Coolest Homemade Werewolf Halloween Costume

I’ve been wanting to create a homemade Werewolf Halloween costume for awhile, and after 6 years in the Army, I finally completed my term of service and had some down time to make it happen. I’m the same guy that made the “Gargoyle” and “Reptile-man” costumes, previously featured on this site. I learned a lot from those costumes and my main goal with this year’s costume was to create something that would be a lot simpler and easier to put on.

The homemade Werewolf Halloween costume was time consuming to make, but the process was fairly simple and could be easily replicated with a lot less time if some of the details were downgraded.

I started by buying a spandex shirt and pants, and then shaping muscles out of memory foam. I used anatomical muscle diagrams of both humans and wolves to try to get it pretty accurate. Eventually, I ended up with 178 hand carved muscles, which I then glued onto the spandex shirt and pants. If someone wanted to do this without spending as much time, they could just reduce the quantity of muscles and stick with more generalized shapes. You could also use regular foam instead of memory foam.

Next, I had a great friend and seamstress sew a second spandex suit, which I then slipped over the first one. If you aren’t able to get a custom sewn suit, plenty of ready to wear ones are available online or in theater/dance stores for around $50 – $75 each. To attach it and keep the seams minimal, I had the upper portion of the suit attach under the groin area (like a child’s onesie) with a snap for bathroom breaks.

Next, I used fabric glue to create veins running throughout the body and stippled across to create a skin texture. Then I painted everything with fabric paint. Once that was complete, I began the arduous process of hand gluing two pounds of alpaca fur and horse hair across the body. If you don’t have access to an alpaca farm, generic synthetic fur would work fine too.

Once all that was done, I created the hands from an old pair of monster gloves I had, which I cut apart, resized, and made into the long fingers you see in the photos. I also recycled an old pair of monster feet into the wolf legs in the photos.

To create the stilts, I used 2-by-4’s which I cut and shaped into crude retrograde style legs with shoes attached about 9 inches from the ground with my toes angled down (like very very high heels!). To support my weight and make walking easier, I attached bungee cords to the base of the stilts and then created supports that attached below my knee.

The end product was pretty comfortable; I could trot, walk, and even go up and down stairs with little difficulty. The plans to create these digigrade stilts are available online and on youtube, though I changed them quite a bit to improve the design and make them more durable and comfortable. They look a bit intimidating to make, but they really weren’t too bad and pretty inexpensive — maybe $75 for all the materials with extra left over for replacement parts. You can also make them with simple tools like a drill and handsaw.

Finally, to disguise everything, I pulled a pair of spandex leggings over the stilts each time I put them on and attached those with Velcro. To create the mask, I purchased a prosthetic wolf face, which I then adhered to a spandex facial hood which I had previously elongated with more memory foam. I glued ears to the mask that I had from an old gargoyle mask, but repainted them and faded out the transitions with liquid latex.

Once all that was finished, I began applying giant wads of horse and alpaca fur and then carefully painting everything. When everything was completed, I simply slipped everything on, stuck in some sclera contacts that turned my eyes bloodshot with white pupils, painted a little makeup around the eyes, and then pulled the mask over my head.

Total time to put on costume was about 45 minutes — a vast improvement over my previous costumes which took hours and hours. My total height was about seven-and-a-half feet tall once I was strutting around town.

I’m working on a video to put on youtube showing step-by-step how the costume was made and will email that link in the next few days so that people can get more information if they would like. I’m also always happy to help anyone thinking about attempting something along the lines of this costume or some of my previous costumes, so feel free to contact me through my youtube channel…

Thanks again to Elad and Tamar for hosting another great contest with amazing prizes! I’ve seen the amount of costumes increase each year on his site and know he must spend an arduous amount of time and effort to continue bringing these great contests year after year!

PS: My wife went as Little Red Riding Hood, so I included a picture of the two of us together. Her costume is NOT in the costume contest, but I thought it would be nice to include some pictures of both of us!

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