Head Construction

I always give a lot of time to designing and building the heads of my costumes, since I think they're some of the most important parts of any character. On this page, I'll talk about the specifics of building the head for the gargoyle. The information may be useful for a wide variety of projects, since this same construction method can be used as a basis for a furred head, too.

The basic structure of the head created with wire. I use a heavy galvanized wire that is sold at Home Depot for repairing chain link fences. This is a relatively stiff wire that can be bent into shape with pliers or firm hand pressure; when joined with other wires into a cage, however, it acts as reinforcement that will resist bending.

During construction, I use masking tape to hold the joints in place. When I'm ready to permanently connect the wires, I sand the wires at the intersection (for a better mechanical grip for the glue) and then coat them with Goop. Once dry, this creates a fairly strong bond. Of course, there are many options for holding the wires together. A metal adhesive called JB Weld also works well, creating a good rigid joint. And, if you want to join metal wires the proper way, there's soldering. (You'll need to use silver solder, not the low temperature stuff used for electronics.)

Once enough wires are in place to define the surface contours, I begin to add the foam. I use one inch thick sheets of common polyurethane foam rubber. I cut it into strips and use a razor to make a slit about half-way through it. I fill this slit with hot glue and then press the wire into the slit, surrounding it with the foam slice.

Using this technique, I was quickly able to create a shell of foam around the wire skull. Most of the foam strips were anchored to wires, as just described. Holes between these strips were filled with small cut-to-fit pieces of foam. These were glued in place using Fastbond 100 adhesive.

The foam-over-wire construction of the head is very comfortable. It fits snugly against the head (pay attention during the wire sculpting!) and doesn't tend to shift about as you wear it. It is a bit reminiscent of wearing a padded military helmet.

The eyes for the head were cut from black reticulated foam (this is a highly porous foam) and glued in place. Although the foam of the eyes is only a quarter inch thick, people were unable to see my eyes inside the costume head. (I actually got a couple people asking me "How are you seeing out of that thing?". It didn't seem to help when I responded by pointing to the solid black eyes!) Part of the effectiveness of the foam is because the inside of the head, when worn, is so dark anyway.

I left the eyes unpainted since I wanted the character to have a bit of a mysterious air. With no eyes, only blank insets of black, he seems more like the lifeless stone sculptures than a personified creature.

In finishing the snout, I added nostrils reminiscent of an aligator. I liked the reptilian air that it added, as if he were a draconic gargoyle. The upper lip was carved to create the overbite and pointed tip to the snout.

The ears were a wire and fun foam. Since the ears needed to be thin, I couldn't use the heavy sheet foam that I used to construct the head. I went with the thin FunFoam that I used on Widge's head. To support it at the top, I put a piece of stiff wire wrapped in foam as a support mast.