Marvin the Martian Costume (finally!)

I've been a busy boy this Halloween season, and my costume was right at the top of my priorities. I've wanted to do a Marvin the Martian costume for years, and I finally took the dive! Making this costume was a journey of new skills and several spills and ultimate triumph! The way I ended up forming the costume will make things a bit easier for the next poor soul who takes it upon themselves to venture to be Marvin for Halloween.

Step 1 First, Figuring Out How the Heck Do I Do This?

To some extent, I planned the project out, but as things progressed, I found that I had to change tracks several times to accomplish my goals. The first thing I decided was that the head had to be made of fiberglass. I did some reading up online about how to work with fiberglass, and it looked fairly easy. I also had to figure out how I was going to make the oversized basketball-style shoes he wore, as well as his roman soldier-type skirt and helmet. I happened to have a large thick stock cardboard box that once housed a computer system. I realized quickly that I could do alot of building using the cardboard from that box. So a materials list began to grow. But that list would change as the project progressed, along with the very methods I was using to build the parts of the costume. The head, I decided, had to be based on a proper size of round object, a ball or globe. I finally settled on a bouncy ball about 16" in diameter from Wally World. It looked TOO big but it was only $2.50 and I figured it was best to go big to get the right kind of dimensions. I'm about 6' tall and so the head/helmet, skirt and shoes needed to be huge to make that illusion work.

Comments

[Andib]

I LOVE it!!

That costume is wonderful. How much of a pain was working with fiberglass cloth?

All in all, it seems to have come out together great!

[MarxNutz]

The fiberglass cloth wasn't so bad, although some strands would come off the edges a cut piece and stick to anything. I was using latex gloves, and had gotten a bit of the resin on them and the bits would stick anywhere there was resin. I don't know how much different it would be if you worked with the mat instead. There are some videos on YouTube about working with fiberglass you might find useful. All in all, I was impressed with the ease of use, and I plan on making things with fiberglass again.

[Penolopy Bulnick]

That costume is great :) Awesome job!

[MarxNutz]

Thanks for the kind words!