Grimlock Cosplay/Costume

So I went and made a Grimlock costume. It's all cardboard and krylon spraypaint. it was quite the experience to make. 

I wanted to make a very exciting costume for a recent convention that involved Transformers but I had no idea how to go about it. I felt that it would be ridiculously ridiculous and many people laughed at me for even considering it. I searched throughout the internet and was eventually brought to this website and the amazing Soundwave costume (https://www.instructables.com/id/Transformers-Soundwave-Costume/) and Optimus Prime costume (https://www.instructables.com/id/Building-Optimus-Prime/), which both gave me a huge start. I figured that I could base my entire costume off of the combination of both of those as well as the Masterpiece Grimlock figure that I had bought a few months earlier.

I figured cardboard would be the best option to go with for my first one since it was very durable when combined with each other. So the quest began with cardboard and hot glue. The most challenging part of this whole costume was the lack of patterns available. I began with the head/helmet. It involved a hard hat and lots of cardboard. I started making a pattern for most of it out of paper but found out that it was very difficult to actually get the actual pattern to work. So I just started cutting cardboard pieces out and putting it all together using scotch tape until it started holding enough for me to glue it together. Once the entire head was made, I went and bought a blue see-through rubbermaid container to use for the eyes/visor so I could actually see out of it.

After that, it was pretty much "Let's build each part and spend a few months doing it" time. I took a medium size cardboard box and used it as the upper body. I put a backpack inside of the back so everything would be sitting on my shoulders instead of just floating there. The dinosaur head on the back would cover the entire thing so no one would be able to really see what was holding things on there. I just cut most things out and looked to see if they worked. If not, I would go and re-cut them until they did. It was a lot of trial-and-error on my part since I had never done anything this big before.

The hands were made out of hockey gloves that I had to paint part black so they looked like robot hands. I had also bought cardboard that was able to bend in curves to use for the shoulders of the robot. The feet were the most challenging part since it was really difficult to walk in. Curse Grimlock for having very huge feet. I used a lot of ideas that the Soundwave costume used in terms of sliding the cardboard together using cardboard locks (you can see them in a few of the pictures). It connected pretty well using those. The shoulders actually have the sliders on it to hold the chest and back together. The legs have sliders on them so I could cover the inside of the legs to make it look solid all around. The wings have them so they just sit on the back next to the dinosaur head.

Eventually, I went and used gesso to prime the entire costume so the paint would stick better and look a lot sharper than just painting the cardboard itself. I eventually cut another rubbermaid container (this time, see-through clear) for the chest to make it look like his see-through chest and put some flickering tea lights in it as well for aesthetic purposes.

Overall, I think that it came out pretty well. There are tons of things that I would change on it but for my first costume with this much detail, I think it came out very well. I hope that you enjoyed this. If you want to know more, please don't hesitate to ask. I have more pictures that I could upload if people want to see more of the details of my designs.