SON OF THIRTY-ONE DAYS OF HALLOWEEN! DAY 24: SMARTPHONE HALLOWEEN COSTUMES!

As I've mentioned in a few previous entries in SON OF THIRTY-ONE DAYS OF HALLOWEEN!, the costumes folks in my generation had to deal with as a kid were terrible. Really terrible. One of the best examples I can give you is a Star Wars costume I remember wearing as a child of perhaps five or six. The costume consisted of a vacuformed character mask (with an elastic string to hold it on) and a mylar poncho that didn't look like the rest of the character you wanted to be for Halloween. Oh no, that would be FAR too sensible! Instead, the poncho featured not only a photo of the character but also, the character's NAME! I guess costume makers of the early 80s thought we were too stupid back then to remember who we were without having two visual reminders outside of the mask. Either that, or they too realized how crappy their costumes were and that very likely, other people might need help in identifying who the hell we were supposed to be "in costume."

My mom was nice enough to send over a photo of a photo of me (age 4) and my brother Jarrod (age 11) from way back in 1980. He's Dracula, and I'm The Batman! Notice the weird, over-sized mask, the bizarre mylar costume, and worst of all...BATMAN written on the bat-symbol on the costume!



Sorry...rant over. I just get frustrated by those horrid "costumes" we were stuck with back in "the dark ages."

Times have most definitely changed. Not only can you purchase movie-quality costumes of just about any character you want to be these days, you can also use your smartphone to bring your costume to digital life.

I discovered these Digital Dudz costumes whilst doing my usual research for this blog, and I am absolutely floored by the fact that such amazing costumery exists. What a truly wonderful time we're living in, kids! There is a great variety of extremely innovative, smartphone or tablet-enhanced costumes available from Digital Dudz/Morph Costume Company, but I'm going to focus on my favorite: the "Flesh iWound."




This is one of those multimillion ideas so simple you wish you'd thought of it, yet at the same time, it took a former NASA engineer to bring it to life. Mark Rober, an ex-NASA scientist who worked on the Mars Rover, had the brilliant idea to link two iPads together and attach one to his chest and back, creating the illusion that a hole had been blasted through him. After this idea became a YouTube sensation, he created other concepts, the best of which is, in my opinion, the Flesh iWound.



It's simple: you buy the special latex appliance that fits over your neck, download the free Digital Dudz app, and then put your favorite button-down shirt on over the appliance or cut a hole in an on t-shirt and voila! You now have a simple yet digitally-animated Halloween costume, appearing to be a person who has survived a massive chest wound that has exposed your beating heart! The app provides both the visual of the beating heart and and the beat to go with it!

Watch the video below to see the Flesh iWound in action, and visit the Digital Dudz site to see what other digital wonders await!