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For the first of our new regular column in SciFiNow (see it in its natural habitat in the new issue) celebrating the epic craftsmanship and unbridled creativity of cosplay, we caught up with the brilliant Chelsea Dean to discover how she put together this take on Ghostbuster’s Janine Melnitz…
Janine’s a pretty unconventional choice, why her?
I chose Janine because I’ve always loved her in the films. Her voice is something I’ve been badly imitating for a while haha!
I chose to do the retro action figure version based on the Extreme Ghostbusters cartoon because it was more stylised and I love how she looks in it. Plus I have a huge weakness for redheads with tons of sass haha It also meant I could jumpsuit it up and bust with rest of them!
How much work was the costume and how long did it take to put together?
If I’m honest this was one of my easier costumes, I purschased a Dickies jumpsuit as that’s what the film ones were and I was trying to keep it a good mix between the cartoon and the films. I then took that jumpsuit apart and restitched and reshaped it so it wouldn’t drown me or make me look like a plumber!
What was the most challenging aspect of it?
For me I think the most challenging aspect was the glasses and wig, I knew they had to be spot as they were a big part of Janine’s style. I tried to find actual glasses frames I could alter but had no luck whatsoever. So I decided to make them myself, although I’ve made larger props from things such as foam this was hard because they were so damn fiddly. It was well worth it afterwards though as I loved how they turned out!
What props do you have and how were they sourced?
Overall the costume took a while to gather together as I had to get patches from America, along with numerous props and accessories which took ages to track down as I intent on getting it right. I sourced a few from this great website called gbfans.com where so many awesome Ghostbusters fans post about how make or buy various items.
My favourite prop was the Mattel collector PKE Meter which lights up and bleeps. Looks great in pictures and also when kids ask to have their picture with you it’s so nice to see them excited when they get to hold it! I had other props such as these great ghostbuster earrings which were made from buttons. They matched earrings I’d seen Janine wear in some forms of fan art and I love being able to add little details like that to costumes. As well as props I like to go to weird extremes such as changing my eyebrow colour for each cosplay, for Janine I actually bleached my eyebrows and dyed them bright red. I looked a fool but it made me very happy haha!
My favourite part of my costume though was having my partner as Egon Spengler with me! They’re a great couple to act out and it’s so much fun pretending to bust ghosts with your boyfriend haha!
Janine is definitely one of my favourite cosplays along with my Hope Summers as it allowed me to get into a character I’ve always loved and really have some fun. I’m updating it soon though to match the recent IDW comic series and FINALLY get round to making a Proton Pack!
Do you love cosplay and the sheer thrill of getting that perfect outfit together in tribute to your sci-fi, fantasy or comic-book heroes? Do you want to feature in a future issue of SciFiNow? Shoot us an email and some pictures!
