Halloween 2017: White Walker from Game of Thrones

It's time once again for my yearly post that has nearly nothing to do with the Dukes of Hazzard:  My Halloween costume!  (I'll squeeze a bit of Dukes in here somehow.)

Winter is here.  This year I went as one of those devilish snow creatures that want to take over all of Westeros (that's their objective right?  Seven seasons in and we still don't know what they're up to.)  I didn't have the bald head to do the Night King, so I went with an earlier season version and I think I nailed it.  

I knew right away that if I was going to do a White Walker, I had to do it right and get blue contacts.  I haven't worn contacts in over 12 years so I had to get used to them.  The one exception was when I was Lion-O in 2009.  I wore red cat eyes.  A few months later I revived the costume for New York Comic Con and wore the contacts all day with no prep time.  That was a mistake.  I had a horrible headache the next day.  This year I was determined to get used to the blue ice eyes so I wore them every day for the last two weeks.  It worked.  Saturday night when we went out, I had no issues.  They really set the costume apart.  

To my knowledge, there is no officially licensed White Walker costume.  I had to make mine from scratch.  I searched around the Internet and landed on this body suit from Morphsuits.com.  It's a new design for 2017 called The Rake.  Apparently the Rake is a popular creation on the horror site Spooky Pasta and this is the first licensed product from that website.  As soon as I saw it I knew it was perfect for my White Walker with a few modifications.  

I couldn't find anything that resembled ice for the spear so I went with this foam dagger from the Halloween store.  I did the trick.

The additions like the skirt thing and the arm and leg coverings were fake leather.  My mom did an excellent job crafting them into the Walker's garments.  She even added some really cool embellishments like the belt buckle and the little dangles.

The make up was all Natalie.  We used a few different kinds of Halloween makeup from Spirit Halloween.  It worked out great.

Here's an animation of the transformation.  Natalie did an magnificent job.

I tucked the Morphsuit head inside and the coloring of the makeup and Morphsuit matched perfectly.  They only real change we made to The Rake suit was shortening the signature fingers to normal size.  I would imagine the creators of Morphsuits had a plan in the back of their minds that The Rake could be used as an unofficial White Walker costume, if not, then I just figured it out and they should run with it.  I haven't seen anybody else use this suit for a White Walker yet, but I guarantee we'll see it soon.  Just to reiterate, Morphsuits.com's The Rake costume makes a great base for a Game of Thrones White Walker costume.  You heard it here first, folks.

Some other costumes I ran into are Tyler and Trenton as an old man and a nerd.  These boys introduced me to Morphsuits two years ago.

Chad and Renee went as Tommy Pickles and Chuckie from Rugrats.  The five hairs on Chad's head really sold it.

I was hoping to see some David S. Pumpkins!  I loved the skit last year on SNL and the animated David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special was just perfect.  I saw two different Halloweeners dressed as the Tom Hanks character.  This fellow was alone, but another guy had two sexy skeletons with him that really put his over the top.  Any questions?  I didn't get a picture though.  My fingers were covered in the Morphsuit so I didn't get as many pictures as normal.  Shame.

A pair of costumes that I just loved are these two.  Earl Sinclair and Grandma Eythl from Jim Henson's Dinosaurs!  They even carried around a cardboard Baby Sinclair.  They said they made the whole costumes including the masks.  Wow.  I love that this picture was accidentally taken in front of a Sinclair Gasoline sign.   Earl Sinclair was named after the Sinclair Oil Corporation. 

Though I didn't get may pictures of other costumes I did snag this pic of a Jessica Simpson Daisy Duke costume.  This is, of course, the outfit Jessica wore in the Boots music video before she strips down to a bikini and washes the Gen'ral.  I managed to sneak some Dukes of Hazzard into this blog post!  Seems I run into a Daisy Duke costume every year.  The universe always seems to put one around me at Halloween.

Halloween was a success!  I tried to stay in character and not smile in any of the pictures taken of me.

Supernatural ice creatures from north of the Wall certainly don't smile.  Photoblombing Rugrats do though.

Another great costume!  I'm really proud of this one.  Some people said it was my best yet.  Happy Halloween everybody!

Dukes of Hazzard Movie Banners and Posters (From The Sky!)

Well,  It seems like I took about a month off from the old blog.  That's never good.  I sure have been busy at work.  A new venture I've been enjoying is my drone work.  It's kept me pretty busy lately.  I recently added a new big display piece to my collection and I have a few similar items that I never blogged about so I got them out for pictures.  They are so big that it's easier to photograph them with said drone.  Let's get flying.

I wrote the above paragraph before I actually got the huge display posters out and placed them in the yard in front of our office.  I thought this would be an easy and fun little drone session.  Man, this was hard.  First it's unreasonably hot for October, and second, flying a drone a few feet above these posters on a breezy day made for all kinds of trouble.  Let's just say this didn't go as easy as I had planned.  Enough complaining, I got a blog to write!  Above you will see a bunch of different display posters for the 2005 Dukes of Hazzard movie.  I got some in the mail this week, and have had some since 2005.

One thing I hadn't planned on was that taking pictures from the sky makes it look like these posters aren't huge.  They are.  Really huge. Here's an awkward picture of me by the posters.  It didn't really have the effect I was looking for, but it's better than using Lion-O for scale.  (Whoa! That's a throwback reference to the pre-blog DukesCollector message board!  Probably only Jeff will get it.)

The first one I added to the collection is the biggest.  It's a banner with all six of the stars of the movie on it.  It has a plain white background.  I got it back in the fall of 2005 when I was buying everything movie related I could.  Who am I kidding, I am still buying everything movie related I can.  It measures 8 feet by 4 feet and is printed on heavier vinyl.  I believe it was intended to be hung in movie theaters.

Next up is a subway poster.  It was intended to be hung in subway stations and bus stops.  It measures 6 feet high by 4 feet wide.  It is a larger version of the standard movie poster.  All of the images of the actors are the same in all these posters, just placed in different locations.  No General Lees were harmed in the creations of these posters.  You definitely can't say the same for the creation of the movie.  This one is made of a thicker vinyl as well, just not as think as the banner.

The next piece is different from the others, but it's big and movie related so I included it in this blog.  It's a Wallbangers General Lee wall stickers set.  Similar to the Fat Heads that I think are still popular which are life-sized stickers of sports heroes and such, this is basically a big ol' Gen'ral that you can put on your wall.

Wallbangers seems to be out of business.

Wallbangers.com lead me to a site for sale.  There are no other markings on this print, but I seem to remember this item being shipped over from England.  I think Wallbangers was a British counterpart to Fat Heads and I don't think I ever saw another one of the Dukes Wallbangers.  Seems to me it's a pretty rare item.

It has three General Lee wall stickers, the Dukes movie Z logo, and a two General Lee texts.

You get the same image in two sizes.

And one of the General Lee mid flight.  This is an interesting piece that I assume is licensed because it is well made and uses the correct movie images and background, but you can never tell with foreign items.  Just look at the JDH 1/43 Caddy and Neo 1/43 Rosco Car.  There are no mentions of Warner Bros. printed anywhere.  It's a cool, different addition to the collection that fits in nicely with the posters of this blog.  It measures 5 feet wide by 3 feet tall.

Next up are a few similar banner type posters.

I got this poster from everyone's favorite Tick writer Jeff for Christmas a few years back.  It's on a thinner material that feels almost like paper, but not exactly.  It gave me the most trouble when the drone was in the air and kept trying to roll up.  It features a sky blue background with Johnny, Jessica and Seann sitting on the hood of the Gen'ral with Burt and Willie behind.  It combines the sky scene of the standard movie poster with the side shot of the General Lee from the banner.  It measure 5 feet wide by 4 feet high.

The final two pieces are the ones I just got.  The were meant to be plastered on the side of a bus to promote the movie.  They could either be on each side of the bus or side by side.  They connect as the lower one has the tip of the Gen'ral on it.   The top one has the same images as the other two banners, except this time Willie and Burt can bee seen through the windows of the General.  All of the movie info is on the second page, as well as the big Z logo.  I find it really interesting how many versions of basically the same banner are out there, and I love the fact that I have them.  There are probably even bigger versions of these posters and banners somewhere in the world.  If you know of any that need a good home, I'll take them.  Please contact me.

I really felt like I wasn't demonstrating just how big these pieces are so here's a shot of them beside our office.

And here's another one with me smiling into the drone which was directly in front of the sun and I almost went blind looking at it.  The sacrifices I make for this blog!  All of these pieces are so big that they can't really be displayed.  For now they sit in big ol' poster tubes waiting to come out every few years.  It sure would be great to have them hung up somewhere, but that's not going to happen any time soon.  One of these days.  Here's hoping I find more awesome huge movie banners and posters!