Why I love Halloween
Halloween is probably my favorite holiday. I say “probably” because Christmas is pretty awesome. It’s close.
When I was working on my Halloween costume this year, I was trying to juggle a few other priorities and had the momentary thought, “Why am I doing this?” I didn’t have any big Halloween parties to go to and it’s not exactly a tradition to dress up for Halloween at my office (I think I was the only one this year).
After a bit of reflection, I decided that even if I only wore my costume to work (yes, I always wear my costume to work), it would still be worthwhile.
What I love about making costumes
Why do I like making Halloween costumes?
- Creativity
- Problem solving
- Real artists ship
So there’s the obvious creativity aspect. Since I tend to be on the more ambitious end of the Halloween costume spectrum, I need to start thinking about my costume at least a month in advance. I love trying to think of something unique that only 10-20% people get. When only a small percentage of people understand your costume, they get excited. It’s like being in on an inside joke.
Problem solving. My last two costumes in particular have involved a lot of schematics and trial and error. In 2009 I was working with chicken wire and PVC pipe. This year, it was all about 3D sprites built out of cardboard.
Finally, I think the best aspect of making a Halloween costume:
Real artists ship. – Steve Jobs
The time and money pressures of making a Halloween costume force enough constraints to make it an interesting problem. No matter how early I start making my costume, I always end up tweaking it up to the last minute. When October 31st comes though, you gotta get out the door with a costume one way or the other.
I think there’s a really interesting parallel with shipping software that I hadn’t considered until this year. When you go to work or your party in your homemade costume, you know every single flaw of your costume. You know it could be better. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. If you came up with a unique idea and it resonates with people? It doesn’t matter if people can see your tape starting to curl up on your cardboard sword. Make something cool and ship it!
What makes a good costume?
To be a good costume, I think it has to be either:
- Unique
- Really, really well done
If you’re going as Boba Fett or Jack Sparrow, you’d better be able to stand in as their stunt doubles in “Star Wars: Rise of the Midi-chlorians” or “Pirates of the Caribbean V: Return to Disney World”.
For example, in 2007, Beth went as an Engineer from Star Trek TOS (The Original Series). She bought an authentic Gene Roddenberry insignia patch and had her mom sew her a Starfleet Engineering uniform in 2 days:
That costume was solid. You could probably sell it on eBay to a Trekkie and they’d be the talk of the next convention.
I usually take the other tack - the unique costume. Not that I’m the first person to think of a particular costume, but hopefully I’m the first person you’ve seen with that costume.
The costumes
Here are my costumes from the previous 5 years. In 2007, I inadvertently started a theme of Saturday Night Live alum movie characters.
This is Navin R. Johnson (Steve Martin) from the last scene of “The Jerk”.
In 2008, I went as Bob Wiley (Bill Murray) from “What About Bob?”, one of my favorite movies. The unique element here is “Gil”, the live goldfish around my neck. This one didn’t take too much work to put together (I bought the shirt online), but I loved the idea of having a live prop (don’t worry, he found a happy home in a coworker’s aquarium).
Beth went as Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica. Notice a theme?
The pinnacle of my Halloween costumes - me as all 3 of the “Three Amigos”. It was the 3rd in my Saturday Night Live alum trilogy. It was also my most recognizable costume in years. Typically I wouldn’t go for something so obvious, but I’d wanted to do a multiple costume for years. This one special for 2 reasons:
- The novelty of going as 3 characters
- The execution
It took me about 50-60 hours and cost more than I’d like to think about. I made 2 full-size dummies from chicken wire and PVC pipe and Beth and her mom tailored and designed the outfits from Goodwill suits. Oh, and it has fully-articulated joints. At a party later that night, I fashioned a rod to each of their hands so I could perform “My Little Buttercup”:
This one’s going to be tough for me to top.
And finally, here’s my costume from this year. Do you recognize it? As I said, my personal barometer for costume success is about a 10-20% recognition percentage, so it might not be immediately obvious. If you grew up with an Atari 2600, you might be able to guess it.
I went through the whole design process with this one - research, sketching, and even paper prototypes. Making the pixelized “sword” to scale was a lot of fun and gives me some new techniques I could potentially use for classic video game characters in the future …
Did you dress up for Halloween this year? Why or why not? Let me know on on Twitter
