed on the patches we bought from Serephitic. (If I hadn't found those, I had planned to draw/color the patches, seal them in clear Contact paper, then pin them on.)

For the gloves, we used some of my old colorguard gloves from highschool and binder-clipped sheets of foam to make her bracer-cuff thingies.

And ski goggles to finish it off.



The finished Tracer costume was Awesome.

And the really great part was that once it got dark the power pack was a great combo flashlight and keeping-track-of-child device. My son was totally jazzed.

The two things that made him a little shy were that 1) he was dressed as a girl (to which I responded that no one knows who Tracer is, much less her gender) and 2) answering the question "Who are you dressed as?" It was a mouthful for him to say "I'm a videogame hero named Tracer from a game called Overwatch that is in closed Beta right now." So I think some folks thought he was a WWII bomber with a big Ironman light on his chest.

And that was OK, too.

Creating the perfect Halloween Costume for a Superhero who isn't even released yet: Tracer (Part 1)

Blizzard has created a bunch of new compelling characters for their upcoming superhero game, Overwatch. And to make sure that not only gamers, but the kids of said gamers, love these new Overwatch characters, Blizzard has created this Overwatch teaser movie in the style of 'The Incredibles'. And it worked; my 7-year-old son loves Overwatch. And just like the little boy in the video, he loves Tracer. And he wants to be Tracer for Halloween.

There are sadly no commercially-available costumes for Tracer, for a nice low price of $22.99. The CosPlay crowd has of course already started to create costumes for Tracer and her friends, and even posted some of their step-by-step Tracer costume creation processes, but I don't have that time or cash to spend on a trick or treat Tracer costume for a 7-year old.

So my son's Tracer costume is being built with:

• An old brown sweatshirt. (I would have loved to get this bomber jacket but it is only sold in the UK and I'm across the pond in the Colonies.) 
• Ski Goggles that we already had
• Some rocking Tracer patches I found on Etsy by Serephitic
• Some LED lights: one from LED battery-operated base lite from Target for $15 and one random cheaper one from ACE hardware 
• 2 water guns that managed to survive the summer
• Black straps from his lunch boxes
• A pair of orange pants that barely fits him anymore
• Some old white gloves of mine from high school colorguard, plus some white pieces of foam
• Random stuff like Cardboard and duct-tape and binder clips and Chinese Take-out Containers

Stay Tuned! I'll post Part 2 of my venture into CosPlay after Halloween ...