Silent Hill 3 Closer Costume

This Halloween I've decided to make a Silent Hill game monster, The Closer. Inspired by this instructable, I've set out to make more authentic look.

As described in the wiki:

Its brownish body seems to mock the female form, as its entire face resembles a pair of lips; it also seems to be wearing a miniskirt and dark boots resembling Heather's. The Closer is a tall, menacing creature, with thick, all-encompassing arms. Some sections of the creature's arms seem to be stitched together and bandaged up.

So, okay, I, the 1,75 m tall guy, must turn myself into tall woman-like creature to freak everyone out. Let's do this!

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Step 1: The Mask

One of the most prominent parts of the costume is it's huge lipped face. I've made it out of silicone caulking.

First, I've took sculpting plasticine and made a form. I've tried to be as close to original model as possible, so I've made lips a bit off the center, with curly vein going from one of it's corners. I've also added a bunch of veins and even pimples.

I've put my form onto a cardboard and made a round cardboard wall around it using hot glue.

Then i've mixed some gypsum (plaster) with water and started pouring it. Since plaster is quite easy hardening I've made small batches and poured them over the form. The first layer should be really carefully poured and should not contain bubbles, so be careful with your vigorous stirring. It took me about 0.5 kg of gypsum to make a mold (and eventually I'd use more, like 0.7 or 1 kilo if I had). When the first layer of mold is poured in, place a burlap, cheesecloth or some other loose-woven cloth onto it and pour more plaster over it — it will mae for a good reinforcement, since gypsum is hard but quite brittle material.

When the mold is all cured and completely hardened (it might take from 24 up to 48 hours), start getting your plasticine out our the mold. Don't use knives or screwdrivers or anything hard to avoid screwing your mold. It's hard as hell, but it's possible.

When complete, have a look at your mold. If you find some bubbles or any broken imperfections, you may want to leave it as is (because good painting can fix bad form), or try and fix it with some plasticine. Either way, you're all set up to start using your silicone.

It's better to use pouring silicone for this, but I went cheap-o, so I used silicone caulking. It's way more viscous and not actually pourable, but is ok too. Make sure to thoroughly cover the mold with it, but don't go all the way up to the mold brim — silicone is quite heavy and your mask is going to be hanging 15-20 cm in front of your face. When you covered the bottom-most part then add cheese-cloth straps around the perimeter and seal them into the mask with more caulking. The reason for those all-round straps is that silicone is really resistant to any glue or chemicals. I've made only two straps (just in case at that moment), which helped a lot but was not enough, so the only way to attach the mask to the cowl for me was staple it down around the edge. Don't make same mistake — add straps around the edge inside the silicone itself.

Painting silicone is a pain, too. I used acrylic paint and it's not very sturdy — it rubs off easily. Anyways, I did it with acrylic paint. For the base I used yellow+brown mix to make it look like ill skin. Then I've traced all the veins in scarlet and purplish colors, added red around the pimples. I added deep red and purple to lips. Then I took airbrush and covered all the mask in muddy brown + purple paint, which put the overall tone a bit and made it the way it looked.

Step 2: The Cowl

For a cowl I've found the original 3d model on the Internet, deleted all of the body and saved as STL file. The resulted STL file I opened in Pepakura Designer 4 and worked on making as few parts as possible. The result PDO file is attached. For those who don't have a copy of Pepakura Viewer or Pepakura Designer I've attached resulted paper layouts in PDF.

Print the layout, cut it out without flaps, transfer to EVA/craftfoam and cut that out.

I managed to fit all the stuff into 50cm x 100cm. I used 2mm thick foam, which is quite thin, but it's the thickest available to me. probably 4-6mm would be better.

Start gluing using the side numbers as a guide. I've started gluing but the thickness of the foam and quality of the glue made me think that it'd be better to sew those parts together. The simplest zig-zag is enough and looks really cool.

When done, you may wish to add triangle inlay flap at the throat seam to hide the seam.

To fasten the cowl on your head, use whatever you see fit — buttons, velcro, double-sided sticky tape. I used the latter and it worked poorly. I suppose either buttons or velcro might be better to keep cowl together, while velcro might be the best to attach cowl to the back of the dress.

Step 3: The Dress

Ok, it's quite complicated. I'm not a tailor, I just followed instructions in a tailors book and managed to make it right. I suggest ask a good tailor to make a dress for you or buy some similar-looking dress, if you are not into sewing.

So, I've managed to construct proper template for a woman's dress using man's measurements. It's a simple knee-length dress without sleeves, to which I just added two pairs of decorative straps — vertical over the shoulder and side one closer to elbow.

I've tried the template on a scrap sunflower-colored cotton cloth to check whether it would fit me (the first pic). Then I've traced templates down to the actual dress cloth, cut it out, sew it all together and sew a long dark-red zipper down the back.

Step 4: The Arms

For my arms I used two wooden planks 1.5 cm x 3 cm, 120 cm long. I took two 5 l plastic water bottles, put the wooden plank down their throats, screwed the wood to plastic at bottle thoat level and at the very bottom.

I then measured about 30-32 cm from the top edge of the wood and drilled a hole into it. Then put about 11 cm threaded pin through the hole and secured it with nuts. I then wrapped the threaded pin with a PU foam to make a soft handle.

At the very top edge of the wood I screwed a loop of velcro, so that I could fit me elbow inside and it would hold to my hand.

Then I took large sheet of PU foam 4 cm thick and started wrapping the whole thing up. I used hot glue gun for that and it worked great. When done, cut some of the scrap foam into strips and glue them as some kind of veins or burps on the arm surface.

For the cover I bought some stretchy cotton+polyester cloth. I've wrapped arms so that they were tight and no cloth were hanging freely, traced the seams, sew them down and got two long bag-like covers.

Step 5: The Boots

If you're like me, male with 43 EU feet size (US 10-11 and UK 9), then it is very cumbersome, when it get's to buying a highheeled boots. I happened to find a pair of white wedding high heeled low shoes second hand. I put them on, wrapped my leg with shoes on in black stretchy fabric, pinned it tight, traced seams, put it off and sewed along the seams. I've got nice knee-high black covers for my heels and it looked superb.

In order to secure the top edge on my leg and not have it roll down like a sock would, I've put double-sided sticky tape right at my leg and top edge of the cover. Worked like a charm.

Step 6: Dyeing and Painting

I've used cheapest dye for jeans, brown and gray colors. The hue was too saturated, so I didn't quite put-and-boiled it, but rather carefully dip one side, then the other, then tie a huge knot out of the fabric and dip it that way. It helped and made it dye uneven. The photo shows the just-dyed arm covers and dress, which got even lighter when dried. I've tried to dye the bottom and the very top of hand covers darker, while leaving room for airbrush painting in the middle. The dress was lightly dyed, with dark dyeing around the spine, in triangle shape down from the neck.

I then put arm covers onto the arms and started painting with airbrush. The vertical seam was darkened as much as my cheap airbrush could allow me. I've also added lots of veins in dark purplish hues, especially around those bumps and burps.

Adding airbrush touches to the cowl here and there to match the color scheme makes sense at this moment, since all the parts are of different color and material and need to blend well together.

Step 7: Putting It All Together

Ok, now, You'll need a helping hand, probably.

Apart from putting it all on you, you'll want to make sure to shave your legs (at least the upper parts). You'll also need to cover them in brownish dirty makeup. The color should be close to what you have at the upper and lower side of your huge arms, but a bit darker. You want to cover your shoulders and your thighs in that dark brown color.

Put your dress on, zip it up, paint up your parts, put on your boots, put on the cowl and, at last, take your hands in your hands.

Ok, now. Stand in front of a mirror to amaze at your awesomeness. Good job.