Homemade Costumes from the Movie UP

A quick trip to the local fabric store and my foam guy.

Essential tools (glue gun not pictured).

Starting with source images. This really shows off how boxy Carl's face is.

Planning all of the elements.

I drew his face enough times that I could do it from memory. Now from notebook to scale

Grid lines to make sure the left and right side of his face match up. If one side is lower than the other, he would look all stroke-y.

Happy with the grid layout

And now the terrifying part - the cutting.

Draping felt to add wrinkles and other features

Baseline. Glasses made from particle board which is stupidly expensive.

Added foam mold wrapped in cosmetic fur to get the hair to look like this. Also made hearing aid out of moldable plastic and painted it.

Wife taught me how to use makeup so that I could add the appropriate shading. He looked like a ghost under strong light otherwise.

Wool coat, quad cane, Ellie badge (hard to see), and ridiculous bowtie

Russel's source image

Trying to figure out the elements of his face. Harder than the other characters.

time to start carving

After carving

Yes, the baseball hat stitching was necessary. Doesn't look right without it.

Happy that the panels came out. Got it to sink in at the middle by tacking it to his head with more needle and thread

Wouldn't be complete without makeup!

My brother helping out.

More people helping out

He looks like he's ready to take your house.

Kevin was, by far, the hardest costume.

Made the head, but foam just didn't look right. Needed the beak to be shiny and hard.

Wrapped the model in tin foil

Bought a bunch of moldable plastic...

...and draped it over the tin foil

After making top and bottom jaw, painted with acrylic paint and then covered with a few layers of Modge Podge

Built body with sheets of foam. Made relaxing incisions to get it to drape correctly. Used a pool noodle for the neck and reinforced it with brake line from a local car parts store.

About $100 worth of feathers later, my wife was finally happy.

Bought some cheap slippers and added extra toes to look like a bird's foot. We also bought her matching grey leggins. For her arms, we covered a shirt in feathers to match.

And since we had just had a baby, we decided to kick off her first Halloween right..

This is my little baby Kevin. Bought a Cookie Monster outfit, ripped the eyes off, and used it as a scaffold for gluing on the foam and felt elements.

My wife adding the paint and feathers

The little outfit, complete with booties to look like bird feet

The row of costumes.

For the people that made it this far:
1. The foam costs nothing. Most foam outfits make custom orders from large blocks of foam. Whatever is left after it's been cut to spec is trash. I grease one of the workers $20 and it's done. Now, I just show them pictures of this stuff and it's free.

2. There are holes for the eyes (they just look black), there is a hole under the nose to breathe and drink beer without removing the head, and we wear them in October so it's nice and warm out in the cold.

3. No one featured is single. The girl dressed as Ellie and the guy dressed as the construction worker came late, so I didn't get a group picture. We have an actual golden retriever, but I didn't want to mess with the leash and a quad cane.

4. These are last year's costumes, so I'm getting rid of them. PM me if interested.