hello kitty - zombie
the making of

I can usually see the finished product in my head with these costume projects and knew this one was going to be a lot of work to achieve. I figured it might be good to document it.

Here's the first pile of supplies. I ended up not using a number of these items - the cloth and the spray paint and spray foam didn't make it into the end design, but I almost used up a whole can of spray adhesive. The pants and shirt got dirty (with real dirt!) but they're salvageable. The giant shoes and gloves were a great find at Mr. Fun's

Here's the second pile. Instead of a dress, I used two aprons and decorated one with ribbons. Here's the stacks of foam I used to build the head as well as the various "gore" - including glass paint and the deflated rubber ball. It looked like brains to me in the store. Also here are the zip ties that ended up being the whiskers. The foam was not as high a density as the professional mascot makers would have used, but I figured it would suit me fine - especially since I didn't really know what I was doing.

Here's the detail on gore. I used a pink rubber ball, torn and cut into pieces, and then painted with red glass paint. It's all in the details. I ended up not using as much of this as I made, but it's better to have too much gore than not enough. I also used a red balloon that was cut up for some gore as well, but it didn't turn out as good. Still, I was ready. This is resting on Plexiglas since it would be easy to get the glass paint off. I also used the paint to make blood drips to great effect.

The cutting begins. Hello Kitty has a very round head, but I still needed plenty of room for my own head inside - so, I just cut off the corners. I used a bread knife and figured the cloth would cover any irregularities and/or it would add to the freakishness of the head. And yes, that was me rationalizing a slightly shoddy job in two different ways.

Here we've got the framework of the head. This is with the "face" removed. This was the first time I worked with a spray adhesive and I struggled with getting things lined up within the appropriate dry times. I ended up having to carefully take it apart and reglue at one point, but it worked out in the end. Plus, the outer cloth helped hold it together.

Here the ears are being cut out. The ears didn't take as much foam since they sat back a bit on the head. Pretty much just a stack of triangles. Also, that knife looks really sinister, but at this point it was getting dull. Still got the job done though.

Here's the head covered in cloth. You can see the eye holes have already been cut from the face and the neck hole has been cut from the base. I ended up adding an extra piece of fabric over the face and the back to cover the rough edges of the cut fabric. After this step I cut out the holes and glued the excess to the inner sides of the eyes and neck openings. Interestingly enough, Hello Kitty doesn't have a mouth. Didn't stop me from talking though.

In this step, I cut out the screen to make the eye coverings. I think this is one of the best parts of the costumes - everyone always wonders if I can see out and the answer is that I can - and very well. They also served as air holes - so, that was very important too. Because the foam is so light colored and the fabric covering it was also white, I had to work a little harder to "hide". I used two layers of this screen and painted the inside of the head with black paint to block the external light. I still showed up in pictures if they used a flash, but to the regular eye I was hidden.

In the home stretch. Ears have been attached, whiskers and bow added, the cloth has been painted. I used paint in a misting sprayer - first green, then black - to get the rotted flesh effect. All that's left here is the addition of gore to the whiskers, adding the nose, and putting blood on where the mouth would be. The rubber band is still holding the bow in place - it was made out of "foamie" and the glue wasn't setting as quickly as I would have liked.

It was a lot of work to do this one, but people really liked it. And I had a blast.