Way back in September, Todd and Ali fired off a simple email for a Halloween costume idea: Are we in for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem band? For those uninitiated to the band of the Muppets, these guys:
I was initially wary. Todd and Ali have previous expertise with Muppet construction. Their award winning costume in 2006 were a pair of Beakers, Dr. Honeydew's lab assistant(s). While Lee and I have had our share of elaborate costuming attempts in the past (which I expect I'll blog about retrospectively sometime) it seemed like stepping up to the Electric Mayhem required a whole 'nother level of commitment. Of course, that level of effort requires the optimal place to showcase our craft. A place, preferably with a costume contest, that would appreciate the love and care that would go into achieving Muppethood. We had several good contenders, but we ultimately decided to make our band debut at DNA Lounge's Halloween party on Halloween night. DNA Lounge is known in San Francisco as THE place to go and be if you're serious about quality Halloween costumes. The very prospect seemed daunting and yet appropriate.
Because I'm impatient, I'll just go ahead and jump to the end result. Read on to see the riveting (or maybe glue-gunning?) documentary behind-the-scenes look at "Electric Mayhem Rising"! (Warning, image and media heavy post ahead!)
The original Electric Mayhem had 5 members and we only had 4 people. Turns out Zoot was off making a solo foray during Halloween and so the rest of us had to soldier bravely on without him. Yeah, that's it. Our first band practice was Oct. 11. It was a busy weekend for everyone, but we squeezed in a mad brainstorming session as well as a parts shopping spree where we closed out Michael's, JoAnn's Walmart and the Halloween Spirit Store in rapid succession.
Thanks to Todd's l33t screen capturing skillz, we each had our own master character sheet with which to derive our inspiration. My original plan was to build the muppet heads on a hardhat I have so that I could have some structure underneath whatever the head was made of to interface with my head, create a bit of an airspace and better distribute the weight. But I only had one hardhat and there were four of us. So we got some bicycle helmets at Walmart as the basic scaffold for all of us.
We decided that both Dr. Teeth and Animal had roughly spherical heads. Last year Ali had experimented with creating a Dr. Honeydew muppet to go with their Beaker costume but it was abandoned and the remaining papier mache ball, when cut in half would start both Dr. Teeth and Animal. I used exactly half of the ball and poked some zip ties through to tie into the zip ties through the bike helmet.
Tada! A wearable papier mache half-ball. Dr. Teeth's half had to be modified somewhat so it wouldn't be as wide as Animal's head so we made a cut up to the center and glued/stapled the overlapping ends.
Floyd and Janice's head shapes were no mere spheres. Lee and Todd started on Floyd's head shape since it was a simpler pear-shaped head. They started the fishbone spine using 14-gauge wire from Home Depot. Then they attached wire mesh that we found at Michael's as the base skin. Wielding only wire cutters and pliers against the irascible mesh, Lee and Todd emerged scarred and battle-worn but with a Floyd-shaped head. Todd would go on to fatten Floyd's head up with a layer of foam.
Janice's head was the trickiest of all. It was vaguely Kermit-shaped. But the real beauty of her head was her chin. What Muppet had a chin? But there it was, unmistakeable in the screenshot, so we had no choice but to give Janice a chin. With the learnings from Floyd's head creation, Todd and Ali further honed their wire shaping skills and wounds to create Janice's head.
With the head shapes established, there were many Muppet technologies we had to invent to add each character's signature look. We decided that Dr. Teeth would merely be a happy guy - his signature is his reflective gold tooth.
Dr. Teeth looking eerily like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy green head. Since we were all looking out of the character's mouth, we put a light, sheerish black fabric there, complete with tongues. A little hard to see out of, but impossible to see in!
Animal needed movable eyebrows, preferably controlled invisibly. To simplify the mechanism, I opted to default Animal's look to half-lidded with the movement being a more wide-eyed look. Animal does have an expression that involves almost fully closed eyes, but I left that out. I ended up using a partial Halloween wreath (black like eyebrows), tying some fishing line to it, threading it through the papier mache and sewing it to some velcro. The velcro would attach to the bike helmet underneath and serve as a chin strap. I could then open and close my mouth to move Animal's eyebrows. I did have a movable jaw for Animal, but I opted for manual jaw movement given that my chin was already attached to his eyebrows, I didn't want to get confused and raise my eyebrows to open Animal's mouth. Since the jaw movement was hinged through only paper and glue, I stuck the jaw wire through some plastic disks attached to the head for durability.
Janice needed to be able to pout. Lee came up with the idea of running fishing line through one strand of her hair, attach beads to the end so that she could tug on her hair to close up the mouth. The fishing line would of course be attached to her jaw.
Did I mention that Janice has a chin? How to mold wireform and foam to look like a Muppet chin? Well somehow, Ali made it work. And work it she did!
Floyd also employed what we ended up calling "M5 Muppet technology" to have a hair-controlled jaw (Floyd has a ponytail he can yank on). He had some additional challenges in the nose department. The initial nose color was unfortunately toxic to Muppet noses (styrofoam).
On the left is Floyd's nose on drugs. On the right is Floyd's nose out of rehab. Any questions?
Fortunately, the Electric Mayhem didn't travel around naked, even though Animal was close. Dr. Teeth modified a giant pink top hat with some additional feathers, a pimp costume from a Halloween Spirit store with some red fringe on the back. Animal wore his two-toned rock shirt and ripped pants. I also wore the requisite chain so that the rest of the band could keep him under wraps. (I also ended up sewing some Muppet gloves and booties for Animal.) Floyd wore his signature Sgt. Pepper jacket and cords. Janice was in her rock babydoll tee, miniskirt and sandals. They carried around their lighted guitars and Animal carried drumsticks to beat on everything I could get ahold of.
Then we were ready to take the stage at DNA Lounge. We were an instant hit! We got hugs. We got pictures. Each member of the band had their fan club. Some couldn't believe they were actually seeing the Electric Mayhem live and in person.
There were some that posed with us over and over again.
But the culmination of the evening was the costume contest and this was the reaction:
Which ended up with this as the result:
We took first place! At DNA Lounge! By a large enough margin that they had a run off for 2nd and 3rd place but not for first! Second place went to an amazing Predator and 3rd place went to Bender.
Additional pics
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