This costume was built a few years ago to wear for Otakon, an annual convention celebrating anime and video games. Danbo is the name of a cardboard robot costume in the comic “Yotsuba&!”. I began the project by collecting reference material from the comic. Unfortunately, I found that the drawings were far too inconsistent to develop a definitive set of dimensions. Instead, I took reference from an action figure of the character. While I wasn’t able to get a hold of the toy, I found enough photos from enough angles to be able to determine ratios of Danbo’s measurements. Scaling it so that I could see out of the mouth resulted in the costume being significantly larger than would be manageable. I considered alternatives like looking through the eyes, but this wouldn’t have allowed me to see straight ahead and would mean sacrificing the lights that I had hoped to add to the eyes. I ended up deciding to build a periscope inside the head, meaning that I would be able to see out of the mouth while making the costume only as large as it absolutely needed to be.

I ran into issues with materials, as well. While the source material has Danbo constructed out of cardboard, I was hesitant to use it. I didn’t want to work with visible corrugation on the edges, flimsy material, or having to seek out clean, blank, uncreased cardboard. Instead, I used sheets of corrugated plastic, each sheet wrapped in brown paper attached with spray adhesive on the front and tape on the back. This resulted in boxes that looked and felt like cardboard without any of the problems that come with the material. Unfortunately, I used less spray adhesive than I probably should have; the paper was not glued as evenly to the front as I would have liked. I ran into more problems the day I had planned to wear it. Otakon is held in Baltimore during the peak of the summer, and just having the costume in the car softened the glue enough that substantial repairs had to be made before it was wearable again.

Even with the frustrating adhesive setbacks, the size and material challenges made this a project I look back on fondly. Despite the time that has passed since I built this costume, I have yet to see another that portrays Danbo as accurately.