How to make your own Sackboy costume

When I started thinking about making a Sackboy I wasn’t really that sure how I’d build the basic shape for the head. Fortunately I’ve just moved into a new studio space called Workhaus in Hove and the place is chock full of talented designers and makers of all disciplines. Several people had suggested that I use chicken wire and Papier-mâché as I could form it into any shape and make it solid with enough layers of paper. It has been a very very long time since I’ve made anything in Papier-mâché and I had to turn to James Tooze for some pointers on what I’d need to buy and how it should be done, he’s rather capable at making pretty much anything.

Step 1 – Buy the materials

So, the shopping list was as follows:

1. Chicken wire – I bought plastic-wrapped wire to help prevent gouging my face when I put it on
2. Wallpaper paste
3. A sponge for applying the paste
4. Wallpaper liner
5. A bucket for the wallpaper paste/slop
6. A couple of plastic saucers for the eyes

Step 2 – Construction begins

I made a basic cylinder shape to start with. Not rocket science this is it…

Step 3 – Shaping the head

I had a good look at Media Molecule’s website to get an idea of the head shape and began cutting darts into the wire that would enable me to create the kinda bell shape that the Sackboys have. This was a fairly irritating process as I really didn’t feel that I had enough control over the shape that was being created without something for it sit on so added some cardboard discs that didn’t help much at all…

Step 4 – Creating a nice curve on top of the head

I should emphasise at this point that I have no tools or much experience in constructing things like this so as well as borrowing extensively from those around me I was improvising to a large extent too. This should explain the rather odd looking cardboard and bubble wrap dome you see above.

Step 5 – Let the Papier-mâché-ing commence

This was a long ass process that I’ve spared you the experience of documenting in too much detail but what you can see above is the result of perhaps 10 hours of work in total. The head is pretty big at just under a metre tall and wide and that means a lot of strips of paper and James advised that I’d want around 5 layers on the outside as well as a couple on the inside. Ugh. It was actually quite therapeutic.

Reality dawns

I was making this costume for Bestival, a particularly bonkers, fancy dress obsessed festival on the Isle of Wight and the last of the 2008 Summer Festival season. The weather was brilliant in 2007 but reports were predicting horrific weather and, for some reason, I hadn’t figuring that into my plans as I thought that a coat or two of lacquer would protect the headpiece and help with its rigidity.

I then took a look at the shape that I’d created with all this work and realised that it looked quite a lot like a planter that I may be able to buy from a garden centre. GAH!

I decided to start all over again.