I was commissioned by my church to build a Sully costume from Monsters Inc. for their At The Movies series that happens in July. It’s a really fun outreach that they do where they decorate the whole church in the “movie” theme and then do teachings/show biblical principals in clips of movies each week. Its so fun and a great way to get people who don’t go to church or don’t the resources to go to disney lol all the while being exposed to the Word of God in a creative way. Anywho, I’m obviously a fan and was happy to try and make it happen in my busy summer schedule! I essentially had 2 weeks through between travel and events to pull this thing off!
I want to first and foremost thank Nick Behling https://www.youtube.com/@nickbehling2111 whom provided the majority of the basework/pattern and instructions for this build in his instructable page: https://www.instructables.com/The-Ultimate-Sully-Costume/. I would also like to thank Miss Alyssa and her hubby https://www.tiktok.com/@missmompreneur?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc for showing their progress in their build also based off Nick’s base. The tutorial videos of how they made their costume helped answer some questions I had in my own build!
I HIGHLY recommend going to their sites and watching what they did first. I will be trying in this instruction to show you what I did, which mostly matched theirs but not exactly! I did something’s in my own way, and some of the choices I made may not have been the best lol!!! I will just tell you what I did and my process!
First here is my material list, and the links to where I bought them. There were some items in Nick’s list that I never used so I will only include what I actually used. Items listed without a link are things I had already in my stash.
Sulley Material List:
Box cutter or a foam cutting tool – https://a.co/d/00vzjNZO
Hot Glue Gun and at least a 20 pack of long glue sticks
Heat Gun
jigsaw or dremel
Plastic wrap (For horns)
1 Inch plastic buckle(for head buckle)
8 in of 1 in strapping(for head buckle)
Serrated Bread Knife for cutting upholstery foam. I had a spare one in the house but you can get something like this https://a.co/d/092gBapC
Chalk for marking
Turquoise craft felt 1 sheet (for eyelids)
3 White 2mm or 3mm white craft foam sheet ( for eyeballs, horns and teeth)
2 sheets of black craft foam 3mm or thicker (for tail spikes)
Purple temporary Hair color – https://a.co/d/0coqIZ9w
Turquoise acrylic paint small tube (for lips)
Fabric Scissors
Ribbon at least 16 ft long (for simple hand extender)
Thick upholstery Thread and Needle
Various blue and black sharpies or permanent markers
Respirator mask for when using the contact cement
Projector ( if you have other means to print the pattern out then you dont need this!) https://a.co/d/01iZRbtg
Poster Board 24 pieces for Initial Pattern to Foam – https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pen-Gear-Economy-White-Poster-Board-22-x28-1-Count/1298283556?classType=VARIANT&athbdg=L1102&from=%2Fsearch&sid=b34781f9-34d9-491e-8188-396c03343cf0
Shannon Fabric long pile gorilla fur Turquoise – 9 Yards Turquoise Solid Gorilla Animal Long Pile Faux Fur Fabric by the Yard | Big Z Fabric – I used almost EXACTLY this much! I was able to cut out all the pieces except for one arms without breaking up the pattern.
5 gallon bucket – The Home Depot 5 Gallon Orange Homer Bucket 05GLHD2 – The Home Depot
blue flexible PVC – 8 feet Apollo 3/4 in. x 10 ft. Blue PEX-A Expansion Pipe in Solid EPPB1034S – The Home Depot
Gorilla tape – 1 roll at least Gorilla 30 yd Black Duct Tape 106718 – The Home Depot
Extra tough scrap fabric – 1/2 yard (For securing elastic straps)
Barge Cement I used almost 2 of these! https://a.co/d/0cfvDTcI
Loctite professional strength super glue https://a.co/d/09Xlrrwq
Loctite Professional Strength spray adhesive https://a.co/d/04jSMUk7 (For keeping fur in place)
Puzzle matt EVA foam – at lease a six pack I actually ended up using 7 mats because I messed up one! Norsk Blue 24 in. x 24 in. x 0.47 in. Foam Interlocking Floor Mat (6-Pack) 240747 – The Home Depot
flex seal white – 1 can Plasti Dip 11 oz. White General Purpose Rubber Coating Spray 11207-6 – The Home Depot any color plasti dip will work or elmers glue. This is to seal the horns before you spray paint.
costume claws 2 sets – https://a.co/d/0fIN88WE
2″ upholstery foam – over 12 yards https://a.co/d/0g89hr1d 2x24x120 5 rolls
1/2″ gray pipe insulation (for lips) – 6 foot Everbilt 3/4 in. Foam Shttps://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-1-2-in-Foam-Semi-Slit-Pipe-Insulation-5-8-in-ID-x-6-ft-K7PXE048058HD1/327682623emi-Slit Pipe Insulation (7/8 in. ID x 6 ft.) K7PXE048078HD1 – The Home Depot
Elastic – https://a.co/d/0gELSLv8 (For harness and straps on body and arms)
4 inch clear acrylic globe for eyes- Set of 3 Clear Plastic Ball Ornaments 3.45 Inches (88 mm), Color: Clear, Model: SGH-0003 | Michaels
Teal blue faux leather 1/2 yrd I used my old Cara Dune leather for the nose and the hands palms.
Pattern
I pulled up the pattern provided by Nick Behling in his instructables page. https://www.instructables.com/The-Ultimate-Sully-Costume/ and connected the projector to my laptop. I then enlarged it about 25 times till the template size match the lines in the guide
Once I got my size right, I would tape the poster board on the wall and then trace the pattern to the poster board.
Once all the pattern pieces were drawn, I cut them out and positioned them onto the Upholstery Foam sheets and the EVA Puzzle mats. The EVA puzzle mats are for the head and the soles of the feet. I will go into more details about the legs/feet when we hit that section.
This is how I layed out my patterns. Once all down I used my sharpie to transfer the pattern to the foam.
Now that all your pattern pieces are transferred its time to cut them out! For the EVA foam, don’t make the mistake I did and cut the foam at an angle! Just cut it at 90 degrees straight. I did mine beveled and it cost me a whole mat wasted! (sad face) As for the Upholstery foam, it’s good to watch foam tutorials if you have never done it before like me!
Now it’s time to glue the pieces together!
Assembly of Head
I am pretty sure I did not assemble my eyes correctly. There was a hole (soft spot? lol) at the top of his head and I think I was supposed to glue the two eye pieces together in a different way. I was a little confused on how it all went, and I did the beveled edge instead of straight so I was already not doing my best ha! It ended up not really being an issue once the fur came into play so I would say as long as you have the basic shape down, then you will be fine. What I did was actually assemble my poster board pieces first so I was sure of where things went.
Once I figured out where they went I began to glue with the Barge cement. You will need to wear your RPE (Respiratory protective equipment) because this stuff is STINKY! Also very toxic! I had fans blowing as well as my Respirator on! Start by gluing all the darts together first for each piece, then start to put the pieces together.
Next for the head was to go back to the projector and put an image of Sully up so that we could get positioning correctly of his eyes, nose and mouth. We just put the head in front of the image and drew where those should go directly to the headpiece.
I then cut out the mouth and glued a wedge I made for the nose bridge. Just a scrap of EVA foam I had.
For the front of the nose, I just took a triangle shaped EVA foam piece and glued it to the front, tucking the tip inward to create the nostrils.
I tried using my dremel to sand the edges but I ended up scuffing the front of the nose a bit. I decided to used some foam clay to smooth it out which worked great. I ended up painting the nose but then later I thought that the teal leather would look best and so all the touch ups didn’t matter!!!
Now for the mouth! I used the 1/2 insulation foam for the lips. I cut out the right length based on my mouth I cut and then hot glued it to the head. I then used some teal colored paint I had laying around and painted the lips to be turquoise. Lastly I made some teeth with some scrap EVA craft foam I had laying around (2mm maybe 3mm). You can use scraps from your blue mat, but you will need to paint them white. Anytime using EVA foam you have to seal it before using spray paints. If you are just using acrylic paint, then you do not have to seal. You can used your plasti dip or elmers glue to seal. Since I just had white foam, I didn’t cure it or paint it and left it raw.
Now for the eyes! I traced a circle around the ornaments onto white eva foam. I then poked a hole in the middle to create some depth and glued some black foam to the back of the eye. I then took my various blue sharpies and started drawing the color around the iris.
I then put the disk eyes into the ornaments! I then cut out some “c” shapes in my felt to make eyelids and hot glued them to the head. I ended up getting glue on one of the eye balls so DO NOT do what I did and try to rub it away before it fully dried. I ended up having to tear the eye out and redo it completely because I ruined the plastic ornament. If you get stringy glue from the hot glue gun on it, wait for it to get hard THEN remove it!
I then cut some eyebrows out and glued them to the head out of leftover scrap upholstery foam.
Some notes so far that I would have done differently. The eyebrows were too long and I ended up cutting the length off later. The eyes should have been closer together, I didn’t exactly glue them to the inside circles that I had originally drawn.
Body
I started by getting my RPE back on and begin the long process of gluing all the foam together. I started with the legs, then darts in the belly and tail. I then glued the upper back pieces and then the lower back to the belly and then the tail to the lower body. Something super important to do before you glue pieces together especially if there are darts is to put registration marks across both sides where they should meet up that way when you glue, they can be used as a guide to making sure both sides line up correctly. In the video with the tail, you can see me putting them in before I finish the tail. Trust me, you’ll thank me later!
My husband tried on the pieces to make sure we were headed in the right direction!
Legs/Feet
Ok, let’s talk about the legs/feet. I was for some reason super confused as to how these things go together even though there was only 3 pieces! I didn’t realize that the bottom piece you see in the picture above was actually the foot part! It glues with the top of it narrow and the bottom wide. That’s so you foot can slide in but have resistance when walking so it stays on your foot! Also you have to carve out the 3 toes on each foot. I glued the foot to the base of a EVA foam mat then cut out the toes. See the video below on how I glued them all together. I only glue on some parts. For the toes, the glue is on the front bottom of the foam, then for about 3 inches the side of the foam. Again see the video which will show you better than I can explain!
After gluing them together we had to test them out!
Of course my daughter wanted to try lol
What was great about trying it on with the torso, is that it showed us that I needed to trim up the sides of the feet a little more so it would be easier to walk in.
I also added another toes foam layer to the top to make the toes more pronounced.
ARMS
Now the arms also go me a bit confused so I’m just going to show you the right way instead of my wrong way…. well, maybe I’ll show you the whole thing and you can live vicariously through me lol!
So again we make sure we put our registration marks for all the sides that will be glued! Then put the RPE on and glue all the darts and sides together. The video below you can see me gluing the arm darts and then actually putting my horns together. We will go over the horns later!
So when my husband tried it on again I did not have the shoulder and the upper arm glued together and its was almost impossible for him to get the lower arm on. The picture above he barely has it in his hand. So I glued the upper arm to the shoulder and it helped. We will do the hands later!
SPINE
The spine is structurally the most important part of this build. If I were to do this again, I would have shaped the spine before I glued it into the suit. Instead I glued it to the bottom torso and then shaped it. It made it much more difficult in the long run because I was still struggling with the arch of the back later having to try and shape it with the foam on. So all that to say I will continue to show you what I did. I first used my head gun the bend the piece in have leaving a bit of an arch at the top. My pip was 10 ft long so I ended up cutting a foot off the bottom. I cut slits into the lower torso and marked with my sharpie where the poles will go. I then cut out a trough and used my Barge Cement heavily to both the foam and the pipe.
After gluing the spine to the torso I used my heat gun to shape the spine to have an arch. Again, I should have shaped this BEFORE I glued it, but here we are 🙂
Then it was time to do the same to the upper body. I marked out where the pipe would go and then cut out slits not all the way through the foam. Repeated the heavy glue again and then shaped it some more.
I ended up gluing a foam pad at the top where the head goes and to the torso lower pipes. Then tried it on again to make sure we were in working order!
Then it was time to get the bucket! I cut the top of the bucket off using a jigsaw. The edge was a little rough so I used my leftover 1/2 insulation foam and hot glued it to the raw edge which was the inside of the costume. I then glued the bucket rim to the opening hole and secured it with gorilla tape.
Harness/ Suspenders
So in order for the costume to not rest solely on your head, you need to install straps that help take the weight off by distributing it to you shoulders. I used the elastic band roll to measure out what I thought would work for a 5’7-6′ ft person. I then marked the inside of the torso where they would go and then glued them with contact cement. I also used this time to mark and glue the band to hold the position on the chest and the back to the torso as well. I then used the touch non stretchy scrap fabric to reinforce the glue.
This all looks pretty on paper, but after one weekend of three different guys and 6 services, the straps ended up breaking off. I went back to fix it and ended up re-gluing, then sewing with thick upholstery thread to the front torso strap and glueing/ tying a knot to the spine in the back. I then went back over all of that with Gorilla tape. We will see if it survives this next weekend!
ARMS again!
We now have to go back to the arms. The arms now need to get attached to the body and that involves marking and gluing with cement the elastic straps to the top of the shoulders and side of shoulders and then at the join of where the elbow goes. Reinforced with gorrilla tape.
I then went on to make the hands. I tried to use what Nich Behiling used as a model and free hand the hand on a cardboard. Then I cut it out of foam and glued it to the wrist. I then tied individual ribbons to each finger and made sure they were all tied together and could be grabbed from inside at the elbow. Be sure to secure it with some gorilla tape so that it doesn’t fall into the hands never to be seen again lol
At this point I had my husband try it on again and he said the movement was very difficult and still felt like it was a struggle to move the arms.
I then cut out some of the shoulder that was hitting the torso and ended up shortening the upper and lower arms significantly. It made ALL the difference!
FUR
What you just read up till this point took me exactly one week with solid 8+ hrs a day work. We left for vacation and then when I got back I didn’t have time to work on it because I was getting ready for having a booth at another convention which is was also running the costume contest for! So two weeks passed before I could pick this back up and I had exactly 4 days to finish the build before the 4th of July weekend which started the whole series off at church! Needless to say I was praying all the way through this project!
So in order to cut the fur to fit, you need to make a pattern that will fit over the Skinned-Cat Sully as we like to call him at this stage! The tutorials I read said to use old fabric or bedsheets, but I really didn’t want to waste good sheets of dive into my fabric stash for something I will never use again. That’s when a video I had watched popped into my mind while I was at walmart that I remembered saying that they used plastic sheeting used for painting to trace and cut patterns they didn’t want to cut. I thought, well that should work for what I need it for since it would be used in the exact same way at the fabric was! So for under $4 I bought the 2mm plastic sheeting and started with the feet to see if it would work.
I started by wrapping the sheeting around the leg and then pinning it with straight pins directly into the foam to hold it in place. I then took my sharpie and drew the shape around that I needed the fur to be.
I then cut the plastic out and made sure it still fit properly around the leg before I cut the fur. I didn’t want to make a mistake here because there was no way I would be able to get more fur in time if I messed up! so it was VITAL that I made sure the pattern was going to fit! It seemed like it was going to work, so I placed it on my fur fabric and used my sharpie to trace it to the fur. I then used my razor blade that I used for the EVA foam to cut the fur reducing the amount of fur that would be shed.
Once cut out I again placed it around the leg to make sure it was going to work.
I then sewed the leg together. Because it’s a long pile fur, I had to constantly push the fur back in before it came to the needle. I used a tool that looks like a looped screwdriver, but a pencil or a tweezer or thin stick would work.
I tried on the leg fur and felt like I could also go a a muppet if all goes wrong lol!
I then slid the fur over the leg and it fit perfectly! I then repeated for the other leg.
Lastly I just used some of the cut fabric to cover the toes piecemeal-like. Fur is very forgiving! I used the hot glue gun to glue it to the foam directly.
Then I had to try on the mech suit with the feet to make sure, one more time, that the suit was what I wanted and it was ready for fur.
Before I got to the suit, I wanted to spend extra time on Sully’s face since that will make or break kids reactions. I want happy excited child, not scared/confused child! This is where I glued the blue faux leather to his nose. This is also where I screwed up his left eye with the hot glue and I had to rip that eye out and reglue it with a new globe. I ended up using the original head pattern that we cut the EVA foam out with and just gave myself about an inch seam allowance all around. I added at least 5-8 inches to the bottom of the back of head piece and ended up at the end of it gluing more flaps to the sides so the person’s head could be hidden better.
I ended up just adding scraps of fur where it seemed best. I also used my husbands hair cutter to cut down the bridge of the nose/ between the eyes area. That made a huge mess BTW. my husband wasn’t super excited about all the blue hair in his razor either ( I cleaned it up!!!)
At this point it was pretty late and I ran up to show my family. They were happy but I could tell they weren’t thrilled. I couldn’t see what they saw, that Sully looked more like a shaggy dog than James P. Sullivan Scarer of the month! I went to bed and the next morning printed out a reference photo and realized they were right! He had WAY too much hair on the sides and his eyebrows were way to long. Also I noticed his eyes seemed way more spread apart making him have a derpy look about him. I quickly got to trimming and cutting. They I used my heat gun inside the head aimed at the bridge and tried to manipulate the foam to bring the eyes closer together.
Always have a reference photo!!! It makes ALL the difference!
The last thing that needed to happen was to attach the head to the body. I used Nick’s idea of attaching a simple plastic 1in buckle to the spine loop and the inside of the head. I used some old velcro strapping I had and gorilla taped it to the spine, and then contact cemented the strap with the other buckle end to the inside back of the head.
With the the head done and two days left I narrowed my focus back to the body so I glued the little belly triangle piece that I forgot about and then began the process that I started with the legs and used that same technique for the rest of the foam. I started with the tail. Also a reminder that the fur is directional so make sure you are cutting it with the direction you want it to lay ( which is down!) I sort of forgot that for the tail but later was able to tame it a bit from brushing.
Then I moved onto the back and belly.
Arms I saved for last! Again, I wrapped the plastic sheeting around it and made sure it fit. I had enough fabric for one solid arm, but the second arm I had to cut the pattern in two to make it fit. I just gave myself a seam allowance and sewed the two pieces together and then sewed it till about 2/3 way up the arm so that the armhole opening would be unobstructed. I then used the wrong type of thread to sew the arms to the shoulders. (after my final try on I ripped the seams!) Please use the strong upholstery thread that will endure strain and movement!
Now it was time for the hands. This part was very tedious and there was no pattern for it. I basically just laid the blue leather in the palm of the hand and tried to trace out where the fingers were. I then cut it out and hot glued it to the fingers. I then realized he needed more padding in the palm, so I glued a block of foam right at the base of the wrist to palm area and that gave me the height I needed. I also ripped off the nails from the monster gloves and hot glued them to the hands and the toes. The toes and feet got a little trim as well.
Then I was down to just a few last details! First, the Horns! I used a online search for free horns and came across this viking horn pattern I modified it by adding a triangle wedge between the two “horn” parts and didn’t need to do the circles. I then glued them together with contact cement. I sealed them with plasti dip and then wrapped them in a twisting motion with plastic wrap. Lastly I sprayed them dark brown with spray paint. You can use spray paint or acrylic paint, either will work! They then got hot glued to Sully’s head! (Check your reference photo!)
Sully’s lips got touched up as well since I kept holding him in that same spot on his face! I also started spraying Sully’s whole body with the purple hair spray. I made sure to try and follow his color pattern from the movie photos.
So the last thing I had to do before my final try on test was to put black spikes on his tail and back. So I just cut out triangles getting gradually bigger and hot glued them to his back and tail.
So the last thing I had to do was to try him on and make sure he was good to go because I was meeting the Youth Pastor the next day at 11am to deliver him!!!
Satisfied with my work he was delivered a few hours later to the church! He was a big hit that first weekend and will be a favorite for the rest of the month! I did go back after the first weekend to repair a shoulder that had the bad thread on it and redo the harness.
