Cool Homemade Transforming Optimus Prime Costume

My Homemade Transforming Optimus Prime Costume is made entirely out of recycled cardboard boxes and is completely homemade except for the helmet, only because I was short on time. The costume is made with three boxes that collapse into each other so that the costume transforms from a robot to a truck and back. For this part I used large boxes that were the size of my body and I used drawer slides so that they move inside the latter.

The arms are made from small boxes lined with foam so they contour to my arms and long flat boxes on top to look more like Optimus Prime’s arms. The arms then Velcro to the sides of the truck. I decided to use Capri sun boxes for this part because they were just the right length and then I cut pizza boxes in half for the other part.

The costume is painted just like the movie character with fades from orange to red, flames, and white pin striping. I just used the stencil method instead of painting the flames on one by one. Some additional features are that it has working head lights made from those little tap on lights, a windshield from sheets of plastic, and a speaker system in the back (Cd player hooked up to stand alone speakers).

I started late September and finished just in time for Halloween night. So the whole thing took me about a month or around 100 hours. Enjoy.

Here’s a video of the transformation: