Costumes, Tutorials and Skits by Tab
Hi there! I’m Tab Kimpton and here’s an archive website of my costume work. I mainly work as a comic artist nowadays so unfortunately I now only make one costume a year for myself, but I try to keep the site updated when I can!
I started cosplay back in October 2007 for a small recon in my local town. Since then I have made dozens of costumes, for myself, friends and commissioners. I do a lot of skit and performance work in my costumes, so you’ll find some funny stuff on this site as well as serious costumes. I love making obscenely complex costumes then taking them up on stage and being ridiculous in them.
I have several years experience giving panels and workshops at events, from sewing skills to laugh out loud Yaoi panels. I try to have a fresh set of panels for each calendar year to keep things exciting. If you’d like to have me do a talk at an event for you, please visit the events section to see my schedule and the sort of panels I give.
I run a dealers table at most Anime/comic events in the UK showcasing my LGBT comic work. If you’re interested in LGBT, Queer, Gender and Sexuality comics, feel free to have a look at my comic work at Discord Comics
If you’d like to see why I don’t have time to make as many costumes any more, check out my house renovations at the Fantabulous House
Cheers! -Tab
Commissions Currently Closed!
Thank you everyone for your interest, but unfortunately I’m closing down my commission service for now as I’m getting ready to move house and won’t have a workshop during the move period. I’ll let you know if I plan to open up again but right now I’m focusing on comic work.
I’ve taking lots of great progress photos during recent sewing work though so you’ll still see tutorials popping up on here occasionally!
Vote for the next tutorial!
I’ve got a couple of things up my sleeve so I wanted to know what would be more useful to other people!
Site Edits
Looks like we had some site issues which means my costume gallery went down! It’s all back up now, feel free to use it to stare at my face.
In other news, I got a picture of myself not in costume!
Got this taken at Jcon, a big thanks to Rei Bennett
Costume Commissions are currently closed except for particularly interesting projects!
After a lot of thought I’ve decided to close costume commissions except for particular interesting ones that people ask me for. Please feel free to email me with commission ideas, however I’m focusing on tutorials and comic work this year so I’m cutting back on the number of commissions I take.
I’ll be working through my current commission queue in the mean time, taking pictures of how I make things as I go. I hope to get a lot more tutorials up on the website in this coming year, so watch this space!
Last Con of the season!
Phew, what a year! Just came back from the last convention of the season, now have a big break until the end of January for Akumacon in Ireland!
It’s been a busy year, more conventions than I ever thought possible have turned up. The next few months will be focusing back on commission work, a January of Taxes and refurbishing our shed to take more stock.
I’ve been behind with updating the site with tutorials, but I’ve been doing some really interesting commissions recently that has thrown up what I like to call a “disaster tutorial”. It’s rare that you get to see people make mistakes, so I’ll be taking you step by step through everything I did wrong, what I learned, and the final finished result when everything finally went right!
Riddle me this batman…
Carmillia Commission Project
I was approached to make this commission by a lovely woman from France. It’s not often I get a chance to make big dresses even though I have the skills to make them, so this was a lovely change for me.
The costume uses 24 metres of triple velvet and the train is 9m long. (About the length of a double decker bus!). The corset is steel boned to give as much support as possible and to make it comfortable to wear. The train is actually part of the sleeves, so it can be removed and the wearer can move about more easily. Everything is lined for comfort and durability.
The wig is made from 2 punky XL wigs in a custom colour ordered from Coscraft, built over fosshape, so it’s worn like a hat.
All the jewellery was sculpted and cast in resin so it’s stronger than using Fimo.
Check out the Gallery for more pictures!
Back from BanzaiCon and Norway!
Just got back from Banzai con and my fantastic trip to Norway. I tell you, the Norwegians know how to throw a con!
Some of the highlights of my trip:
- Waking up at 4 am for the train trip to London Stansted
- Paying £70 because when Ryanair says 2 15kg bags, they mean 1 on the way, 1 on the way back.
- Airports make people seriously angry. I was the happiest one there I swear.
- Landing on a run way with 5 feet of snow on either side
- Becoming “The English Dude” on the friday because I didn’t mention why I was there to people.
- Paske Eggs!
- My hotel room shower had 2 shower heads. One for my head, one for my butt.
- Free wifi!
- The opening show!
- Awesome stage with amazing projector and sound system! I got to use a headset mic!
- People loving my stall stuff
- Meeting some amazingly friendly people and talking about the difference between the countries
- Weird money is weird!
- Pizza at the end of the convention with some of the people I’d made friends with. Awesome end to an evening.
- Norway man and Norwegia woman!
- Selling enough that I could abandon a suitcase in Norway and not pay the extra luggage charge on the way back.
Here’s the video of the opening show. I kind of turned away at the caramelldansen bit thinking it would be like every expo, but then it got so much better. These guys are great, you can tell they worked hard, and it’s really funny.
(link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOxPb0v2uxg)
Also, here’s a picture of Norway from my hotel room:
New Site Live!
The brand new Khaos Kostumes Site is now live and kicking! Some of the costumes need information which will be added over time, but all the images are there for you to look through.
Go check them all out in the Costume Galleries!
Some Costumes added!
I’ve updated the costume gallery with some costumes. I’m using NextGen with WordPress under a recommendation from Pez (from coscraft), and it’s working brilliantly.
Check them out!
Crystal Siegfried from Soul Calibur IV
Nightmare from Soul Calibur IV
New Site
Welcome to the new Khaos Kostumes site! We’re updating so we can add some cool stuff like tutorials and keep the archives up to date.