Hulk Costume

Hulk and the Avengers were always my favorite characters ever. I have seen those movies dozens of times and wanted to bring the energy from the big screen to life. I sat down at my kitchen table one night trying to come up with my next great costume idea and it hit me, what better costume shows energy and power than the HULK! I started designing right away with notes, drawings and scribbles trying to figure out just how I wanted to put this gigantic beast together. after a few days of design and movie watching for reference I dove in and the experience was one I will never forget.

The HULK costume I built is comprised up of only a few items:

1. Styrofoam noodles (like the ones in the swimming pool)
   I started by constructing a frame with the noodles that resembled pants suspenders tape and glue and came up with a tee shirt like object to begin building the muscles on
2. I used green cushion foam for the muscles which I carved by hand with an electric turkey knife.
   (100's of muscles went in to building this goliath.
3. Created pants out of more green foam with muscles and wrapped them in a pair of 4XL sweat pants
4. I knew the HULK had to be BIG...I mean real big no 6 foot HULK for me would do. I wanted my HULK to be big like the one in the movies . In order to do that I used some old dry wall stilts I had in the basement that gave me an extra 26" of height to the costume. I am 6' 1" tall + 26" stilts + 6" head that's 8' 9" tall!
5. For the skin I used a bucket of costume latex found at a local costume shop. I glued on a layer of spandex fabric over the green foam and painted on layer after layer of latex with brushes, chunks of foam and sometimes my bare hand until it was just right.

At first people said were did you buy that?...that to me was the greatest compliment ever! Others said
joking don't you think you could have made him bigger, or He looks like HULK's little brother. Most people just stood there with their jaw wide open and said nothing...That too was a great compliment.

I wanted to design and build a great costume made from materials that were available to anyone at local stores, make it affordable, durable and most important make it look like it jumped right out of the movie. The entire costume took 1 month over 250 hours all in, That's after work 6-8 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, double time on sunday. Im wearing the costume. picture taken by my friend Nick. I hope you enjoy!