The hardest part was trying to plan out how big make the costume. I seen too many costume where the child could barely walk. Their costume looke more like a transforming dwarf robot. Then some cosutmes were too small and the person looked like a turtle. Luckily I found some perfect boxes at work and here we go.

Stage 1: Cutup up boxes and create car cover.

This part was the slowest part of the whole process. It was scary deciding how big or small to make the costume. I had to make sure that the wearer was big enough to fit. I found some great handles that came in some monitor boxes from work. I just reversed them so that the handles are seen on the inside. That way the gauntlets will be easy to put on and take off. The feet still aren’t worked out completely. I was still having a difficult time figuring out how it can be worn without wearing out the bottom cardboard. So I thought to cut out some wooden panels at the exact height and width of the rear panels and attached with glue. I took some cardboard scraps and layed them on the inside, then stapling with heavy duty staples to the board. That way the original cardboard isn’t supporting the weight of the costume.

Stage 2: Primer and base yellow paint.

This is self explanatory.

Stage 3: Test wearability and design decals.

This was the fun part. I spent many hours on Google Images and researched the BumbleBee transformed mode. The Camaro is an awesome car by the way. I enjoyed studying it. First I measured every dimension of this costume, sides, tops and bottoms. I took that info and created a vector template with Adobe Illustraor. Using my previous photos I manipulated the decals onto the photo. That way I was sure of the design before it went to print.

The decals were printed and then with some time and effort, I was able to get the decals on perfectly.

Stage 4: TRICK OR TREAT!

It is done. With a weeks time we can finally show the finished costume. We gave the suit it’s first real test run and it passed with flying colors.The main goal was to get the car mode to look slick like in the movie. The robot mode had to blend with the store bought outfit underneath. Choosing to use the actual hands and feet for the bottom of the boxes worked perfectly.

It’s early Halloween morning and we are ready for the big night! My son was good enough to let me post these images and video online. He is also brave enough to enter into a costume contest this year. We hope to win! That would be icing on the cake.

Final Video:

BUMBLEBEE! Transform and ROLL OUT!

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I did use Illustrator to put in some cool cars, but I did refine the rendering in Photoshop. I used a Wacom Tablet on this.

I do recommend watching FINAL WARS, that is the best godzilla movie. Well it has alot of action and some cool redesigns on a few characters.