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closeSunday, Oct. 26, 2008
Master of the mask: Pasco man creates award-winning creatures for Halloween costume
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
PASCO -- If John Perry has entered the same Halloween costume contest as you, you might as well pull your mask down over your face and go home.
The Pasco man usually starts working on his costume in August. Two months later he's ready to walk into a bar -- or two or three -- on Halloween night as a 7-foot-plus tall fantasy creature.
Most creatures come straight from Perry's imagination. He's churned out demons, a satyr, a cyborg and a robot.
This year he's making a devil woman -- Hallow-Eve.
"I wanted a woman around here," he said, gesturing around the garage of his Pasco home, where his costumes take shape.
In one corner, his satyr costume hangs from the ceiling. Pieces of monsters in the process of construction or deconstruction into new costumes are scattered elsewhere arou1nd shelves and the floor.
He made his first costume around 2000 when a former roommate started on a Robocop costume.
"He quit. I kept going," Perry said. He ended up with a 7-foot-tall red and black robot modeled after one from the Judge Dredd movie.
Crafted of cardboard, hot glue and fiberglass, the costume was topped with a mask with glowing red LED eyes.
Perry won $600 in a costume contest at Grizzly Bar and a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, from the Crazy Moose Casino. He was hooked.
At least every other year since, he's come up with another fantastic creature, relying on his imagination to come up with yet another new monster.
"I just like to draw," he said. "I always try to make something creepy."
Although he starts in August, the initial brainstorming stage is mostly about drinking a few beers and coming up with an idea.
"He takes more time scheming it than making it," said his neighbor, Ryan Wright.
For one costume, Perry used a cow skull as a base for a mask for a nuclear-powered cyborg. But mostly he shops for supplies at hardware stores.
Wright said he's seen Perry more than once buy out Lowe's supply of tubes of silicon intended for weather stripping and tiling.
Perry's supplies have varied over the years, but his most recent costumes have been made of foam -- foam floor padding and sheet foam glued in blocks onto a suit of long johns. Then he carves the foam with the sort of electric knife more commonly used on Thanksgiving turkeys. The silicon caulking is the finishing coat to make a rubbery, pliable costume.
Most difficult are the platform feet.
He builds a platform, using welded strips of metal as the base, to give his creatures attention-catching height.
The costume he wore last year -- a towering, loin-cloth-wearing, combination Minotaur/satyr with curving horns -- has feet that weigh about 30 pounds each.
"I got around and danced, too," Perry said. But between the weight of the feet and the heat of the rubbery costume, he could only stay on his feet about an hour.
This year he's working on making lighter feet -- but Hallow-Eve's oversize hoofs perched on high heels still stand about 18 inches high.
He's also crafting his demon costume this year on a fiberglass mannequin he made himself.
"It's easier to see stuff if you are not wearing it," he said.
Perry can't even guess what his creations cost. It isn't so much the materials in the costumes themselves but all the discarded supplies that didn't work, he said, pointing to the boxes of glue and caulking in his garage.
Over the years he's won thousands of dollars in prize money to help defray the cost of his animated hobby.
But winning the prizes no longer is the point, he said. "It's fun to do."
* Annette Cary: 509-582-1533; acary@tricityherald.com
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