My journey to become Hellboy

[themaggot8]

Hi, this is the second thread that I've done in several years. I mostly read and extremely rarely write something, but this project has meant a lot to me, so I wanted to share it with you, read your ideas, recommendations, etc..., since it is a work in progress...althought it's almost completed. It has taken me a long time (about 7 months so far) mainly because I work night shifts, so I get home, work a bit on my costume, then sleep and go to work again.

First of all, I wasn't a huge fan of Hellboy until about a year and a half ago. I loved the movies, but I downloaded one of the comics and loved it, so I ended up buying the complete Hellboy collection (the hardback one) and thought about making a costume of the big red ape, just because I'm a bit obsessive. I have 3 other costumes that I basically bought the parts and put them together, but for this one I wanted to build as much as I could or modifying already existing products and I wanted to use it for superfest (a local con here in Chile) and well, this is my story...

So my journey began with me wanting to make a movie accurate-ish costume (by accurate-ish I mean having all the parts, not necessarily making it screen accurate). For one of my other costumes (Papa Emeritus II) I met a guy (Walterqp) who makes phenomenal masks and he made, in my opinion, the best Ron Perlman Hellboy, but the mold broke and he wasn't able to make a new one because of the amount of work he has, so I searched for someone else to help me make the mask. I found a guy who makes a mask that doesn't necessarily looks exactly like Ron, but for what I wanted, it looks great, it was in my budget and I really like it, also, by a happy accident, he will come to the same con that I want to go, so I won't spend money on shipping. The guy is @thecavecw on instagram. So I had the first thing done...by someone else

The next thing was making the RHOD I thought about buying the sideshow one, but I decided to make it from scratch. The base structure was a cylinder made of corrugated cardboard. Having that I drew the shape of the hand, cut tons (it was a lot of testing) of EVA foam and carved the basic shape. I put a piece of tube inside the cylinder to hold the hand (I didn't care about making it functional) Covered everything with paper maché, once it dryed I carved the runes, sanded, gave it a coat of white glue mixed with water, sanded again, then painted it with bright red spray paint and finally weathered it with a mix of black and red acrylics

For the left hand I found a long women's glove at a party store for 2 bucks. The color matched the red fabric that I bought for the tail, so I got it and drew some nails on it (I don't want to paint my hand). For the brown glove, I found some brown gloves at a flea market for 5 bucks, so yeah...

For the jacket, I bought a jacket from hollywodjackets...or moviejackets...something like that. The jacket didn't look that much like in the picture (the leather was kinda red, the fabric was darker, which I liked, the patches were horrible and the hole for the buttons weren't sewn properly) so they gave me a partial refund and I kept the coat. With that money I got a new BPRD patch from aliexpress, modified the shamrock patch, weathered the leather, fixed the holes and that was pretty much it. I didn't want to cut the right sleeve, because now the coat looks great to use it as a regular piece of clothing.

For the pants I bought some biker leather pants, not accurate at all, but they are leather pants. For the boots I had some new old biker boots (I bought them like 15 years ago, but never used them) so that part was easy

For the tail I bought an isolation tube foam thing at a hardware store. Glued several pieces of 15mm EVA foam, carved them into a point and glued the point to the tube. Then I asked my mom for help (yeah, my mom helped me...I can't sew for my life) so she made a tube out of the red fabric that I bought and use it as a cover for the foam tube. I glued all that stuff to a weird structure that I made (all this was made from scratch and thinking about how to proceed during the making of it) then added some of pieces of metal that I had lying around and basically made a tail that attaches to the belt. Also I put a thin wire inside the tube, so I can pose the tail in the position that I want, but it is thin enough to allow it to have movement like a real tail

Talking about the belt, this was the part that challenged me the most, because I had no idea how to make it, so I bought a real belt and that was it...just kidding. Well, I actually bought a belt, but a regular belt. I also got a bunch of faux leather which I used to make the under belt, the pouches and the straps to attach the rosary and the horseshoe. The buttons of the pouches are that...buttons, they just look like snaps, but I used velcro to close the pouches. For the belt buckle I bought an old BPRD one from the movie and that was it. I had made 2 other belt buckles for my GF and for her nephew, but I didn't have the energy to make another one (I made a Liz Sherman and an Abe Sapien costumes for them). I thought about gluing the underbelt and the real belt permanently, but I ended up attaching them with velcro. It works great so far.

For the left hand rosary (the one that belonged to professor Broom) I bought one from a church near were I live. I didn't like the look of it, so I weathered it and ended up looking like crap, kinda pink. My mom loved it tho, so I gave it to her and bought a new one made out of wood...much much better

For the belt rosary I bought big wood beads, chain, a big cross and basically put everything together taking as a refference the one from the hot toys figure and from pictures of the art of the movie book.

For the horseshoe...well I made it from EVA foam, carved it, painted it and weathered it with acrylics. I could use a real one, but it's just too heavy

For the good samaritan...oh man, I love the way that gun looks, so my plan A was to modify a toy gun that I got, which ended up being quite frustrating because I had to modify it too much, and by too much, I mean that I had to basically rebuild the entire thing only keeping the frame of the gun. So I went to plan B and I bought a 3D printed kit from Jens Replicas on etsy and boom, the social revolution started in my country (you can look for it on google), so yeah...I'm all up for it, but I had a project to complete so I went to plan C and bought a nerf gun that kinda resembles the samaritan, painted it, weathered it with acrylics and some home made rub n' buff and that was it. Yesterday I found out that the 3D printed kit arrived to my country so I will try to have it completed for the con (by the end of january...it was supposed to be on November, but the social revolution...) and then make the holster for it

The last 2 things that I bought were a black T-shirt and a fake chest..you know, one of those...

I also had laying around an e-cigarrette that I used to use to perform magic, so I made a tube out of 2mm brown EVA foam, sanded it, painted the point with rub n' buff to make it look like ashes then gave it a coat of sealer and I got a functional fake cigar, I mean, it lights up.


I think that covers pretty much everything. I didn't take pictures of the process for every part, but if you want to make something like this, I can explain in great detail everything that you guys want to know.

Oh!, I forgot something. At the same party store where I bought the red glove, I found a foam sword...I know that it isn't in the movie at all, but it kinda looked like Excalibur, so I bought it, sanded it, added some beads to the hilt, painted gold and voilá. i don't now if I should weather it, but it looks cool.


That wraps it up. I just wanted to share this project with you, since I took a lot of inspiration of costumes posted here. Thanks! and sorry for my bad english

 

[Cieszlak]

Great work brotha

 

[themaggot8]

Hello there, here's an update about my costume. I wasn't really happy with the gun at that time, so I bought a big toy revolver at a thrift store that I modified a bit to make it look more like the Samaritan, using pieces of plastic tubes, wood and bondo. For the bullets I used little pieces of sticks that I cut to the right size and a piece of metal pipe to give it a bit of weight (noawadays I'm working on a full size 3d printed samaritan) But this is what I ended up using for my costume, also I had to make the holster for it, which I'll show in my next post

 

[themaggot8]

Finally I had the chance to wear my costume last January for Superfest Chile. Here are some pictures that people took that day (the new Hellboy is one of the guys from @thecavecw who helped me with the mask) i have to say that I'm not 100% happy with the RHOD, so I'll make a new more screen accurate and also probably get the correct pants and perhaps get a silicone mask