Person Being Carried Costume Part Deux!

Welcome! It's been I while I know, but I've spent some time on a new costume. This is a follow up to previous costume that I did, which you can check out here. The difference with this one is that I went out and bought all the parts from a hardware store rather than built it out of random things from around the house. Ok enough about that, let's check out this one!

This is the "Person Being Carried Costume Part Deux"! I started this Instructable while I was still in the process of building the costume, but I'm basically done now. I've got some small tweaks to make here and there, but for the purposes of this project I'm considering it complete :)

Step one: Sketches!

Whenever you get an idea, sketch it out. This might be the most important step. I threw up the sketches into this step to show you all it takes to get started. You can see actually the different approaches that I tried out on paper before settling on what I will actually be using.

It's also a good tool for resketching out the idea once it's half built. Take a look at the last picture, once I built most of the body structure for the top and bottom half, I had to figure out how the clothes will all work together to complete the effect.

As I said in the intro, I used a different technique in this setup compared to what I normally do, which is find things around to house to throw together at the last minute. This time I went to the hardware store and bought things to throw together at the last minute.

For the limbs I decided to go with a 2" PVC pipe and fittings. I don't remember what each fitting was called, I just went into the hardware store and looked at things until I found what would work the best.

I riveted a really sweet double sided velcro strap to the pieces that would sit on my hip. This velcro seriously outperforms anything you can find in a hardware store, I actually don't think it's made by the company Velcro.

Finally I found some (packaging?) foam lying around at my work and strategically zip-tied them to the PVC fittings and velcro straps to absorb some of the strain that would otherwise be directly on my skin.

Once the legs started taking shape they became hilariously lifelike.

I later bent the legs into a more natural angle by using a heat gun on the knee joint, but you won't see that until a later step. Just imagine that it happened now.

I attached the shoes today. You can see how I did it in the last few pictures, but I will describe it as well. I drilled out a keyhole slot at the bottom of the legs, and then attached a screw with a nylock nut at the end onto each shoe. This will make it easy to attach and remove when it comes time to assemble the costume and disrobe later when I've had too many pumpkin ales.

For the arms, I did roughly the same thing as I did for the legs, except I did not attach the velcro straps directly to the pipe fittings. I wanted to be able to adjust the position of the shoulders along the straps so I just fed them through some tight slots.

Again, I then zip-tied some foam to the fittings that made contact with my body as well as the straps.

I used a heat gun to get the elbow fitting all melty, then bent into a rough position.

I decided to make the hands its own step because of how intricate the design was. I also tried two different styles as you can see in the pictures. Yep, those are Nerf darts. I think they worked pretty well, but once I cut them up to act more like fingers they got very flimsy. Because of that (and the unreasonable amount of time that I spent on it) I decided to just make a fully foam hand. I have to thank SpyrosB for the idea though!

I stuck some "coat hanger" wire through each finger and out the bottom of the wrist so that I could bend the hand and fingers into a natural pose. I actually used my own hand for reference.

Lastly, I cut some slots into 1-1/2" PVC and trimmed them to length. My original idea was to attach these hands directly to the fake legs somehow and let the "wrist" PVC tube just sort of float in the larger tube, but I realized that I should probably just mount them here. I needed the hands to be removable in order to put the clothing on the arms without tools, so I devised a plan for the smaller tube to be gripped by these sweet little rubber spiky things.

I grabbed the head from my previous costumes (handstand) and cut it in half. I later realized after doing some sketching that I shouldn't have cut it up that way, and instead I taped it back together to cut it more diagonal. This way the head is tilted forward as if the person carrying me was really straining and hunched over. I also cut out a channel for the velcro strap to feed through. This should hold the head a bit more securely.

It was actually pretty difficult to figure out the right way to cut up the fake legs pants in order to fit right and not look weird. I'm still not 100% on how I did it so I might change it up a bit. Basically what I did was cut straight down the rear seam all the way to the bottom of the front crotch, and then cut outwards from there. I plan on adding something on the back like a zipper or buttons that will allow me to put on the pants from the front.

I decided to use an old stretchy hoodie to go over my legs so that I could have some maneuverability, but once the bottom pants were put on I could barely walk. Once I have something holding them up besides my knees though I'll be able to walk around a bit better. I plan to add some hidden suspenders.

I've got a couple more small things to fix, like the top pants buttoning in the back and something to hold up the bottom pants. I also need to figure out a better way to dress up, because this thing is such a pain to put on!

Thanks for checking my costume out! I hope at the very least that I can inspire new ideas in YOUR head :)