Egon Spengler
Master Member
It's been a very long road when it comes to getting this costume completed. I started working on this way back in August of 2010 and have worked on it off and on since that time. I finally completed it this month. 
I've tried to give a lot of information on how it was made here. Not everything is in sequential order. I worked a lot on the different parts here and there.
This is a rather large monster from the video game Silent Hill 3.
I wanted the costume to have the same imposing height as the one in the game, but did not want to use dry wall stilts to add the height to the form. If I had used dry wall stilts, the legs would have had to be made thicker to hide the placement of my feet and the proportions would have looked way off.
Getting started I had to figure out a way to raise my shoulders up and to allow for the head of the monster to fit above my own head.
I took my Motocross chest/shoulder armor from a previous costume and filled it's interior with expanding foam while it was on a duct tape torso of myself. Some cotton batting I used to fill the space up inside the shoulders got stuck in the expanding foam, but it's not big deal. Using more expanding foam on top of the shoulders I built up a neck and eventually the head, all as one piece.
My intention was to keep it all one piece to make it easier on my neck when wearing it, but I wasn't happy at all with the lack of movement that caused. More on that later.
For the base of the arm build I used PVC pipe placed into the concrete form tube to add bulk. With the PVC pipe centered in the concrete form tube, I drilled holes into each tube and inserted half inch pvc pipe horizontally, and pinned them into place using paper clips as cotter pins on each end.
To build up the form of the arms even further, I bought plenty of expanding foam and covered the outside of the concrete form tubes with it.
Returning to the head and upper body. I wasn't happy with the lack of movement that the solid neck and head combo caused, so I sliced off those and restarted. I purchased a hard hat and some chicken wire from Home Depot.
After shaping the chicken wire into the form needed for the head, I attached the hard hat to the foam and proceeded to cover the wire in expanding foam. After it was dry and solid, I removed the hard hat from the form so I could reattach it later with heavy steel gauge wire.
You can see where the hard hat was and will sit in this photo.
To add bulk to the shoulders of the upper torso, I bought and cut down two large mixing bowls and also attached them with heavy gauge steel gauge wire. Attach the head to the shoulders, but also to allow for movement and to reduce pressure on my neck, I added to screen door springs to the suit, from the helmet to the back of the motocross armor. In this image the springs are parallel, but I discovered that crossing them over each other allowed for more tension and when I covered them with pipe insulation tubing, like this:
It added even more support for the head.
That's our dog Jacqueline, sleeping between the costume parts. She was a sweetheart but has since moved on to the other side and will be missed.
A photo of the arms and head once all expanding foam was applied, before trimming.
The arms and head all needed to have plenty of foam cut from their forms to give them the proper base shapes. I carefully used a large kitchen knife for that task and it worked well enough. I needed something better than just sculpted expanding foam. The stuff is too uneven and rough to use on its own. I bought some mattress pad foam from Wal-Mart and wrapped each arm in it, smooth side up, cutting it to fit and adding more where needed to get a nice uniform layer on each arm. I cut and glued it in some places to add more pronounced wrinkling to give it a more fleshy look.
Once the arms were covered, I began to paint the foam over with latex. It was a long process but it really added not only to the look and feel of the arms, but to the durability of the foam.
Hours later, after fully coating each of the lower arms with latex, I mixed latex and a little acrylic paint together and began to paint them to look like living flesh. I did not want it to come off as just bland and one color. Sure Silent Hill is full of dirty dusty colors, but this thing is a living creature and I wanted it's "skin" to look alive. I also replaced the blue camping foam on the upper arms with more mattress foam. It gives way more flexibility when moving. I used 3M Spray Adhesive to attach the foam to the shoulders. The foam itself has a nice texture to it when combined with the latex that makes it look even more skin like. I used plenty of reference images to paint the arms and to see where all the slices and openings were located. I tried hard to paint the arms to look sore, and infected, without over doing it with a bunch of blood and gore. Most Silent Hill monsters are more dirty than they are bloody.
I also gave the illusion of my hips being up higher and more in proportion to the creatures height by buying a waist slimmer at Wal-Mart (I think thats what it was) and hot glued foam into it to shape my waist into larger hips. On a creature this big proportions are very important.
After painting the lower arms with only latex and acrylic paints.
For the robe I had to make a pattern. I bought an over sized t-shirt, cut off the sleeves, opened the seams, and added fabric from an old black t-shirt to the bottom to get the length right.
I bought some fabric, which I think might have been jersey knit and used it to make the robe. I bought an extremely long zipper to run down the back. I fit the robe to the form and then stitched it all up with the sewing machine.
I've tried to give a lot of information on how it was made here. Not everything is in sequential order. I worked a lot on the different parts here and there. This is a rather large monster from the video game Silent Hill 3.
I wanted the costume to have the same imposing height as the one in the game, but did not want to use dry wall stilts to add the height to the form. If I had used dry wall stilts, the legs would have had to be made thicker to hide the placement of my feet and the proportions would have looked way off.
Getting started I had to figure out a way to raise my shoulders up and to allow for the head of the monster to fit above my own head.
I took my Motocross chest/shoulder armor from a previous costume and filled it's interior with expanding foam while it was on a duct tape torso of myself. Some cotton batting I used to fill the space up inside the shoulders got stuck in the expanding foam, but it's not big deal. Using more expanding foam on top of the shoulders I built up a neck and eventually the head, all as one piece.
My intention was to keep it all one piece to make it easier on my neck when wearing it, but I wasn't happy at all with the lack of movement that caused. More on that later.
For the base of the arm build I used PVC pipe placed into the concrete form tube to add bulk. With the PVC pipe centered in the concrete form tube, I drilled holes into each tube and inserted half inch pvc pipe horizontally, and pinned them into place using paper clips as cotter pins on each end.
To build up the form of the arms even further, I bought plenty of expanding foam and covered the outside of the concrete form tubes with it.
Returning to the head and upper body. I wasn't happy with the lack of movement that the solid neck and head combo caused, so I sliced off those and restarted. I purchased a hard hat and some chicken wire from Home Depot.
After shaping the chicken wire into the form needed for the head, I attached the hard hat to the foam and proceeded to cover the wire in expanding foam. After it was dry and solid, I removed the hard hat from the form so I could reattach it later with heavy steel gauge wire.
You can see where the hard hat was and will sit in this photo.
To add bulk to the shoulders of the upper torso, I bought and cut down two large mixing bowls and also attached them with heavy gauge steel gauge wire. Attach the head to the shoulders, but also to allow for movement and to reduce pressure on my neck, I added to screen door springs to the suit, from the helmet to the back of the motocross armor. In this image the springs are parallel, but I discovered that crossing them over each other allowed for more tension and when I covered them with pipe insulation tubing, like this:
It added even more support for the head.
That's our dog Jacqueline, sleeping between the costume parts. She was a sweetheart but has since moved on to the other side and will be missed.
A photo of the arms and head once all expanding foam was applied, before trimming.
The arms and head all needed to have plenty of foam cut from their forms to give them the proper base shapes. I carefully used a large kitchen knife for that task and it worked well enough. I needed something better than just sculpted expanding foam. The stuff is too uneven and rough to use on its own. I bought some mattress pad foam from Wal-Mart and wrapped each arm in it, smooth side up, cutting it to fit and adding more where needed to get a nice uniform layer on each arm. I cut and glued it in some places to add more pronounced wrinkling to give it a more fleshy look.
Once the arms were covered, I began to paint the foam over with latex. It was a long process but it really added not only to the look and feel of the arms, but to the durability of the foam.
Hours later, after fully coating each of the lower arms with latex, I mixed latex and a little acrylic paint together and began to paint them to look like living flesh. I did not want it to come off as just bland and one color. Sure Silent Hill is full of dirty dusty colors, but this thing is a living creature and I wanted it's "skin" to look alive. I also replaced the blue camping foam on the upper arms with more mattress foam. It gives way more flexibility when moving. I used 3M Spray Adhesive to attach the foam to the shoulders. The foam itself has a nice texture to it when combined with the latex that makes it look even more skin like. I used plenty of reference images to paint the arms and to see where all the slices and openings were located. I tried hard to paint the arms to look sore, and infected, without over doing it with a bunch of blood and gore. Most Silent Hill monsters are more dirty than they are bloody.
I also gave the illusion of my hips being up higher and more in proportion to the creatures height by buying a waist slimmer at Wal-Mart (I think thats what it was) and hot glued foam into it to shape my waist into larger hips. On a creature this big proportions are very important.
After painting the lower arms with only latex and acrylic paints.
For the robe I had to make a pattern. I bought an over sized t-shirt, cut off the sleeves, opened the seams, and added fabric from an old black t-shirt to the bottom to get the length right.
I bought some fabric, which I think might have been jersey knit and used it to make the robe. I bought an extremely long zipper to run down the back. I fit the robe to the form and then stitched it all up with the sewing machine.
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