Man who always wanted to be dog spends thousands on life-sized costume

Dog lover Toko, who lives in Japan, had a lifelong dream of becoming a dog and spent $15,000 US building a life-sized costume.

The agency Zeppet created the life-life costume that is so realistic, it looks like a big border collie.

Zeppet specializes in sculptures and models for movies, commercials and amusement facilities. It also creates TV costumes and mascots.

The costume for Toko took 40 days to create and the Japanese man also went through multiple revisions including fittings to make the costume just right.

In an interview, Toko said he chose to become a border collie as the costume because the long hair of the breed can “mislead the human figure.”

“I made it a collie because it looks real when I put it on. My favorite is quadrupedal animals, especially cute ones. Among them, I thought that a big animal close to me would be good, considering that it would be a realistic model, so I decided to make it a dog,” Toko said. “I met such a condition and made collie, my favorite breed of dog.”

A Zeppet employee said that creating the costume was difficult as it requires a significant amount of time to study how the dog’s figure can correspond with a human figure.

“The point is that the skeleton of a dog can be reproduced on the skeleton of a human. Since the structure of the skeleton is very different, we spent a lot of time studying how to make it look like a ‘dog,’” the employee told Mynavi. “In addition, we collect photographs taken from various angles so that the beautiful coat of the collie can be reproduced and devised so that the coat will flow naturally.”

“At the request of an individual, we made a dog modeling suit. Modeled after a collie dog, it reproduces the appearance of a real dog walking on four legs like a real dog,” read the caption by Zeppet.

Toko posted a one minute and 29 second video to his YouTube channel on April 12 where he tries on the border collie costume and transforms into a dog, making dog-like motions. He can be seen waving his “paw” in the air and flopping to his side as a real-life dog would.

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