TJack's 2012 Halloween Costume Contest Entry (Monsters Inc.)

So this costume has sort of been in the back of my mind for a few years, but this January something happened that made me decide to finally make it a reality.

We took our boys (5 and 2) to Disneyland this year and seeing just how excited they were to experience the park and interact with the characters, I knew that I wanted to try and re-create it at home not only for them, but for the kids in our neighbourhood.

Like a lot of us here, I am a complete amateur when it comes to costume/prop making, and although I'm not an engineer by trade, I'm definitely one at heart. The biggest obstacle on this build turned out to be finding the right fur at the right price to keep me on budget (details on the budget are in the link to my other build thread).

Along the way, my wife and I decided that it would be fun to get her involved as well, so not only did I end up making Sulley, I also made Boo's monster costume as well.

Enough chat, on with the build.

I honestly thought I took more step by step pictures along the way, so I'll do my best to describe some of the details that don't have pics.

My original build thread:
http://www.therpf.com/f24/james-p-sullivan-monsters-inc-new-video-139360/

Re: TJack's 2012 Halloween Costume Contest Entry

So I started off by making a duct tape dummy. This way I could easily tailor the build to my size without having to drag my wife out to the garage for countless fittings - kind of like last year

I picked up a backpack frame from a garage sale so that I would have something to attach the body structure and carry the weight of the suit.

I have a ton of electrical conduit in my garage that I scored for free a few years back and it has been my go to building material on the last few costumes. In some places I kept the pipe whole, and for others I split it. This allowed me to reduce the overall weight of the suit, and it was also much easier to work with. I used a heat gun to get the pipe into the shapes I wanted.

I'm going to keep this thread basic and add more details to the other one as it will be much easier to fill in the missing pieces there than try and re-create everything here. So if you want to know more about how the suits came to be, please follow the link in the first post. Plus, I also have some videos in the other thread

Below are a few shots along the way to give you a bit of an idea of the progress.

Re: TJack's 2012 Halloween Costume Contest Entry

One pic for fun


And of course, the proof pics!

Re: TJack's 2012 Halloween Costume Contest Entry

This entry is complete. :thumbsup

I just want to say thank you to everyone who has voted for us so far

If we should happen to win any of the prizes, my plan is to purchase books/toys to take with me to the Stollery Children's Hospital where we re going to wear the costumes for the kids

Hey TJack,
I wish I had seen this at the right time. Great job. More complex in it's structure that what I am aiming for.
That picture with all those kids smiling is priceless.