Ren & Stimpy DIY Costume

My husband and I have always been big into DIY costume making. We try to create something unique every year for Halloween. This year, we decided (at the last minute!) to be Ren & Stimpy, from the early 90's cartoon on the Nickelodeon network. We used to watch the show as kids and loved it (although it was more of an adult tv show!). We have never seen anyone in this costume before, so we were inspired to take on the challenge. 

Cardboard box, cardboard, newspaper, glue, flour, cheesecloth, red/pink/white fabric, flexible foam paper (black, white, red & pink), hot glue, hot glue gun, joint compound, acrylic gesso, acrylic paint, paint brushes, red pen marker, lighter, PLA 3D Print filament, poly-fil, a foam roller, red long sleeve shirt/leggings, cartoon hands, nude skinsuit, men's cup/jockstrap, old shoes.

We knew Stimpy was going to take the longest, so we started on him first. First, I bought a red long sleeve fleece-lined shirt & leggings and brought it to the fabric store to color match the stretchy fleece for Stimpy's body. Stimpy required a very large cardboard box, that we bumped out and curved on each side. Then we cut arm, head and body holes. After that, we created a cardboard skeleton to make Stimpy's head - It looked like an upside down basket. Then we paper mached the head to make a solid base. Once that dried, I took two pieces of cardboard and folded them into ears and paper mached over the ears.

Sometimes it's hard to envision dimension when you're working with a flat surface. In order to create depth with Stimpy's eyes, eye sockets, cheeks, lips, face and nose, I had to bump everything out with more cardboard and paper mache. Without knowing where to see out of my costume, we cut an eye hole blindly and figured it out as we went along based on my height. We were able to cut a slit below the nose so I could see out Stimpy's face.

Since Stimpy is a plump cat, I hot glued poly-fil to his stomach, face and his backside to give him roundness. Then I took a stretchy red fleece fabric and hot glued it to Stimpy's cardboard body. After that, we used a white fabric to glue on his face and stomach. It was really tough figuring out where to glue, how much to stretch, where to cut, where to fold. It was mostly just trial & error.

Since Stimpy normally has thick lines around the edges of his body and body parts (in the cartoon), I used flexible foam paper to create black lines around the eyes, face, and body to create a similar look and make everything pop out. That same foam was used to make the eyes. The tongue was made out of cardboard that I bent into shape and then hot glued more poly-fil and pink fabric around it. I used that same fabric for the inside of Stimpy's ears. For Stimpy's nose, I blew up a balloon and stretched it to be more oval in shape and then paper mached it. To create a smoother look, I added joint compound, wet sanded with a damp old towel, and then covered it in acrylic gesso before painting the nose in blue acrylic paint. After it dried, I used hot glue to affix the nose to the face. To add little hairs to the top of Stimpy's head, I cut small pieces of 3D print PLA Filament, manually curved them, and then melted the end with a lighter and stuck it into place - no need for hot glue. To make feet for Stimpy, I simply used the same fabric from his body and hot glued it to an old pair of shoes. To make the costume more comfortable, I added pieces of eggcrate foam at the top of the head, shoulders, face, and at the stomach area to make it easier to stand and walk.

Ren was pretty challenging, even though it was less work. If you watch the cartoon, he makes a lot of different weird abstract faces - in fact, there is no good straight on view that we could find to create Ren's face, so we had to be imaginative. First, we blew up a large balloon and then paper mached several layers to create the main head. Then we drew the ears and paper mached those separately. After drying, we made 2 slits in the head and inserted the ears. We used hot glue to secure them in place. Then we took cardboard and built out the face before using cheesecloth and paper mache to put them in place. We took a foam ball, cut it in half and used those as eye balls. We cut a small section out for my husband to see out of the costume, but weren't sure how to integrate it with the face. He had a great idea to make it part of the nose.

Since Ren is a Chihuahua, he's not as furry as Stimpy. My husband bought a nude skin suit (and a jockstrap/cup to cover his man parts lol) to use for Ren's body. When we went to the fabric store, we were originally planning on adding fabric to his head. However, there was no fabric that matched the same texture/color as the skin suit, so instead, he brought the skinsuit to a local home center's paint department and asked them to color match it. It matched almost perfectly! But then we had to smooth out the paper mache on Ren's head. In order to do this, we used a fast drying joint compound and then wet sanded with a damp towel after it dried. After that, acrylic gesso was used to make it hard - then he painted the head.

After the paint dried, we had only 1 more day to apply the finishing touches. We were super limited for time since we started costuming a lot later than we had expected. The eyeballs were painted over with white acrylic paint and then we cut out the pink flexible foam and hot glued them on the eyes. After that, we cut a smaller pupil in red flexible foam and hot glued those on top of the pink. Ren often has bloodshot eyes, so to create this effect, we added red pen scribble lines on the whites of the eyes. The eyes were then hot glued onto the head. Since Ren has a weird shaped nose, we added pink flexible foam to the top of the nose and melted 3D print filament to create the shape on top. Then used black acrylic paint to paint the inside of the nose, so you couldn't see my husbands face inside the mask. Then we used white/black flexible foam to create the smile/teeth and then pink flexible foam for the ears. We melted black 3D print filament for hair at the top of his head, similar to Stimpy. To make the inside of the headpiece fit better, we hot glued a hat (without the brim) to fit inside and used the same eggcrate foam to make it more comfortable. To make feet for Ren, we used old shoes already in my husbands closet, and painted it the same color as the head. Then added 2 black foam strips to the tops of the shoes to make it look like Ren's toes. To access the shoelaces, we added a piece of foam (painted in the same color as the shoes) hot glued to the tops of the shoes, just covering the laces.

"It's log, it's log, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood. It's log, it's log, it's better than bad, it's good" - We couldn't be Ren and Stimpy without having LOG!! Ironically, we found this fabric by accident when we were looking at the fabric store. I have a foam roller for my back that was a perfect size to wrap the wood patterned fabric in. We cut it to size and hot glued it to itself.

Once our costumes were finished, we went outside and did the Happy Happy Joy Joy dance!