We had literally a few weeks to make it happen, since CAPCOM wanted it to be released over the 6 weeks leading up to the launch. Max, Simmons, myself and maybe a few others got together and had a meeting to iron out the storyline, and thus, which characters we needed to make costumes for.
We settled on Strider Hiryu (Max's favorite from MvC2), Ghost Rider (because Max looks like Nick Cage), Wesker again (because both Nemesis and Dr. Strange would be too hard given our timeframe), Phoenix Wright and Vergil (by popular request) and Rocket Raccoon (because we really wanted to make that puppet.) With that, we wrote down the series plot, got it all approved by CAPCOM and got to work.
It was a nightmare, but it was a blast to make. We had very little time to make it happen, so I pulled some all nighters trying to get Strider, Ghost Rider and Vergil ready all in about a week. Thankfully, UltraDavid was playing Phoenix Wright and had his own costume, so my wife just styled him a quick wig (which looked great in person and fucking awful in green-screen - we didn't know it was gonna be green-screened) and she and her brother were making Rocket Raccoon. I already had Wesker, so that left me with three costumes to make.
To say I made three costumes is a gross overstatement. I drafted patterns, gathered materials, and did most of the legwork, but I couldn't have finished them without the help I got from my wife Barrie, Strider actor Ben, makeup artist Lyndsey, and sound guy Dan. All I made for Strider was his go, tabi shoes, red sashes, "metal" belt and leather harness. His entire costume was weathered by Barrie and Lyndsey, who also styled his wig. If I remember right, Barrie made his sword the morning of the shoot because the one I made was a shameful outrage that I threw away, but Max really wanted a sword for the shoot. I did some of the work on Ghost Rider but mostly gave direction. The spikes were made by Ben and installed by teamwork of Ben and Dan. Putting them on took a lot of elbow grease. Barrie made the gauntlets. The Vergil costume was a nightmare. I was up all night before the shoot finishing the coat, manually trimming it with gold painted masking tape (because I forgot to buy trim and no fabric store was open at 3 am). Ugh. SO MUCH stuff I would have done differently if we'd had more time.
Even filming was rough. The episodes were shorter than the season 1 episodes, but we had six to make over four (I think?) weekends. We filmed Strider first, and I think Ghost Rider that same weekend. The next weekend we met and filmed the Wesker episode, much of which had to be reshot. We had wrapped the episode and I was in the middle of getting cleaned up when one of the guys came upstairs and was like "Hey, pretty much all the footage was unusable. We gotta redo it."
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| Pictured: my (completely reasonable) reaction. |
During tone of the weekends we were together for filming I asked Max what his plans were for season 2. Since I had been more involved with the show creatively since the Jill episode, I knew he wanted to do a Deadpool episode (and I wanted to make the costume and portray him, so bam). Max settled right then and there on Deadpool as episode 1 of season 2. I asked him if I could write it (I had written the rough draft of Rocket Raccoon, but little of what I wrote remained in the final rewrite by Simmons). Max gave me the go ahead to write Deadpool, and I was stoked.
I think I wrote the first draft less than a week later.
No clue the Ultimate stuff was done so rushed.
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