This is my home made James P. Sullivan project. It was fairly cheap to make using mostly supplies from Home Depot (excluding fur and fabric). The total project cost me 155$ And the fur was 106$ of the total. So if I chose a character to build without fur I would have saved time and money, (Mike Wizoski for example only cost me 45$).

Step 1: Materials

Materials.

1. 5 yards blue fur
2. 3 yards blue felt
3. 3 yards white pleather
4. 4 rolls of masking tape
5. 12 ft roll chicken wire
6. 1 bag flour
7. 1 bottle of wood glue
8. 4 rolls of paper towels
9. 1 super bouncy ball (for the eyeball)
10. 2 rolls of duct tape
11. fish net stalking or screen (for the detail on the nose)
12. hot glue gun hi temp
13. big bag of glue sticks 100 count
14. 8" SAKRETE tube from home depot
15. black sharpie
16. scissors
17. old sneakers
18. acrylic clear sealant spray
19. fine tip paint brush and angular tip paint brush
20. Bubble wrap for the head support
21. 1 can baby blue (marine blue) spray paint
22. 1 can greenish blue spray paint (different cans use different names)
23. 1 oz baby blue paint (eye)
24. 1 oz dark blue paint (eye)
25. 1 can white spray paint.
26. 1 can purple spray paint.
27. 1 hula hoop for his belly.
28. wire cutters.

Step 2: Making the Head

1. Cut out the chicken wire and mold it to the size you want. My head was 2 feet tall.
2. Cover the wire in masking tape so you have a canvas to sketch on.
3. sketch out Sulley's face so you can see where you want to place all of his features exactly where they need to go.
4. Make adjustments where needed, I needed to make his chin bigger so I cut out and added more wire.
5. Add masking tape to help mold the facial features.
6. Use wire cutters to cut out the mouth and eyes.
7. Use a strip of chicken wire to mold the pointed teeth and attach them buy spinning the ends of the wire to the wire on the inside of his mouth, then cover in masking tape.
8. Do the same step as 7 to mold the horns and attach them.
9. Cut strips of paper towel in small, medium, and large strips
10. Make your mache mixture. I used 2 parts water to 1 part flour. I added a few squirts of wood glue for every part flour. mix and apply to cover the entire head.
11. Once dry, i covered the lips, eyelids, and nose with Gesso to give the mach a smooth canvas to paint on.
12. Once dry, spray paint the lips and eyelids with Aqua marine blue or a shade close to sulleys. (not baby blue its more marine)
13. Before you paint the nose cover it with a fish net or screen so once it drys it will give the texture of scales.
14. Paint the nose with a sponge and dab the paint on so that you dont move the screen and scramble the pattern. I used a dark marine green because Sulleys nose is slightly darker than his lips and eyes.
15. With a fine tip paint brush, using the darker nose color, paint the lip wrinkles.
16. Cover the lips and nose with masking tape (once they are dry) and spray paint the teeth glossy white. The tape with block the white paint and remove no paint once you take the tape off.
17. Paint the horns. I used an airbrush paint gun for the first time this year and tried it out on the horns. I used a silver gray liquid acryllic and sprayed the base coat with an ivory color. Paint the tip white. Once it dried I spray the dark details up the horns.

18. For the eyes I bought a super bouncy ball from walmart and cut it in half. Its squishy so it fits into the eye socket nicely. Paint the to halves with Gesso. once dry spray paint them glossy white. once dry, I used an old bottle cap (about the size of a half dollar) to draw in the iris circles with a sharpie.
19. sketch in the pupil with a black sharpie.
20. once your ready to paint, I found it was easy to accurately paint the iris with the right brush. I used an angular shader with firm bristles. at first i tried to paint tiny lines with a fine tip paint brush and it was too difficult and looked cartoonish. The angular brush was fast and easy.

21. Once your entire face is painted, spray the painted areas with a glossy acrylic sealer thats clear. This will hold the paint in, protect it, and waterproof it.

Step 3: Applying the Fur

you really only need to be accurate when applying the fur just in the face between the eyes and around the nose. Everywhere else the fur blends into itself and since its a long pile fur it covers wrinkles and errors easy.
1. using paper towel, lay it over the face and sketch a template of how the pattern of fur will look.
2. cut the fur out and lay it on the face dry first to see if its accurate.
3. Since this is long pile fur you will need to give Sulley a hair cut. his fur is short on his nose. Using scissor trim the fur just like you would give someone a hair cut. the center of the bridge of the nose is the shortest and gradually get longer as you move out towards his cheek bones. Taper the fur accordingly.
4. Using a hot glue gun, start glueing the fur in the middle of the eyes because this is the hardest and smallest area. then glue from the eyes down to the nose.
5. Applying the fur to the rest of the head is easy and there is little room for error. if you miss a spot just cut out more fur and glue it in place. I had no rhyme or reason for the rest of the head. I just cut out long pieces that looked correct and put them on, then came back after and fix my holes.

Step 4: The Shoulders

1. I cut out a cylinder 3 feet wide and roughly 2.5 feet around. They original size does not have to be very accurate because you will mold and bend and cut some of the wire, just you can ball park it. Remember it needs to be comfortable to wear so dont go too big.
2. cut out a square almost should width wide leave one side uncut. prop this panel up to resemble the neck.
3. bend the shoulders and tie of the ends of the cylinder by spinning the ends of the wire around other loose ends. it should be a complete cylinder.
4. using the industrial dowels that came with my fur I made cross bridges to add structure to the shoulders. I used duct tape to hold them together and inserted them where my shoulders will support the most weight.
5. Next, i used old football belts and wove them around the chicken wire in a cross pattern so that when I put my shoulders on I could stabilize them from falling backwards.
6. Using chicken wire, i molded to arms to wrap over the top of my shoulders to add further support from the cylinder rolling around.
7. cover with masking tape.
8. if you have the desired shape and size, you can mache the shoulders to make them solid..

Step 5: The Hands

1. cut out the chicken wire so that the hands will be roughly the size of Sulleys face ( he has big Ol mitts)
2 bend and shape the fingers with the wire ( its very moldable wire)
3. add in the details of his fingers and palms by bending the wire
4. add class with either tape or more small pieces of wire.
5. cover in masking tape
6. add long dowels or light weight pipe to act as arm extension so you can move the hands when your walking around.
7 paper mache
8. paint.
9. Cut out cylinders of chicken wire roughly 2ft long to act as forearms. make the area by the elbows wider than the wrists.
10 Cover in masking tape.
11. cut out a template of the hand or outline it on the fur, cut it out, and hot glue it in place. use 1 piece of fur to connect the hand to the forearm to help secure the two together (1 long piece about 3 feet long)

Step 6: Feet

1. Cut out the chicken wire in a square about 3 sneaker widths once you bend the sides around to form the foot. (the top of the foot should be 3 sneaker widths)
2. Bend the wire to form the foot and toes
3. add more wire to make the claws
4. place the sneaker to that its on the inside of the foot. the feet are so wide that if you put the sneaker in the middle then you will be stepping on your big toes when you walk.
5. weave the laces through the wire.
6. cover in duct tape.
7. Using the industrial dowels, cut them to proper length and insert them inside the feet to give the feet some support.
8. for ankles I used Sakrete tube from home depot. its basically a big dowel that holds concrete and light weight. it was an 8" tube. attache with duct tape.
9. Hot glue the fur in place. make sure you glue the fur on the feet to the ankle dowel using 1 piece of fur so that it holds the dowel to the foot.

Step 7: The Body.

1. I measured from the floor to my shoulder front and back to get the length of material for my body. I then measured the circumference of the shoulders and added it together.
2. cut it out and sew the sides, leave enough room for your arms and shoulders to go through.
3. I used fishing line to sew with because its much stronger than thread.
4. Sulley has short legs so wait until you put the entire costume together to get the correct height.

Step 8: The Jacket

1. Im using hula hoops for Sulleys belly (to make him look wide) so I measure the circumference of the hoops and made that the base of my jacket.
2. I then measure from where I thought his belt line would be on his stomach, up and around the shoulders and back down to the belt line.
3. you dont have to be very accurate because Sulley wears his jacket open.
4. Sew the sides and edges.
5. You may want to taper off by the shoulders to give the jacket its "varsity" look.
6. for the sleeves i cut out the pleather to fit the circumference of the shoulders I created. I measure from the top of his should to his belt line. cut out the fabric and sewed with fishing line.
7. for the collar trim of the jacket, measure the wrist cicumference, jacket width, and neck circumference and cut out the fabric accordingly.
8 I hot glued a pleather strip to each piece then sewed them in place.
9. for the school logo, the giant M, I cut out a dark blue M, a slightly bigger white pleather M, and a slightly bigger baby blue felt M, then hot glued them all together and to the jacket.

Step 9: Safety

steps to use caution

1. once you cut the chicken wire it becomes sharp and will prick you drawing blood.
2. the hot glue gun can cause bad burns
3. cutting the SAKRETE and tubing