Minotaur costume-Narnia style

Hi and welcome to my step by step guide on how to build this Narnia style minotaur, It is made very cheaply and using materials that I already had, all of the fur is made of string that I stripped down and hot glued on to make a fur effect, I felt this would be a lot cheaper than using fake fur and also would give a better effect of fur. The mask was made using plaster and was moulded on clay, the body was a t-shirt and the bottoms are made of old school trousers and tights, I made the armour out of coke cans. Im entered into the epic costumes contest, please vote!

Any way on with the build

the stuff you will need:
around 50 meters of sisal rope- eBay is the best and cheapest place to buy this-25meters is around £6
you need roughly 200 mini glue sticks
and a mini glue gun, you can use a large one but I don’t know how much glue you would need for them.
I bought my glue gun for £5 with 50 sticks
you also need modelling clay-enough to build a face, horns, hooves and hands
some modroc or plaster and scrim, around 4 rolls
plaster
acrylic paints
Polyfiller
around 20 coke cans- or other aluminium cans
2 old t-shirts one that fits and one that’s a couple of sizes to big
a pair of old trousers that are around 2 sizes too big
a pair of tights- (not my first choice but I think the best)
an empty 2 litre coke bottle
a pair of strong scissors
a craft knife
a balaclava
some spare wood
some newspaper
a few bits of cardboard
around 1/2 a meter squared of fake leather dependant on your size.
a long reel of paper-I got some from IKEA

Step 1: Reasearch

I started wanting to make an awesome Halloween costume this year that was also original but with a very low budget and only a few weeks I struggled for inspiration, I originally started with a sci-fi space man costume but after doing a quick search and some failed attempts I decided that it was neither original or feasible for me, I loved the work of Howard Berger on Narnia and the lord of the rings and was inspired to do something like him, however latex wasn’t possible with my low budget and after seeing a ball of sisal string I decided to make a minotaur. After re-watching the Narnia films a couple of times I took notes on the legs and faces and saw which one I would like to copy, the two below were the ones I chose, the first was the one I stuck closest to because of the colour and complexity of the armour on the other. Before deciding on the way I was going to build it I wanted to test of some materials so I started with the head as a rough draft however after a while I grew attached to it and so kept it, I took a very close look at some other instructables such as the werewolf one http://www.instructables.com/id/realistic-werewolf-costume/ however I still felt that the fur didn’t have the right, rustic look and the legs were wrong, so I redesigned it even though this mean a lot of trial and error, I liked the shingle look of the armour so I wanted to replicate this, I did it with coke cans as you will see later. I also say that they made a clay base for the Narnia ones, I did this also but I am not sure what the made the actual heads out of but I chose plaster.

Comments

[poofrabbit]

Congratulations on being a finalist in the Halloween contest!!! Can’t wait to see if you win! Good luck!

[ellwoodjoe]

Thanks, definitely cannot wait

[Lamarch]

This is amazing, you did a great job, I can't wait to try My hand at a version like your.

[ellwoodjoe]

thanks!

[jessyratfink]

I agree - the materials you used were not what I expected. Amazing job. :D

[ellwoodjoe]

thankyou for these greate comments! I gess the string was a bit of a pain but it got a lot easier after a while, thanks

[poofrabbit]

Wowza! Nice job! I love that you stuck with your materials, it can be so easy to get in a project and think to yourself, what was I think and switch, but this turned out lovely! Very well done!

[scoochmaroo]

Holy shizzle. what a great lot of work! And what resourceful materials you used! Really well done. Five stars.