Growing a Giant Evil Pumpkin

Tutorial October 5, 2018

With Halloween soon upon us, I thought it would be a good time to look at how I went about creating Pumpkin Rapper. As I mentioned in my post about the cosplay, after deciding to cosplay the monster, I didn’t exactly know how I would make him happen. The process of creation was a series of happy accidents that lead to a successful debut at San Diego Comic-Con.

Photo by Docking Bay 93

The first step was deciding just how I was going to create Pumpkin Rapper’s signature head. While working on the green base under his head, I came up with a method of construction that I call the Sandwich-Framing Method. It essentially involved using wire to provide a lightweight, solid structure that was softened with fabric.

At first, I didn’t have the batting or fabric.

As the head started to, literally, take shape, I went about finding textiles that matched the character. I ended up going with the orange you see below:

In general, there weren’t a lot of choices. The orange that I ended up going with was stretchy enough that I could remove most of the wrinkles I was expecting. If I had a choice, I would have gone with a tone that was more muted.

Regardless, once I had the wire structure in place, I added my batting. Before stretching my orange fabric over, I decided where my eyes and mouth would be. I cut marked the batting with a light marker and cut the shape out when I was happy.

After stretching the orange fabric over and using adhesive spray, I cut out the same eye and mouth sections from the orange fabric. I then secured the orange fabric by sewing it into the chicken wire frame.

Once everything was finally in place, I cut out a black piece of mesh fabric in the shape of the eyes and mouth, laid it on top of my head, and glued it in place with fabric glue.

Here’s a view of what the outside looked like from inside the head:

This was the end result.

With the head finished, I proceeded to finish the rest of the monster.

Having finished the base of Pumpkin Rapper’s neck, I added foam tubes coming from the top neck. I then pulled and glued these tubes towards the bottom center. I added a few longer tubes to make the effect look more random. These foam tubes were then painted green.

As I wasn’t using a sewing machine yet, I cut fabric to the shape of a body suit and glued the orange fabric onto it. I added some green streaks coming out of the boots with green paint and glued, on top of the suit, a woven pattern that I had made separately out of foam tubing and black mesh.

I found gardening gloves that I painted in a similar orange color to match the rest of the suit.

Lastly, I hand sewed boot covers that went over the Chucks that I was wearing. I added some batting on the inside to make it look more like boots.

Making it again, there’s a lot that I would do differently. It was still fun and a huge learning experience. I hope that some of this helps in whatever it is that you’re making.

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