Since the costume was essentially just head and gloves, and the dress would be bought, it certainly made sense to start once more with the head. It was going to be the most difficult part that I myself would be involved with, after all.

Unfortunately, I did not take as many pictures of Marian's head under construction. This is largely due to the fact that the technique is almost the same to how I build Xodiac's. The shape is different, of course, but the method is identical, with some minor exceptions.

You can click on any of these images to see a larger version, of course.

The first thing I did was to get some good sketches of horse heads made. Marian was going to be a little more cartoony than Xodiac or Brooklyn, so I didn't want to just use a picture of a horse head. I enlisted the help of Dogz, a good friend and excellent artist who lives in Texas, God help him.

Next, I translated the drawing into a three-dimensional sculpture. This allowed me to fine tune the look, as well as make sure everything would work out right. And once the model was the shape I wanted, it would allow me to check the mask against it to make sure it's coming out right. The side view was expanded via projector for this purpose.

Here is where the lack of pictures really shows. This is what I call the skull, which is basically the finished head minus the fur. As you can see, the basic technique of getting the shape of the head via tension wire was used, and then it was overlaid with a substance to provide something for the fur to glue to. But this time it was not plastic needlepoint mesh. This time I tried a kind of plaster, which is itself supported by chickenwire. Unfortnately, it doesn't really work as well. True, what used to take several days of cutting and fitting to get the mesh's shape right now took only hours. But they were very hairy hours. Working with plaster takes practice, and I'm not at all certain I got the mix correct. It's also much, much heavier than needlepoint even at the best of times. Like Brooklyn, this head is slightly front-heavy. Thank goodness it is only slightly! Those black things on the cheeks are made of foam. They help fill out the head; it didn't quite look like a proper horse without those puffy cheek areas. The eyes were done identically to Xodiac's - plastic sphere over colored plastic glued to fry mesh that's been painted black and white - except that the plastic was a printed graphic that Legend made in Bryce. He spent a lot of time on that thing. The ears, again, are done like Xodiac's. The plastic mesh that I did not use in the muzzle was used for the ears, and placed within a "fur sandwich" and then cable-tied to the head. The only difference this time is the shape. The mouth was tricky. Unlike a coyote (or dragote), horse mouths don't go all the way back. Well, they might - I didn't look at skeletal structure - but they don't seem to. They only open at the very front of the muzzle. Perhaps it's because they're herbivores. Whatever the reason, it just wouldn't look right if the jaw mechanism was tied directly to my jaw as it was for Xodiac. The mouth would open too far and be at the wrong angles. What I did is make a hinge, with a chinstrap, attached to the helmet to respond to when I open my mouth. Then I made a seperately hinged area further out along the muzzle, and what dropped off that was the costume's mouth. The movements of the one are tied to the other by a simple triangle of string. One length ties directly between the two jaws, and a string from each jaw is also tied to a spring that is attached to the top of the muzzle, pulling them both closed. This "projected jaw" seems to work quite well, with one minor problem: the spring takes up a lot of the slack, so I have to open my mouth all the way in order to get Marian's mouth to open about halfway. Hardly worth fussing over, but somewhat irritating; I would have liked more range of movement. There is, of course, a fan inside the muzzle, run by a 9v battery. It blows the air outwards, through some nostrils I cut through the plaster. This time, I actually thought ahead and built nostrils! It works beautifully. So long as the battery has a good charge, the eyes don't fog up at all.

And this is the head, pretty much complete. I got the wig at an online costume seller; my choice of style was clearly influence by Groat's own Red Shetland, though I will emphasize that his character and mine are not in any way identical other than being red-headed anthropomorphic horse women. The neck proved to be difficult in some ways, as they always have been. My first try simply made the neck opening huge, so that I could get my head inside the mask. I had figured that any extra fabric could be tucked into the dress. Unfortunately, That didn't work out; most renaissance dresses have fairly low necklines, and I didn't use enough fur to tuck it in and keep it there! In hindsight, I realize that even if I had added those extra inches, it wouldn't have looked right; she would have had something of a goiter. So I took in the neck a bit and built a dickey in order to hide the flesh on my neck and shoulders and above my, ahem, breasts. It is quite form-fitting, especially around the neck, and closes via zipper. I may still modify the mask to make it more form-fitting as well, adding a zipper there under the wig. But it looks pretty good now, so I may not. There was one other modification. I bought the largest false eyelashes I could find (in San Fransico's Castro district, so that isn't small) and carefully glued them directly to the fur above the eyes. It's amazing how more more female it looks with just that one change. The head in these pictures is not painted, and remains so to this day. I have yet to decide whether this is because I prefer it to look slightly toony, which it does and was, after all, my original intent, or if I just want to declare the costume complete.