Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Designing Costumes for Disguise

For 11 years I have worked for Disguise making Halloween product. My primary job is designing and sculpting accessories, but I also contribute costume ideas.  Here are some designs, and the costumes that they became. At Disguise, I provide the design concept, which is interpreted by a costume designer. If graphics are needed, that is handled by the Creative Services department. Once they have a mock up of a costume, I give input on the construction and graphics. We only have an allotted amount of money to  work with, so more often than not, we cannot afford some of the elements in my designs. In most cases, I also sculpt and paint the components that accompany the costumes.  Click on any of the images to see full size.

For these two military designs, I  had some time to think through and develop them properly. Everything was done in Photoshop. The completed costumes turned out OK, but there was so much more I would have loved to see.



I'm a huge industrial goth fan so when they asked for me to contribute to the Rot"N" Rocker line, I jumped at the chance to make the creepiest rocker on earth. Even though we could not afford to do the pants,  I was very impressed by how it all come out in the final costume.


This was originally going to be a vampire knight, but the executives didn't get it. So, he became the black knight once I added a helmet. My initial inspiration was in re-purposing a chest piece I did on a costume that was canceled a few years back. I thought with a new paint job that it was worth saving. So far, the buyer response has been great.


I had such high hopes for this one when I designed it. I was responsible for the sculpts and am proud of them, but the actual costume really falls short.


I was trying to make these designs with the parchment back round look; like they all came from the same world, ancient, and horrific. Here are a couple more  that I really liked. The Crypt vampire made it as an essential costume, but "The Monster" lost over the Black Knight and Reaper.

This was a fun little design I did in 2008. They were looking for a twist on a skeleton costume. I was inspired by things I'd seen in some issues of Heavy Metal comics.

 This is my all-time favorite costume I did for Disguise back in mid 2000. No one was saying, make a demon, or vampire, so I made what I wanted to make. I did dozens of sketches, but the one pictured is the closest to how it turned out. It looked amazing, but we could not get the factory to make the vacuum-form plastic armor in the correct thickness resulting in a brittle costume.

  These are other designs for the Biomech that I would still love to make.

I've done tons on ninjas, but these two represent two of my favorite designs.  The one on the left is supposed to be the very first ninja from ancient barbaric times, and the one on the right is a modern day ninja. Both are from the same clan and share a dragon insignia on their belts.
 Every boy at age 7 or 8 wants to be a ninja, I know this because I was.

 This was a idea and design I had for a pitch to try and get the Star Wars license. It never saw the light of day, but it was a blast to work on.

Once in a while I like to just draw stuff in my spare time at home. This was a fun project I did in 2008 that taught me a lot about coloring in Photoshop.