Masters of duct tape, cardboard, and hot glue,
making cosplay out of everyday materials, they are the DIY Costume Squad.
- Hey, welcome to the show.
I'm Dustin, and with me today is Ben.
- Ben! - From Homemade Movies!
- You know Ben. - (Crosstalk) Costumes Squad.
- He was in Season one of Costume Squad.
You're no stranger to tons of big epic cardboard builds from homemade movies, and
Costume Squad.
I especially loved your power loader that you made in Homemade Movies.
- Yes.
- That thing is so amazing.
I'm looking forward to another big cardboard Craziness.
- That’s good, cuz- - What are you making?
- I've got a ton of cardboard because today we're gonna be making a homemade
Optimus Prime costume.
- Yes, homemade Optimus Prime it's gonna be so good.
We wore our matching t-shirts.
- Yes. - Just for this.
- No coincidence.
- (Laugh) So, what do you think you're gonna do to tackle this?
- Lots of cardboard.
- Yeah.
- We are going for the eighties Optimus Prime over the new Micheal Bay one just
because the eighties one is just so king of iconic.
- Luckily it is very boxy to begin with.
- Yeah, I think I'm going for
like real simplified shapes just to make it simple for people doing it at home.
- I am looking forward to seeing how this comes together.
It is going to be awesome, so I will get out of your hair.
- All right, roll out.
- Good Luck - Okay,
the first thing we're gonna do is the body.
And I'm gonna make that entirely out of some cardboard boxes which I have all
over here.
Look at all these boxes.
Kind of I've picked out a few shapes.
And let's see how they look on my body and get the right ones.
So the first part, there's like you can look at my shirt here.
There's the (Laugh) midsection.
Yeah.
So it's pretty snug.
I'm gonna close all these gaps up and just make it a little sturdier.
(Music)
So I'm sort of thinking about this torso in three pieces.
We've got the middle, which I have on right now.
Then I'm gonna make the chest piece, which goes up on top.
And then there's a little piece that goes around on bottom.
So I found a box for the top part, and I'm going to center it onto our base,
here, and trace it out so I can cut a hole.
Amazon Prime.
Optimus Prime, get it?
- (Laugh)
(Music)
- Kinda just eyeballing a square for my head.
I have a hole cut for my head.
And I'm gonna need to cut some holes on the side for my arms.
(Music)
I'm trying to go for as little actual building as possible,
in terms of cutting and measuring and stuff.
So you can just get boxes and start putting them together.
(Music)
If there's one person who can tackle these big giant cardboard builds, it's Ben.
And I'm a huge Optimus Prime fan, so I'm really excited for this one.
(Music)
- So now we need the shoulder pieces which stick out from the sides here.
(Music)
Yeah those will work.
Yeah, you can start to see it coming into shape there.
So I'm gonna hold these shoulder pieces up with some zip ties so
I'm gonna need to poke a hole through the base and through the shoulder pieces.
But we're going to be painting all this so
I'm going to hold off on putting it all together until we're totally done.
(Music)
- Yeah, I think I'll do that.
- What if I just one, two, three, (Laugh) - Yeah, I go in like an angle.
(Music)
Okay, there.
Okay, as you can clearly see,
we have realized that I need a little bit more room for my arms.
So I'm gonna cut out, basically the armpit area.
Let's see how this works now.
Yeah.
- Look at that.
- Like a champ.
- My work here is done.
- Yes.
- There are some details on here.
There’s like the grill, and then there's the bottom section,
which are different colors.
So I'm gonna do those, but I'm not gonna attach them to this body.
Along the midsection, there is a silver strip that's kind of tapered in, so
that's what I'm working on right now.
(Music)
Because I have the holes here cut here for my arms,
I have to do the side pieces in two sections.
(Music)
Popsicle stick time.
(Music)
For the belt part, that's actually white.
I'm gonna start drawing that right on here and
then I'll start making the pieces off of that.
(Music)
This belt piece is raised up from the body just a little bit,
so I'm gonna fill in this gap with pieces of cardboard.
(Music)
All of the pieces for the chest are done, and I'm gonna hold off on painting these
because I want to move on and do the entire body first.
So we're gonna move on to the arms.
(Music)
I was gonna leave the back sides open, but
my arm actually slides through the holes pretty well.
So I'm gonna go ahead and close the back sides.
(Music)
For the forearm pieces, I have this big piece which I'm going to cut in half which
is just gonna cover from my wrist up to my elbow.
Now, I wanna cover up this end right here.
(Music)
And then I'll cut a hole out of that for my hand.
(Music)
All right, let's do some legs.
I think I'm gonna start with the big pieces on the bottom of the feet.
They go all the way up to above the knees,
so we're gonna have to actually make these out of some bigger pieces.
There's a piece up above the knee, so I'm gonna make that.
(Music)
All right, we have two of these boxes which I'm gonna use for the feet.
(Music)
We've got feet, big feet.
Now we're gonna do the thighs, which are pretty simple.
(Music)
Okay- - All right.
- It's looking awesome.
- A big old pile of boxes.
- Lots of boxes, you've made nothing.
- (Laugh) - (Laugh)
- These are all different colors, so
they're all marked, and
I'm gonna wait to spray paint them because gonna move on to the helmet.
Helmet is gonna be awesome.
All right, can't wait to see it.
- Let's do it.
So for the helmet, I'm gonna need to start off with a base.
And I have a dollar store helmet.
It is smaller.
And then, I can build off of it and the helmet doesn't get too big.
So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make a mohawk piece that goes from
the front all the way around to the back.
Again, we're just using all cardboard for this entire thing.
(Music)
So I traced the top of the helmet onto a piece of cardboard and
I'm gonna use that to fill in the top part of the helmet.
(Music)
The side pieces, it looks like there's two L kinda shaped pieces that start from
the top and then go to the jaw.
So, as you can see, I'm eyeballing the shapes here.
I also have this little toy.
It helps me get a 3-D angle on it.
There's a thickness to these pieces.
So I'm gonna make a bunch of pieces and
then just give some depth to these side pieces.
So I'm putting a back piece on here before I put the side pieces on.
So you can see, there's some gaps in between the helmet and the side pieces.
So I'm gonna put some cardboard inside here just to act as filler.
(Music)
(Laugh) Yeah, so the basic shape here is all coming together.
And now I'm gonna add, there's another L shape which goes up a little higher and
that's kind of an antenna looking type deal.
It does have these circular elements on the sides.
And I found these little party frisbees.
These were a dollar.
So I'm gonna use these cuz they're kind of the perfect shape.
So this is the blue helmet, and then there is the mouthpiece and
the eyepieces which are silver.
So I'm gonna make those separately, and
then I'll spray paint them before I attach them.
I think we're ready for paint.
(Music)
Let's do all the silver pieces first, silver silver!
It helps to lay down a primer, so I've a gray primer.
These are $4 a can.
It's silver time, these are a little bit more expensive.
They’re six bucks a can.
(Music)
Red, $4 a can!
(Music)
Gonna do blue now, these are $3 a can.
(Music)
- This is the most exciting part right now, watching these colors go on to these
cardboard boxes, cuz it's really turning into Optimus Prime right before our eyes.
Now for the gloves, you could find some blue gloves,
you could find some big puffy winter gloves.
I wasn't able to find any in time for the shoot, but
I do have these work gloves that I'm gonna spray paint blue.
All right, this is all painted.
We're ready for details.
First thing you wanna do is I'm gonna put these silver bits on.
(Music)
Of course, Optimus Prime has the window, the windshield on his chest, so
we're gonna add those with some blue construction paper.
- Cool.
- I just want to make a little window frame for these pieces.
So, I'm gonna use cardboard.
I'm gonna hit these frames with some silver spray paint.
One more detail is the window shield wipers.
I'm gonna use popsicle sticks.
I've been looking forward to this little detail the entire build,
(Music)
There are a few yellow and blue details for the belt.
(Music)
He has these exhaust pipes on his shoulders.
So we're going to make those.
And I'm gonna use a poster tube.
(Music)
We've got our exhaust pipes on.
And of course, we've got to put the Autobot logo.
So i printed out a Autobot logo.
This turned how to be 5 and a half inches,
it'll probably be different depending on what size your shoulder piece is.
A really good technique for
transferring this onto the shoulder is to flip it around, put it face down.
I like to use a piece of charcoal and
what you do is just rub it right on the back of the image, nice and covered.
Set this down now with the charcoal side down.
Just gonna trace the logo and what's happening is you're pressing down on
the paper and transferring charcoal onto the cardboard.
You always wanna keep a hand on it so it doesn't slide around.
Cuz if it moves around then throws off the transfer.
Now that the transfer is done, I'm gonna use a white paint marker.
You could paint it with a paint brush and some acrylics, but
these paint markers are pretty handy.
- Ben, I appreciate the amount of detail you're putting into our logo.
- (Laugh) There are some yellow details on the forearms, so
I'm gonna do those with duct tape.
(Music)
And I'm gonna move onto the legs.
On the front, on his shins, he has some exhaust vent type deals, so
I'm going to be making those out of cardboard pieces.
(Music)
There are some details on the toes, so
I'm gonna use construction paper and duct tape to make that.
I'm gonna move on to some of the details on the side, like another pipe and
the tyres.
So I have some cans here, and I'm going to use them to spray paint these silver.
Of course, optimus prime is a truck, and trucks have wheels.
So we're going to use this duct tape as a trace to make our cardboard wheels.
Going to add some thickness onto these tyres.
I'm thinking about two inches.
(Music)
Okay, three more to go.
(Music)
All right, four tires, all ready for paint.
(Music)
All right, it's time to put on tires and the cans.
(Music)
That's it for the body.
It's time to finish up the helmet.
So the only thing to do for the helmet are the eyepieces.
And I'm going to use some plastic notebook dividers.
Got these at the 99 cent store
(Music)
This front piece is actually silver, and instead of making a silver
cover piece I'm just going to cover it with some duct tape.
(Music)
All right, got the eye pieces on, and I'm gonna put the mouth piece on.
(Music)
All right, everything is done, and it's time to put this whole thing together.
We are gonna be using some zip ties to put some of the pieces on.
I think we're ready to transform.
- Transform shoulders outward.
- Yeah, there we go.
(Music)
Mark, can you scratch my nose?
- Yes.
- Yeah, right there.
(Laugh) Great.
(Music)
Time to show off the whole costume, let's go.
- Okay, it's time to see the full Optimus Prime.
I'm so excited for this.
Hello, Justice!
- Hello, Optimist!
- How are you?
- This is the greatest thing ever.
- (Laugh) - Yes.
- Should I try to extract Ben from this?
- (Laugh) - Yeah.
- Yeah, dude, great job on this.
- Thank you.
- This is freaking amazing.
It's so colorful and it's like cartoon come to life.
I went for the really Simple, like kind of a more boxy looking cartoon flavor.
And you can add way more details and get crazy with it.
- By the way can you just epic dance a little bit?
That's really awesome.
- (Laugh) - How much did you end up spending
on this?
- I bought the gloves which were a dollar.
- One.
- The helmet was a dollar.
- Two.
- The notebook dividers were $1.
- Three.
- And the little frisbees on the side, that was another $1.
So that's $4.
- $4.
- The majority of this costume was all in the paint.
- Basically with the paint and everything we are looking at maybe 20 bucks.
- Yeah. - The rest was cardboard which you had.
- Cardboard I got totally free.
And we used this costume in our homemade Transformers’ trailer,
so make sure to check it out to see this bad boy in action.
- That's right do thanks for watching.
Let us know in the comments what other DIY costumes you want to see us make.
Thanks for joining us, Ben.
This was awesome.
- All right, auto bots, roll out.
- I, I'll stay here.
I'm not an auto bot.
- Roll out, Dustin, roll out.
- Okay.
(Music)