General Thade Costume Build 2012

I have been heavy into creating my own costume for the last 4 years now and do it mostly for my company costume contest. Its funny to see them progress and get more complex as I try to top the one from the previous year.
And now General Thade! I think this one will be the most fun.
I started in September with a foam latex mask from Morphstore.com. Airbrushed on color layers until I reached a color I liked. (Yes the eyes were creeping me out too!) Then added some reddish brown hair around the edges of the mask, grey around the chin area & reworked the face color a little more. I couldn’t find a good fit for upper and lower teeth so I just opted to go with lowers for now.

I purchased a Balaclava (not the desert) hood and attached fur to it for my wig. (what a bee-och this was! my first) Painted an old set of ears I had laying around and attached them to it as well.

I can’t remember where I purchased the hands but I removed the lame patches of black fur and added my own. I filled the extended fingers with expanding foam to make them stiff instead of all floppy to make it much easier to pick things up. The feet I purchased from GrabCart.com and modified them to be shorter. I brought the big toe in a little, and filled the toes in with expanding foam so they didn’t flop like clown feet. I couldn’t get the black fur off without damaging the rubber so I used brown hair spray to get it the same color as the rest of the fur. Sacrificed an old pair of summer shoes for supporting the feet. I wanted to put a pair of sandals on the feet after this but I didn’t have time.

I attached fur to an old pair of long johns where the open parts of the armor are. I also noticed a maroon colored shirt he wore under the body armor I purchased at value village.

I received a leather jacket from a friend, cut the collar off & holes in the inner elbows, and glued on the black #6 wool yarn. (a little closer then I should have, the pants should turn out better) Trying to match the design of Thade’s body armor.

The pants I purchased from value village, cut holes in the backs of the knees, cut out the butt and the crotch, basically they look like chaps, and glued on the yarn. Both the coat and pants were painted with 50/50 latex & paint to give it more strength. Then sprayed chrome paint on a piece of cardboard and dabbed it on the outside of the yarn to give it the metal strand look.

For the front and back cod pieces I cut them out of the fake leather material with gold paper table decorations glued between and metal studs. Gluing & sewing it all together and attaching it to the pants. I purchased shin guards (Wal-Mart) and roman style foam thigh guards (Display n Costume) covered them with a fake leather material and painted on the gold highlights.

Since I don’t have the room, equipment and money to create a replica of his chest/back armor, I purchased a generic roman one and painted it roughly similar. (no sadistic monkeys this time - future project along with the sandals & battle helmet) The shoulder armor was made out of an old Tupperware bowl. I cut it in half and shaped it to roughly resemble Thade’s and used double sided weather stripping tape to get the design on the front. Painted it with textured paint to give it a weathered look. Metal belt links were used to attach it to the shoulder straps.

The close of me in the mask is after 8 hrs in the costume and my chin piece is not matching up with the face part very well & I'm exhausted. But all in all it held up pretty well and was more comfortable than i thought. Heres the rest of the pieces done and assembled. My friend insisted on playing with their Photo shop program on a few pictures. I hope you like my costume this year. Looking forward to seeing all the others. 

Happy Halloween!!