My GERTY Halloween Costume 2010

Every year for the past 3 or so years, my cousin Megan has had a Halloween party. Megan made a theme for this year's party: movie characters. I came up with the ideas for everyone in my family going to the party. My parents were Nurse Ratched and McMurphy from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. My sister was Ellen Ripley from Alien. Her costume was really cool. She borrowed a real flight suit, bought an actual Nostromo patch, and she and I (with the help of my dad and his tools) heavily modified an Iron Man 2 Nerf gun to make something resembling Ripley's flamethrower. Since I haven't gotten really into preparing a costume in many many years, I decided to get really into it this year. I had a few ideas, but after I had this idea, I couldn't not do it. I decided to be GERTY from the movie Moon, one of my favorite movies from the past few years.

Growing up, I was really into science fiction and robots. Building a robot or a robot costume out of cardboard seems like a pretty common experience for kids that were into science fiction. Although I remember spending a lot of time making things out of and playing with cardboard boxes when I was a kid, I don't recall ever making a robot. When I thought of the idea to be GERTY, I realized it was my chance to finally have that experience.

I spent several weeks brainstorming how I was going to make the costume, creating plans for it, and acquiring the materials needed. I wanted it to be a little more special than just a cardboard box strapped to my torso, so I decided I needed to make the screen and the camera "eye" light up. The eye part itself is the bottom of a Gatorade bottle, which I thought looked perfect.


Here's my sister and me as Ellen Ripley and GERTY.


Here's a view of just the costume without it strapped to me. I couldn't read one of the post-it notes, so I just amused myself by writing a grocery list with space and moon related items. Freeze-dried ice cream, half-moon cookies, and Tang. Notice the eye is lit up.


Here's a photo better showing that the screen is also lit up. It showed up much better in the dim lighting where the party was.


One of my favorite details on the actual GERTY is his cupholder with the mug. I knew I needed a plastic mug because a regular ceramic mug would be much too heavy and fragile. It seems like I see cheap plastic mugs in stores all the time, but then when I actually needed one, I couldn't find one anywhere. My mom finally found this perfect one at a second-hand shop. I carefully scraped the original logo off, and made a stencil to put the Lunar Industries logo on instead. The mug is held into the cupholder with magnets, so it can easily be taken out of the cupholder, but won't fall out while I'm wandering around the party.

There was a costume contest at the party. Of the three categories, my sister won "Best Overall", and I won "Most Original/Creative" and "Most Effort/Detail".