The Echo

Issue date: 11/1/07 Section: Culture

Media Credit: Emily Kohntopp

It is not every day that you encounter Floyd from the Muppets or Gromit from the animated film series Wallace and Gromit reclining by the table in your dining room. Unless, that is, you are Lisa Lang, a graphic design student from Newnan, Ga., who uses materials such as plastic tubing, discarded clothing accessories and baseball helmets to create award-winning costumes.

Lang already has a degree in communications, but after working as a radio broadcaster for a while she decided to return to school and major in graphic design. She said she plans to graduate with her design degree in May of next year.

Lang said she cherishes childhood memories of her mother making costumes for community theatre performances and Halloween parties.

"[I] always had such a good time wearing those costumes, and it took me a while, but that kind of spiraled into my interest in the whole thing," Lang said. "My grandmother was also a seamstress, so I think that partially plays into it," she said.

In 2004, Lang joined with a group of other costumers she met at DragonCon, a popular science fiction, fantasy, gaming and pop culture convention held every year in Atlanta.

"I had been making costumes for years before that," she said "I did a few science fiction costumes, things I pulled out of television shows, like Farscape. Nothing ever really serious, it was just for fun, and we all met up at the convention and decided we all were equally interested in costuming, so we thought we'd do something together."

Since then, the group has coordinated their costuming efforts and has won five best in show titles at the convention.
One year, they chose the Muppets as their theme, and Lang made a Floyd costume.

"[Floyd] is rigged up to where his mouth actually moves with mine," she explained. "There's a structure underneath that goes underneath my chin, so when I move my mouth, his moves as well."

Another year the group chose The Land of the Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as their theme, and Lang created a polka-dotted elephant costume.

"His body… is huge, I mean, it's a gigantic thing," she said.
As for the head, "It's built around a baseball helmet, but there's a larger structure on the inside that's made out of plastic tubing that you can buy at Home Depot," she said. "They're made out of the cheapest materials we can find."

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