With fall fast approaching, I thought it would be the perfect time to break my blogging absence by writing about the time I became a giant bug-man for Halloween!
I love classic horror and Sci-Fi and kind of wanted to go ridiculous that year - and having a framed lobby card of the 1959 RETURN OF THE FLY in my office at home, I really had no choice but to create this!
First of all, you may be shocked to learn that stores don't sell gigantic 30 lb costume fly heads. No matter - I had good old fashioned ingenuity, and spray foam. And Cardboard. And paper mache.
This whole thing started with a cardboard box that I made a rough head-forming shell with. I coated that thing with BOTTLES of expanding spray foam and let it dry.
With the help of a bread knife I carved the foam into a rough shape:
This became the base of the build. It was also a perfect surface to apply paper-mache clay too. Paper-mache clay is just like paper-mache, but like, if you blended it.
Once the paper-mache dried I added mandibles made out of Crayola Model Magic, and held in place by wire hangers. I also added 2 styrofoam domes for eyes. PRO TIP!!!! If you need to spray paint styrofoam, throw a coating of MODGE PODGE on there first. Otherwise the foam will melt, and half domes aren't cheap! I gave everything a brown base coat next.
The final step was dry brushing layers of brown shades which was awesome, because the bumpy texture of the paper mache was a great surface to work on. I also painted the mandibles, and added "hair" that I got from an old plastic broom. The teeth were also added, again made from model magic. Hot glue "drool" was applied later. Let me tell you, my wife was STOKED that I did all this on our kitchen counter.
The final steps were all sourced. I had the shirt, tie and pants. The lab coat and beaker came from amazon. The fly hand was a rubber lobster claw glove that I don't know why I had!
This was one of the most fun costumes I ever made. I got tons of photos taken, and even pretended to be an animatronic for a little while and would scare people who came up for a better look. Sadly the head started falling apart a few weeks later and had to be thrown out. It wouldn't fit in the can, so I set it on top... and somebody took it before the trash man came collecting... so somewhere, somehow, the fly lives on.