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"Tars Tarkas" This phenomenal, "impossible" costume was constructed by Judith Miller and worn by Ron Miller. It was based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter, Warlord of Mars stories and blew the audience away! Judith used papier-mache for the upper torso using a department store mannequin as the casting object. The head and arms were separately sculpted using more papier-mache over the clay head base and cast the hands from the wearer, Ron Miller's hands with moulage molds. Then the whole thing was painted first beige then green so that the coloring would match Ron's body when he was painted green. To his credit, Ron removed most of his body hair from the shoulders down before being painted with thinned acrylic paints through an airbrush. (don't worry, it washed off easily!) The harness was made with leather and vinyl and decorated with plastic jewels and brass rivets. It was then permanently glued to the upper torso. When the upper torso was mounted to Ron's shoulders, he was able to see through a transparent screen that formed the medallion in the middle of the upper torso. Wow! What a great costume! I'm still trying to find out what award it won.Photo by Hank Beck
From the collection of Angelique Trouvere