Light-up Crosswalk Sign Costume

I love creating fun and original costumes and I really wanted to push the boundaries with this one after going as Post-It Malone for Halloween last year. For a while I had my mind set on doing a functional arcade claw machine with lights and prizes, but after that fizzled out I went back to the drawing board and started thinking about other things that I could manipulate with cardboard. After doing a lot of brainstorming I was still a bit stuck, but one day while walking along the streets of New York I focused on a blinking crosswalk sign and figured, "Hey! Maybe I could go as that?" It was unlike anything that I'd ever gone as before and my wife and I had never rigged any costumes with lights, but I convinced her that we could do it and we were off to the races. I did some Googling to see if anyone had done this sort of thing before and found a couples costume from 2012 - where one person was the hand and the other was the walk guy - but it didn't appear that anyone had ever gone as both combined, so I figured why not. Once we decided on the costume, I wanted to make sure that it looked as true to the original as possible - both electronically and size-wise - so I did some research on all the different aspects of it and bought the corresponding parts for it. We started the actual work fairly late in the game on the 28th but somehow managed to pull it off in a few days, which was stressful but definitely rewarding in the end.

When I wore this out in New York on Halloween I had to quickly learn how to get around in it because it was bulky and banging into everything, but after an hour or so I started to get the hang of it. It was tricky getting it down into subway stations and through crowds, but luckily I had a friend there to help guide the way. The costume itself was a huge hit throughout the night and attracted a lot of fanfare and photos, and I had a blast walking in the annual parade with it. One of the highlights of the night was standing under an actual crosswalk in Union Square and emulating the lighting patterns, which drew a nice crowd! (Video file below if you'd like to download it)

For this project you'll need:

• A 30" x 30" x 30" cardboard box, or whatever size would be a good fit for your height (actual one here). I'm 6'3 for reference and it was pretty big for me, so make sure you get the right size for your frame. A cube isn't mandatory but it'll make things a lot easier.
• A box-cutter (actual one here)
• A cutting mat like this one.
• 16 ounces of Acrylic School Bus Yellow Paint, (actual one here)
• 16 ounces of Acrylic Black Paint, (actual one here)
• A wide paintbrush suitable for painting on cardboard
• A paint tray
• A roll of painters' tape
• White battery-operated fairy lights. We used these and it was a good number of lights and string length for us. I would recommend 30+ feet and at least 100+ lights. And it's important to find ones that have a remote control.
• Red battery-operated fairy lights. Similar to the above, but we used these.
• AA or AAA batteries depending on what your fairy lights take.
• A black hoodie like this one, but any brand will do.
• Black sweatpants like this one (also not brand-dependent).
• A half-yard of sheer black mesh fabric.
• Some black, 2-inch wide elastic. We used this one.
• Black Duct Tape (a fair amount)
• A pair of Scissors
• A French curved metal tailor ruler for drawing rounded corners, like this one. This is optional but useful.
• A ruler, preferably at least 18 inches long
• A black fanny pack to hold extra supplies like batteries and duct tape

Note: It's helpful to have a box with cubic dimensions for this step (same Height, Width, and Depth). I used one that was 30" x 30" x 30" but any of the following should work depending on your frame:

• 20" x 20" x 20"
• 24" x 24" x 24"
• 30" x 30" x 30"

For this step we'll need to cut the box down to a size and weight that will allow us to comfortably wear it. I chose to make it two-dimensional for this reason, and for that we really only need one large piece of it that has dimensions [Original Width * 2, Original Length * 2] or 60" x 60" in my case. This requires some cutting.

With the box totally flattened on the floor, go to one end and slice that edge in half (along the seam) with a box cutter. You'll want to go slowly here since you don't want to deal with any nicks or weird edges later if you can avoid it. Once this is done, fold the box over so that its one long piece is spread horizontally across the floor (which should currently be 120" long with a 30x30x30 box). Now all we need to do is perform a cut straight down the middle seam with our box cutter to get one 60" x 60" piece, or again, 2*W, 2*L depending on your box size. Place a cutting mat under the middle seam and slowly use the box cutter to perform a straight, clean cut under it, which should then give you two equal pieces of 2W * 2L. You'll only need one of these large square pieces and you can discard the other.

With our box now cut into a singular square, you may want to use some duct tape to strengthen it down the middle like we did here, especially given that this will be worn outside where wind can play a factor. With the strongest duct tape that you can get a hold of, simply take a long piece and run it down the middle seam of your box, and then repeat on the other side so that the entire seam (both front and back) is fortified. We'll be painting over this later on each side, so don't worry too much about the color of it.

Since a typical crosswalk sign has rounded corners, it makes sense for us to do this to all 4 of ours to really enhance the look of it. The roundedness is pretty subtle on our reference picture here so you don't need to go crazy, but you'll want to do this slowly and carefully so that all 4 of them match.

We decided to go with 2" as a reference point for this, and a French curved metal tailor ruler made it easy to find the perfect curve to trace with a pencil. It's a bit of an art to use this type of ruler correctly, but any circular object with a 4" diameter can be used as a stencil to draw the curve. Once you have your curved line, all you need to do is slowly cut through it with a box cutter and discard your extra pieces.

Now that our box is cut to size and fortified, it's time to start our painting! Crosswalk signs differ from city to city, but here in New York they are School Bus Yellow with a black screen facing the street. This means that the entire back of it should be yellow as seen above.

With the box folded flat on the floor and on top of a drop cloth, use smooth, consistent strokes to apply a generous amount of yellow paint to the entire area and make sure to cover any rogue brown spots. We used acrylic paint for this since it works nicely on cardboard, but other types should be ok as well. Just make sure that the coat is applied evenly and in the same direction throughout.

Repeat the process with 1 or 2 more coats, or as many as it takes to cover the cardboard and show a nice yellow finish. We did 2 coats for this side since the yellow really started to come through on the second one, but a third one couldn't hurt. The paint should dry pretty quickly and it shouldn't take more than an hour or two to complete this.

With the back of our crosswalk painted yellow, we now need to turn our attention to the front side of it - which is what people will predominantly see as you walk around. As seen from the reference photo, most of this side will be black with a yellow border that matches the color of the back that we just painted in step 4.

The first thing that we'll need to do here is cover the border with painters' tape so that the black coat doesn't bleed onto it. Our roll of it had a width of 1.5" and we found that this was a good measurement to mirror the proportions of the actual crosswalk versus the size of our box. Carefully place this along each side and make sure that the lines are parallel to the borders of the box to ensure a nice, smooth square in the middle.

Once the painters tape is down, apply a generous amount of black acrylic paint with nice, even strokes to the central (non-bordered) part of the box until it is entirely covered. I found that this covered the cardboard and the duct tape much easier than the yellow paint and for that reason, I only put one coat of it on, though you may need to perform several touch-ups later so keep the black paint handy.

When the black paint is dry, remove the painters tape and then re-apply it next to the unpainted cardboard border so that we protect the outer border of the black square, which we obviously do not want to paint yellow (picture 4 above). Once this is taped down we can then paint our yellow border with the same paint from step 4, making sure to cover the entire perimeter with smooth strokes. You'll want to apply the same number of coats here that you did to the other side so that the hues match, and once this is completed we'll only need to paint touch-ups for the rest of the way.

Note: Out of all of the steps in this project we found that this one was the most difficult one to complete, so make sure to go as slowly as you need to on it and make sure that you get it right. You will want to match the shape of the original hand as much as you can so that people recognize what it is.

Since we're dealing with fairy lights here, the wiring will be fairly thin and tough to shape, so we'll need to use scotch tape along the way to keep it in place on our board. The scotch tape is also good because we can continuously remove it and replace it without taking any paint off of our cardboard, which would be kind of annoying.

Let's begin.

Take the battery case of the red fairy lights and scotch tape it in a location such that it will be able to fit in your right pocket (picture 2 above) when you're wearing this. You can always tweak this spot later, so you can guesstimate it for now. Once that is on the board, we will start to draw the hand starting from the outside of the thumb, and then work our way clockwise down towards the wrist, across the bottom, and then up the left hand side towards the fingers. Place as many pieces of scotch tape as you need to while doing this (they're just temporary) and re-shape the hand as many times as you need to before you get your desired shape. In our case we had to draw this several times before we got the result that we wanted, so again, patience is key here.

When the fingers are drawn and you get back to the starting point at the thumb, you will want to then go inside the hand and add a spiraling pattern of lights there as well, which you can see from picture 4. The actual hand from a Crosswalk sign has the middle part filled in pretty fully, so this part is aesthetically important. If your fairy lights are 30 feet long like ours were, you should run out right when this inner spiral is done, but if you have some left over then you can always trace backwards and double up the wiring. Note that the wiring in the fingers will overlap quite a bit and that's ok.

When you're satisfied with the shape of the end, the last thing that you'll need to do here is replace all of the scotch tape with black duct tape so that it blends in with the board and holds this firmly in place (picture 5). At this point, you will also want to make sure that each of the fairy lights are facing upwards on the light side so that their brightness isn't obscured later. My wife pointed this out to me when I first tested the lights and you'll want to do that too to ensure you get maximum brightness from this.

We've now reached the point where we have to figure out how we're going to wear this thing! The easiest way from our perspective was to strap the shoulders with elastic - almost like a backpack - with an extra strap around the waist to keep this steady even in potentially windy conditions. In order to do this you'll need some black elastic handy (to camouflage it) and you'll also need to measure out exactly where it needs to go. This step is crucial because the top of your head should be somewhat near the top part of the hand to mirror the look of an actual crosswalk sign.

The first thing that you want to do is lift the box onto a stand or table so that you can accurately measure where the top of your head will be, relative to the hand. We used a TV stand for this and it turned out to be a good height, but you may need to experiment with objects like books or smaller boxes to get the right height of the cardboard relative to your height. When your head is at the appropriate level, you'll want a second person to mark where the tops of your shoulders are (x2), where your armpits are (x2), and also where the right and left sides of your waist end (x2).

We then need to make 6 thin cuts with a box cutter, each as long as the width of your elastic (which was 2 inches for us):

• A horizontal line at the right shoulder mark
• A horizontal line a little below the right armpit
• A horizontal line at the left shoulder mark
• A horizontal line a little below the left armpit
• A vertical line at the right waist
• A vertical line at the left waist

For me, a 7-inch distance between the top shoulder cuts and the lower armpit cuts were a good distance, but you might need to tweak this depending on your own measurements. It's important to use a ruler here to ensure that the horizontal lines are on the same line of latitude at the top and the bottom because you otherwise risk the box being slanted, and that won't feel comfortable on your limbs. The same goes for the bottom two horizontal lines.

Once you have your cuts you can start to thread your elastic through them. The length of all 3 of these straps depends on the measurements of the person wearing them, so make sure to have a second person wrap the elastic around you and then thread enough through the back of the box so that they can tie this in place correctly. If there is too much elastic you can cut it down with a scissor, and if there isn't enough then you'll need to cut a larger piece and work with that instead. The last thing that you want is these straps to be squeezing you too tightly all day long and causing discomfort.

Once the 3 straps are tied into place, practice getting into and out of the costume and make sure that it's both comfortable and secure. You won't want to have to adjust this later on so it's crucial to get it right at this juncture.

The last major step that we need to do is affix the white fairy lights to the person wearing the costume since they will essentially act as the "Go" part of the sign. This can be done while the person is wearing the costume via the elastic straps from Step 7, but it's probably easier to do this while the board isn't being worn and that's what we chose to do.

It's important to note that you should be wearing a black outfit for this so that you blend in with the board behind you. We chose a black hoodie and black sweatpants, and while you can go with something else, you'll see that the hood of the top is important for both this step and the next one so you definitely want that at a minimum. With your black gear on, make sure to put this fairy lights' battery pack in your left pocket since the one from the Hand's fairy lights will be in your right pocket. The left pocket gives you an easy starting point for the wiring, and like we did in Step 6, you will need to draw a figure with it, though this time it'll be around your own body and not the board. This path will start down the left leg and then go slightly clockwise to the knee, then up to the belly button, down to the right knee and so forth until you have a full "person" figure, and you'll see in Picture 3 above that it even needs to go around the hood on your head (hence, one of the reasons to have the hood). All of this wiring should be taped with black duct tape so that it blends in with your sweatshirt and pants, and even though it doesn't stick as well to fabric as it does to cardboard, it should suffice for at least one day.

Two important notes here:

• The bottom of the figure's legs should be as long as they can without going past the bottom of the board. For me that was around where my knees are, but you may need to tweak this slightly.
• The figure's arms went a few inches past my elbow. You'll want these to look long enough that they fit with the rest of the body's frame, but not so long that they don't look proportionally correct.

As with Step 6, you may have extra wiring and if so, you can simply re-trace over the lines that you made already.

Since you can't see the person's true face on a Crosswalk Sign, we thought it made sense to cover mine as much as possible, and fortunately it's easy to do that with mesh. You'll want to purchase around a 1/2 yard of sheer, black mesh from a fabric store to achieve this look.

With your mesh in one piece, take it and fold it in half until your face looks relatively "invisible" behind it (use a mirror or a person to determine this), while also ensuring that you can see through it on the other end. This costume is a bulky one and you'll need to see clearly to walk around in it, so make sure not to overdo this part. You want your face to be obscured to everyone, but you also need to see where you're going.

When you have your desired piece, you will want to secure it to the inside of your sweatshirt hood with duct tape. Once this is done you can tuck in any excess fabric into your collar, and you should be good to go!

With all the pieces in place now, we can finally get into our costume and do some tests. As seen in the diagram, the right (red light) battery pack should be in your right pocket and the left white-light battery pack should be in your left. Fill these with the necessary AA or AAA sizes, and then grab the remote controls from each wiring set. For me, it was easier to control the Hand sign with a remote in my right hand since it was right next to it, and the white lighting with a remote in my left hand. I tended to leave both sides lit for most of the night as I was walking around, but if you ever want to emulate a Crosswalk Sign you will need to flicker "on-off-on-off" for the red side and "off-on" or "on-off" for the white one. Test all of these patterns as much as you can, and note that you might need to point the remote controls at the battery packs from close range in order to trigger them correctly.

Once you have this down correctly, it's time to step out into the world and show everyone your crosswalk greatness!

With all of the taping and maneuvering that is done to our board during this process, it is inevitable that you will need to re-paint some of the spots that we previously covered in Steps 4 and 5 (especially on the middle duct tape line). It's a good idea to do a scan of the entire board before you wear this out, and you'll want to make sure to touch up any yellow or black spots that could use some love.

As I know all too well with my past costumes, things can and WILL go wrong when you least expect them to, so it's a good idea to be prepared with backup supplies. I wore a black fanny pack around my waist all night (which blended in) and loaded it up with AA batteries since I wasn't sure how long the main ones would last, but what I didn't realize was that I actually needed duct tape more since the tape on my sweatsuit wasn't lasting as long as I thought it would.

If you can, I would bring the following with you:

• Batteries
• Black Duct Tape
• Scissors (even a small pair)
• Backup mesh
• A small flashlight

Luckily I was able to get by even with the duct tape issues, so it was a fun night! I should also note that it rained a bit in New York that night and it did cause the box to curve a bit, so if you're wearing this and that happens, be prepared to find cover if you can.

Some other tips:

• Wear black sneakers if you can to blend in with the rest of the ensemble, and make sure they feel good too! Any time you are carrying extra weight like this and walking a lot, you'll want your feet to be as comfortable as possible.
• If you want to eat or drink you will obviously need to open the mesh face covering, and I did this on and off again throughout the night. It wasn't too much of an inconvenience though since I could always tuck it back into my collar.

And that's pretty much it! If you try this out, I'd love to hear about it and I hope you have as much fun with it as I did. Cheers.