orange. blob. blog. » New York Halloween Parade – Mr Men and Little Miss costumes

New York Halloween Parade – Mr Men and Little Miss costumes

Tim — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:53:40 +0000

It’s that time of year again… the air turns cool, the leaves start to drop, and the apartment smells of hot glue. Wait… what?

Yep, it’s Halloween again! We managed to recruit even more people this year, so that our ‘crew’ was a total of 6.5. The half was ‘Mr Small’ who was awesomely tiny – at only 1 year old – it was his first Halloween parade too. No doubt first of many!

So after our first year in 2007 as the Lego Couple, then Pacman and the Ghosts, Where the Wild Things Are, and Sock Monkey and Muno… we decided to go for ‘Mr Men’ and ‘Little Miss’ costumes this year. Check out the Mr Men website if you have no idea what I’m talking about!

As usual, the ‘let’s start them really early this year’ turned into being a few weeks before the big day. The full impact of making the costumes only dawned on us when we went out to buy the raw materials. 45 yards of 2 inch thick foam, and 40 yards of various colours of spandex. From Spandex House no less. The apartment became impossible at that point. Ferrying different body parts around the place depending on what needed to be worked on. If you need to draw out the material then it has to be the kitchen for the largest area of open floor space. If you need to hand-sew the body joints, then you need the table in the living room. If one of the bodies wasn’t being worked on, then it would land up on the bed to get it out of the way!

We had a few friends join us this year, so everyone chose what they wanted to be, and we decided on a few that had to be in, because they just look too cool. That brought us to the Mr Men choices – Mr Tickle, Mr Nonsense, Mr Small and Mr Sneeze – and then the Little Miss choices – Little Miss Bossy, Little Miss Giggles and Little Miss Sunshine.

It also led to some ridiculous conversations. Where’s Giggles? In the kitchen. I think Tickle’s in the bedroom. Ok, there’s a pile of Nonsense in the corridor. Can someone pass me sunshine?

Little Miss Bossy, Little Miss Sunshine, Little Miss Giggles, Mr Sneeze and Mr Nonsense. Mr Tickle and Mr Small had already left by that point but they were walking in the parade too!

We all spent quite a few evenings and weekends working on the costumes. On Halloween we also decided to dig out Muno and the Sock Monkey from last year’s Halloween parade, and head down to the ‘Regis and Kelly’ show. The costumes were fine when we were outside last year on a cold October night. Under the hot studio lights indoors, it was a different matter! Anyway, we got onto the show as one of the audience costumes – was good fun!

The living room was so full of foam and material that now that it’s empty, we can actually tell the difference because the room echoes a lot more!

Here’s a clip from a local news channel in New York – Pix 11 – you can see all the Mr Men and Little Miss behind the presenters, and then later on in the clip too, dancing down 6th Avenue in New York…

NYC Halloween Parade 2010 – Sock Monkey, Muno and Mr X

Tim — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 22:59:58 +0000

How d’ya like me now!!!??

And so… that time of year when the house turns into some kind of weird factory littered with spandex, foam and knitting paraphernalia, as we jump into making Halloween Costumes! If you’re not into Halloween, or you’re only here for the Travel Photography, then feel free to tune out for this yearly nothing-to-do-with-photography post…

This year we decided to do the characters from the Kia Commercial. We couldn’t convince enough gullible victims to do the entire gang of characters – so we settled on Sock Monkey, Muno (from Yo Gabba Gabba) and Mr X.

My better half also took care of most of the creating for this year, as resident designer, sewer, knitter and all-around fabric-extraordinaire!

I think this year was a pretty good contender for our most-fun year, vying for first place from the Lego Couple Halloween Costumes that we did in 2007. I think it definitely ranks up there as the most comfortable costume so far – comfortable as in “possible to see and walk, both at the same time”. I did however nearly lose an eye (just one of course), on some low branches and scaffolding…

First up, Jeni’s Sock Monkey!

Sock Monkey

Jeni taught herself how to knit socks last year… so it was an obvious progression to make an entire life-size sock monkey costume. Naturally.

She knitted the costume mostly from remote locations… on the subway… sitting in coffee shops… winning at poker… I even caught her in the movie theater, furiously knitting during an action scene. Hence why there’s not a lot of action shots of the knitting. Plus, it’s really really boring.

The body was made from 1 inch foam, sewn together at the joints. Then the leg components / body component / arm components of the knitted covering was put on around it.

The head was also foam-based, shaped into the head with the eyes cut out. Again, master knit-modeler Jeni knitted the entire head part to put over the foam like a simple cover!

The head was then buttoned down to the material at the back, and there were some hand-holes so that she could put her hands out from the ‘monkey-hands’. Side note: Conveniently machine-washable. No tumble dry.

Mr X

This one turned out to be one of our favourites! Started with an exercise ball to model the whole thing on, gradually building out a number of interconnected rows of wire. The idea was that the whole costume would ‘hang’ on our friend Lori’s head.

Once the wire-frame was completed, (multiple flesh-wounds later…) a load of brown paper bags were cut into shreds, leaving one end intact. The intact end could then be folded over each row of wire to build up the hairy skirt thing! Only flaw in the plan was potential rain issues… luckily that didn’t happen!

Jeni speed-knitted a quick jumper and arms for Mr X with black and white stripes, and then fitted that to the middle of the costume. More paper bags for the arms as well.

Some foam and black material (and trusty glue gun) topped out the costume, and some last minute eye-holes.

Muno (from Yo Gabba Gabba)

The largest, but possibly the easiest was my ‘Muno’ costume. Same 1-inch foam idea… but with the front and back cut out of a single piece. The head was then put on later. Jeni stitched the two together, and added full length zips – one going up the middle of the back, and one going down the full length of the right leg (think kid’s footie pajamas). Getting in and out was tight!

The head was a big dome (topping out the costume at around 8 feet tall), then we used white material with a pie pan and some more foam (shaped into an eye-ish shape!) for the all-important eye. Swathes of red spandexy material covered the entire costume. And then the dots were cut out of the top of plastic water bottles.

I don’t think I’ve known a person drink so much fizzy water, but needs must, so Jeni dutifully drank 32 bottles in just over a week. Each top was cut off and then covered in more of the red spandex and held with rubber bands on the back. These were hot-glued into place on the morning of the parade… actually took longer than I anticipated because with the lump of material on the back of each bump, it was like gluing a jack-in-the-box down.

Added the teeth and the mesh for the mouth (where I would eventually see out of) and we were ready.

In a last minute test, I found that we’d probably need a way to hold the head up straight, so I modified a t-shirt to support a broomstick on my back, which then went up into the head to support it. Not exactly comfortable, but it did the trick… nothing that duct tape and ingenuity can’t fix.

Family photo relaxing after the parade. Jeni’s already taking orders for next year. No really!

Update… this one made us laugh – link to About.com’s Halloween 2010 pictures. Check out the caption on it:
“This Sock Monkey was the cutest Halloween creature of the evening. His pal Muno of Yo Gabba Gabba! fame was also pretty darn cute. Their other friend appeared to be dressed as an adorable hay bale”.

Also, check out Jeni’s website that has the knitting patterns for the sock monkey and a whole load of other knit-tastic stuff for sale!

Where the Wild Things Are (NYC Halloween Parade 2009)

Tim — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:51:09 +0000

Another one of these off-topic posts… Again if you’re here for the travel photography stuff, then please pick a category from the right hand side!

For this year’s Halloween Parade in New York City, we decided to do a few of the characters from ‘Where the Wild Things Are’. I was Alexander (the Goat), and my better half was KW…

There’s a load of in-the-making photos that I posted up on flickr, which show the making of the ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ Costumes. They took us about 2 weeks of evenings to complete, but we’re pretty happy with the result!

To the left is a picture of the ‘dress rehearsal’ test for KW. We made the mistake a couple of years ago with the Lego Costumes, of not trying everything on together (just testing the head, then the bodies etc). So we were in for a huge shock when we finally put everything on down at the start of the parade route.

This time we were better prepared. And a little bit more confident.

I’ll leave the detailed description of how the costumes were made, as there’s a running commentary over on the flickr photos step-by-step as we were making them.

One thing that I was kinda shocked about was that one group came with a live Llama. Yep, a live llama. So here I am, standing around dressed as a giant white goat, and this Llama has to be in the group immediately in front of us. Apparently it was eying me suspiciously the whole time, and even came over to sniff me and check me out at one point – hopefully someone got a photo of that. Goodness knows what the llama made of it.

Everything went well with the parade – apart from the rain making the costumes (basically 90% fur and foam) soak up gallons of water. Landed up making them massively heavy compared to the dry version, but we made it through to the end.

I also massively underestimated the ability to see out of the head – my vision point was through the gap under the top lip , through the teeth of the goat. However, with a mixture of having to look down to see through the gap, and also having to keep my head level to keep the head on, things got uncomfortable pretty quickly. I also didn’t have time to put fans in the heads this year (like I did with the Legos) so it was like a sauna in there!

Luckily we had a fantastic group of minders, who guided us through the whole parade, generally taking care of when we should go/stop, which direction we should walk in, and other fundamental parade-necessities. You guys are awesome, and thanks for helping us out!

It was also pretty encouraging to be passing people as we were on the way back from the parade, saying that they’d seen us on TV, and that they loved the costumes! Makes it all worth it. We were all interviewed at one point by NY1 with the whole group – there were also 3 other friends who went as the dragon (from the book), Carol and their little ‘un who played a perfect Max!

Here’s a few images from the in-the-making series over at flickr:

Update: There are a few links on the internet turning up, including a Gallery from the Examiner, with pictures of Carol, KW and Alexander in the featured gallery. Also a really (really) short snippet of the longer interview that the TV station ‘NY1′ did with us. You can see a short clip over at the NY1 Village Halloween Parade Clip:

And also spotted in the ‘Village Voice’ Halloween slide show 2009…

Al has also put up a detailed description of the making of his ‘Carol’ costume, over at the instructables site.

Lego Couple (Bride and Groom) – Halloween 2007

Tim — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:46:31 +0000

Around this time of year, I still get a load of questions from various sources about the costumes we made for the NYC Halloween Parade in 2007. The costumes were two ‘minifigs’ – bride and groom…

So here we are two years later, and I thought I’d do a post about the making of the Lego costumes – to tie together some of the photos, videos and a few more details about how we made them.

If you’re here for the travel photography related stuff… then skip to a different category on the right hand side – this is a random off-topic post about oversize Lego Halloween Costumes!

First off, credit where credit’s due – we checked out different sites thoroughly before starting, and as such we came across this site, where the person did exactly what we were trying to do… but back in 2003. This gives a lot more detail about how to make the heads.

Naturally we picked the windiest day of the year to start the project, which started with hauling a LOT of Styrofoam sheets from the hardware store back home. 8 foot by 2 foot and they act like sails on the 20-block walk home!

Once we got them home, it was a matter of selecting the right size of circles, and then cutting out about 28 circles (14 per head), excluding the ones that we needed for the gigantic top hat. Once the pieces were cut, I then stacked up the circles, and cut out head-shaped holes in the middle so that they sat on our heads snugly.

Lots of in-place testing to ensure a snug fit and then it’s a case of gluing them all together, (there was a layer of plastic on the outside of the Styrofoam which seemed to successfully stop the foam melting when I applied the glue). Next is sanding them and cutting them with the correct ‘curves’ in the top and bottom layers:

Cutting the holes for the eyes and the mouth were a tad scary – this after all was the crucial bit which gives the minifigs their characteristic ‘look’.

Another thing I discovered when testing out the heads for so long was that this thick insulating polar styrofoam really does insulate. Well. Hotly. So well that it was like being in a claustrophobic muffled cave next to the sun. Luckily it was at this point that I was able to make a small vent hole through the rest of the top of the head to the top.

I made the vent hole appear in the ‘bit’ / ‘pip’ / ‘plug’… whatever you call that thing that is on the top of lego heads that allows you to clip on hats etc. To keep it covered up I used a mesh in the top. A trip to radio shack then provided the fan (actually a low power computer fan), a switch, a block battery and some wiring. A bit of soldering-time later, and the fan ensemble was embedded in the top layer of foam in the head, and installed so that air blew ‘up’ out of the head. The ‘bit’ with the mesh covering was then installed on top of that level.

So when painted, it looked like:

One slight downside was that the vibration from the fan in this hollow-echo-chamber was a little annoying. The upside was we didn’t pass out from the heat. The battery was slipped into a little chamber carved out of the head further down, on the inside of the head between the human head and the outer layer of the lego head. There was also a switch embedded on the inside of the neck, so that we could switch the fan on and off easily when wearing it. Repeat for head number 2.

The bodies were then made from vinyl (black for the groom, white for the bride). This was then strengthened on the inside with a layer of poster-board glued to it. My better half took care of all the body-making with me standing around awkwardly to model them when needed. To make the bodies / trousers / dress more ‘square’ looking, we also glued in Styrofoam triangles into the 4 corners of them, to make sure that they kept their corner look and to give it strength.

To make the patterns on the outside of the groom, we then used the remaining white poster-board to create the shirt and bow-tie. The whole front was a single cut, apart from the two white buttons. It basically looked like a wierd white wine-glass shape of poster-board, with the bow-tie and two black buttons cut out, showing the black vinyl underneath.

My better half then also made the hands and flowers, which loads of people commented on because it was one of those ‘finishing touches’ that make all the difference, and were exact replicas of the 3-pronged Lego flowers that you get. Again these were foam for the base, rolled up paper for the stalks and foam for the flowers… painted suitably! Though the chewing-gum glue halfway through the parade to stop the flowers from slipping down the stalks is optional! The hands were made from the curved sides of Quaker Oats tins… I think we still have the contents of all 4 tins in our cupboard somewhere, in zip-lock bags.

Oh and last but not least, the top hat and ‘veil’ was again made from Styrofoam. And also fitted with vents for the air being pushed out of the head, to allow it to escape out of the top of the hat / veil.

I should also probably mention here that our biggest mistake (or our best decision, depending on how you look at it) was that for one reason or another, we didn’t try on the whole costume until we actually got down to the parade. We tried the heads. OK. We tried the heads with veil / hat. OK. We tried the feet and the trousers. OK. We tried the trousers and the bodies. OK. It was a totally different situation when we put on the entire outfit. Imagine looking out of two toilet roll tubes, which are both about 2-3 inches away from your eyes. That’s all you can see. Luckily we had a bunch of people who were able to help negotiate us around sidewalk ups and downs / scaffolding / other people / cars / bits of other people’s costumes etc. And to those people… thank you! (You know who you are!).

The reason I mentioned that it might have been the best decision was that because it was so claustrophobic and impossible to move in them, we might have chickened out if we knew about the issues beforehand! I’m glad we didn’t…

Anyway, if you’ve come across this post because you’re doing something similar, then good luck and have fun! If you’re just browsing then thanks for reading!

Also a couple of videos – Me walking on the way to the parade:

And my other half and me, dancing!

And… more videos of the New York Halloween Parade Lego Couple over on youtube!

NYC Halloween Parade 2008

Tim — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:33:48 +0000

Photo courtesy of Tom Henry

First thing’s first… this post is filed under ‘Not Photography’ for a reason! I mean there are photos in the post, but that’s about as close as it gets…

Things tend to get a little quiet around this time of year (photo-taking-wise) as we panic about attempting to make Halloween costumes for the parade in NYC down in the village. This year, the parade theme was ‘ghosts’, so we decided to try to stick to something close. Enter, Pacman and the Ghosts….

As usual, after months of saying that we should be prepared… we should start early… we should begin planning them… it was left ’til the last week. Nights and early mornings of ferrying 8 foot by 2 foot sheets of styrofoam home, then priming… gluing… and painting… and painting… Just 5 pots of paint, numerous gluesticks and a couple of rolls of gaffer later, pacman was born.

To the left is a thumbnail of the inside of pacman – showing the ‘suspension system’. A bar in the middle of pacman served as a kind of primitive handlebar, and also allowed me to hang it off my shoulders using the webbing from a backpack.

With the front suspended, I was then able to use a scarf tied to the back bar (not visible in this pic, but it’s right at the back of pacman behind the bar you can see) to balance it out. Pull on the scarf to raise the back of pacman, and let out a little to lower it. Not ideal but I was running out of time!

Meanwhile, my better half was busy constructing the ghosts… more hours of sewing, styrofoam, cutting material, gluing, and umbrella fitting… finally we were ready to go.

It was easy to organise the man-with-a-van… we didn’t think we could carry them on the subway. Van turns up, and it’s too small – despite us repeating that these things are 6′ by 6′ by 2′. Plus he’s half an hour late. So we decide that our only option is the subway. To say that carrying these things on the subway at rush hour is fun, would be an understatement. It was GREAT fun!

UPDATE: someone just sent me the link to the ‘most viewed’ photos on yahoo! news (images of the yahoo pages are here and one of the ‘most viewed’ section here).

UPDATE: Another update… ‘legocouple’ on flickr has now got the ‘in-the-making’ pictures of the pacman and ghosts up… see here for more!

Anyway, made it down just in time, and walked/chased/zigzagged through the parade route. Later, we walked back to the subway entrance (via many many comments, among which were ‘hm, that doesn’t look like a convenient costume’… or… ‘wow!!! cheese!!!’… or… ‘wow, that’s the best costume I’ve seen all night!’), and squeezed our way back to the house.

I’m still a bigger fan of last year’s efforts, which won us 2nd place (which we just found out last week) in the NYC village parade costume contest. The heads are still sitting in our living room, staring out at us:

There’s also the flickr site with the ‘In the making’ story of the legos here. And a kinda amusing video where I’m attempting to walk across the road to my bride!…

Related Posts and Links:

More pictures of the making of Pacman and the Ghosts