Return to Arts and Crafts

I was inspired to tackle cosplaying my favorite Team Fortress 2 class, Pyro, after having worn my Medic cosplay to a few events. I'd been looking up TF2 cosplays on the internet (Deviantart, Youtube, and the ever lovely Cosplay.com) and reading up how some people had built their costumes, and I thought hey, I can do that, too!

My dad helped me look for a red coveralls suit, which was an uncommon color, but we eventually found a pair that fit me. Like Medic, we used Iron-On Transfer Vinyl for the class logo, though this time we printed them on an old stiff pillowcase, then cut and glued them on so they'd be opaque. We found the gasmask at a military surplus store, alongside the gloves and the webbing that became the straps! The canisters on the front belt were V8 tomato juice cans spray painted with a stripe of orange electrical tape on top. Similar to Medic before, the Axtinguisher was a styrofoam piece carved, painted, and glued on top of an old axe handle from the shed, with some suede cord we found lying around for the barbed wire.

The coolest part, however, has to be the Intelligence Briefcase. I didn't think I could make the oxygen tank on Pyro's back, but I felt the briefcase was manageable, out of cardboard. My dad, however, thought we should repurpose one of his broken plastic toolkit boxes instead! I painted every detail on flat, from the text to the number dials, and my dad cut little holes to slot in some switches from the local electronic store. We also glued some bottlecaps for the buttons. I printed some papers and closed the briefcase over them so they'd stick out; I don't remember exactly every paper I made, but I do remember one of them being Portal's cake recipe!

Getting to run around as my favorite class was awesome; being Medic was one thing, but Pyro was something else. It also cemented my love for cosplaying masked characters, where your individual self kind of takes second place to the illusion of the character you're portraying. It was hot as hell, though; my lenses fogged up, sweat and condensation dripped out of the mask, and my gloves quite literally had little pools of sweat at the fingertips at the end of the day. The costume was damaged rather quickly, as well; the briefcase straps would peel (but never broke off) over multiple cons, and I lost some of my canisters over time, since they were stuck on with velcro. (they were easily replaceable, thankfully.) I also lost the original pair of glove at some point and couldn't find a replacement pair, so the last cosplay picnic I took the costume out to used kitchen gloves instead.

I never got a proper, TF2-appropriate hat made for it, so I just rocked a chicken hat I found at the dollar store instead. I think it's cute.

Photo Gallery

Go to top