The initial idea for my Incredible Hulk costume came on a cold December night as a bunch of my friends and I were out for dinner and drinks. It’s been a standing joke for some time for my friends to say “Don’t make him angry, you won’t like him when he’s angry,” or any other number of Hulk references. So that night, somehow the whole Incredible Hulk discussion resurfaced, only for one of my friends to say “It would be awesome if you paintedyourself green one night and went out.” I agreed and said that I should do it because it would be fun. It just so happened that another one of my friends that was out that night is skilled at airbrushing. I told her to get her airbrush because come Halloween, I would be the Incredible Hulk. So the date was set. For Halloween 2010 I was going to be the Incredible Hulk, green from head to toe.
As the year went on, the Homemade Incredible Hulk Costume would get mentioned every time we would go out. It wasn’t until mid September that I was getting really excited about it. I had a vision about how the whole costume would look; green from head to toe, torn purple shorts, torn white shirt, and green contact lenses to complete the effect. Then the unthinkable happened. On October 2nd of 2010, I completely tore the ACL in my right knee, and severely bruised and stretched every other ligament in my knee playing football semi professionally in upstate NY. Obviously, the last thing I was thinking about at that point was Halloween.
About two weeks passed and I was able to ditch the crutches and had to wear a gigantic knee brace until my knee surgery on November 10th. Everyone automatically assumed I wasn’t going to be able to pull off the Incredible Hulk. Does the Incredible Hulk back down because of a boo boo on his knee? I didn’t think so. So I decided the only modification that I would have to make would be to wear torn jeans instead of shorts. That way I could leave the jeans longer on the right side to hide the knee brace. The idea worked like a charm. Aside from a hobble in my step, no one knew I had a knee brace on.
Now, came time to make the costume. I created the clothing part of the costume a few days before Halloween. First came the white t-shirt. I started by ripping off the bottom of the shirt and the sleeves. I then detailed the shirt with a pumice stone, most often used for grind down calluses. I scrubbed the shirt in various locations to give it more of a natural ripping and tearing appearance than cutting it with scissors would. Next came the jeans. I started by tearing and ripping them in random locations to give it that “Hulk” appearance, being careful enough to keep the right leg longer to conceal my knee brace. I then purchased two bottles of purple dye from a local fabric store and dyed them in my washing machine. They came out awesome! I honestly didn’t think they would come out the way that they did.
Now the important part of the costume; the paint. I went over to my friend’s house and she had lined her bathroom in plastic sheets to protect the walls and floor from over spray. I felt like I was walking into a scene from Dexter. She started with a dark green paint and airbrushed all of the defined parts of my body, to make the muscles have a more pronounced appearance. Next came the “Hulk Green.” This paint was sprayed as a topcoat to make me appear totally green. My veins were then outlined in purple and fluorescent paint by using a small paintbrush. The final step was the insertion of my green contacts. All said and done, the painting took almost three hours. It came out better than I could ever have imagined.
We made the Incredible Hulk come to life both Friday and Saturday night of Halloween weekend. Sadly, I never entered any contests. To tell you the truth, it never even dawned on me to do so. Honestly, the expressions and reactions from people as I walked down the street were unforgettable. And to think, the only things I needed to actually buy to make this costume happen were a $20 set of contacts and $7 worth of dye. I had the old clothes and my friend had the paint. So aside from the hours of painting and fabricating my clothing, this is my $27 Incredible Hulk costume. My friend told me about your contest and I figured I’d enter since you actually have judges versus making it a popularity contest like it would be on Facebook, regardless of how good the costume actually is.
There is some really good competition out there and you’re going to have your hands full deciding on the best costume!
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