I constructed this homemade Animal Muppet Halloween costume idea using paper mache, an old fleece blanket and yarn. The nose and eyes are plastic Christmas ornaments with paint and felt, and the teeth and spikes are carved foam. The t-shirt also has a custom “rock fingers” stencil spray painted on for the punk rock look. The whole project took about 3 weeks, and held up really well over 3 long nights.
I started with a large 17” balloon from the party store and laid up a number of heavy layers of paper mache. After it cured for a couple days I laid out the position of the eyes, nose and mouth, and started cutting. I used a construction hard hat to mount the paper mache dome to, and covered the whole thing with fleece. The chin is just a hoop loosely riveted at the ends to allow it to move up and down.
The back of the mouth is see through scrim, and really works well at blocking my face, but still allows me to breathe and see just fine. The yarn hair was made by wrapping yarn around a piece of cardboard, taping the middle together with a strip of fleece, and then sewing it all together. I then cut it in half to get two lengths of fur to hot glue to the head.
To finish off the whole look, I used orange knee high soccer socks, a long sleeve orange shirt, orange gloves, some ripped up brown pants, and a braided hemp rope belt. The shackles were made with Sintra plastic and hand carved foam spikes. I attached the plastic chain by cutting one link in half, drilling two holes in the collar, and running a ziptie through the link.
I received lots of praise and laughs for this homemade Animal Muppet Halloween costume idea, and posed for many many pictures (I wish more with my camera though). I found that Animal isn’t as recognized as he used to be, and got lots of “Elmo” comments, but the kids still seemed to enjoy it.
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This was such a helpful costume description. I had been thinking about creating an Animal costume for several months and finally decided to do it two weeks ago. I referred to your costume description and pictures a bunch of times over the course of constructing the mask. I just finished the head tonight and I am so excited to wear it in two weeks! Thanks a bunch!