Light-Up Crosswalk Sign Costume

I love creating fun and original costumes and I really wanted to push the boundaries with this one after going as Post-It Malone for Halloween last year. For a while I had my mind set on doing a few other ideas, but after those fizzled out I went back to the drawing board and started thinking about other things that I could manipulate with cardboard. After doing a lot of brainstorming I was still a bit stuck, but one day while walking along the streets of New York I focused on a blinking crosswalk sign and figured, "Hey! Maybe I could go as that?" It was unlike anything that I'd ever gone as before and my wife and I had never rigged any costumes with lights, but I convinced her that we could do it and we were off to the races.

Once we decided on the costume, I wanted to make sure that it looked as true to the original as possible - both electronically and size-wise - so I did some research on all the different aspects of it and bought the corresponding parts for it. We started the actual work fairly late in the game only a few days before Halloween but somehow managed to pull it off in time, which was stressful but definitely rewarding in the end.

Here were our steps:

1. Cut a 30"x30"x30" box down To one singular, 60"x60" square
2. Fortify the box with some duct tape
3. Round the corners
4. Paint one side of the box School Bus Yellow (the back of the crosswalk)
5. Paint the other side black with a yellow border
6. Affix the Stop Hand wiring and lights to the left side of the board with black duct tape.
7. Measure and cut elastic pieces, which then need to be threaded through the box and tied in the back. This is how I was able to wear this - via two shoulder straps and 1 waist strap - and it was actually pretty comfortable.
8. Affix the white "Go" wiring and lights to myself
9. Apply a black, sheer mesh face disguise
10. Load up the battery packs (which were stored in my two pockets).
11. Control each set of lights via a remote control in each hand. This was obviously a pretty manual way of doing this but it was nice to be able to control them on demand.

When I wore this out in New York on Halloween I had to quickly learn how to get around in it because it was bulky and banging into everything, but after an hour or so I started to get the hang of it. It was tricky getting it down into subway stations and through crowds, but luckily I had a friend there to help guide the way. The costume itself was a huge hit throughout the night and attracted a lot of fanfare and photos, and I had a blast walking in the annual parade with it. One of the highlights of the night was standing under an actual crosswalk in Union Square and emulating the lighting patterns, which drew a nice crowd!