Just those minor adjustments really add a lot to the costume!

How to Make a Perry the Platypus Costume:

See Part 1 (the previous tutorial) for the making of the tail, the suit, the bill, and the feet.

New for 2010: The Eyes…

You’ll need:
2 pingpong balls
black sharpie (permanent) marker
2 large safety pins

I decided that the eyes needed to be removable, since The Boy likes to wear his platypus tailed sweatshirt around the house a lot. Alternately, you could stitch these on for a more permanent solution.

Try the hoodie on your child, and guesstimate where you should put the eyes.  Depending on the size of your child’s head, and the size of his Perry hat, this could vary, but mine are probably 4-5 inches from the center top.  They are less than an inch from the edge.  But use your best judgment as hoods will vary.

If your pingpong ball has writing on it, you’ll want to hide it, but if you pin through the writing, it will show as the balls sag a bit when pinned.  So you’ll want to pin through the ball a little ABOVE the writing.   (Try a test ping pong ball first!)  [Or just spray paint them white, I suppose, to avoid the hassle!]

Make the holes in the ball by pinning through the ball (as close together as you can get them (maybe 1/3 inch?).  Then remove the pin, and pin on to hoodie.

Place hoodie back on child, and mark where you want the pupils to go with a pencil.  Remember you want it to look good from both the front and the side.  Mine came out a little wall eyed… I would have liked them looking more forward, but The Boy likes it as is.

Using your sharpie marker, draw a large circle for the pupil, then a smaller circle inside it for the reflection dot.  Color the large circle in black, leaving the smaller one white.

And that’s all there is to it!

I think adding the eyes are well worth the effort…

And if you make a Perry costume, I want to see it!  Leave a comment or email me a pic..

More tutorials for halloween kids-wear:

Remember this cool Eyeball tshirt from Creative Kismet? Awesomely cool.  Go get the tutorial!

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How about this great little candy corn outfit from Chica & Jo?  This would be a great costume, or even just a fun dress for halloween time.

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More cute kid dressing:  A Halloween Ghost dress made from a pillowcase. Adorable.

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Keep the kids warm while still being festive!  Cute superhero poncho capes from Filth Wizardry.

See All Halloween Posts

Go Check out the Star Wars party by Just Jenn.

Also at Superpunch – Downloadable Mask roundup

From Filth Wizardry: Milk jug storm trooper helmet

Halloween costume roundup at One Pretty Thing

Spike through the stomach

Check out this one we posted last year:  a great pirate and mermaid!

More links from Dabbled’s past::

Halloween Costumes, part 3 – Homemade Kids Costumes (plus more links)

Star Wars Halloween

The Spider!  Love the arms… Complete How-to is here

A knight in Shining Armor… or maybe a crusader:  Get the tutorial

Front and Back views of Agent P

Last year’s fave – Perry the Platypus of Phineas and Ferb fave .. aka Agent P!

The Garbage Man (by one of our readers)

Plus some old ideas from around the web:

• Fabulous Max from Where the Wild Things are (with instructions)
• Mega-Man costume
• Working Gameboy costume
• Biker family and Mexican wrestler family
• Adorable Little Bo Peep
• Make your own Monster or Alien feet!
• A fabulous Yoda costume at Geek Crafts
• Easy and cheap candy costume from Dollar Store Crafts
• Robot Costume

This is a quick method I use for coloring more ‘cartoonish’ drawings… I sketched the drawing in pencil, then went over the line work in ink.  However if you draw your pencil lines dark enough, this method will also let you create an ‘inked’ looking drawing from the pencil sketch.  I use both Photoshop and Illustrator (still on the old CS2, sigh) for this technique.  Click on the illustrations to see them larger.

Tutorial – How to take Line Art to Finished Color Cartoon

Step 1: Scan

Clean up the worst of the stray pencil marks, and scan in your drawing.

Step 2: Levels

Create a new Levels adjustment layer.

Move the white arrow to the left  and move the black arrow to the right (see the Step2 image) until you have a white background and black lines.  This will take a little trial and error, but get it as good as you can.  (If you made any mistakes in your inking, and want to fix them, do it now.)

Step 3: Clean up the Lines

For this illustration, I wanted smoother lines.  (You can skip this step if you like the look of your lines.)  Save the .psd and open it in Adobe Illustrator.

Click on the image, and choose Live Trace.  Check out your lines.  If you want to change them, try other settings from the dropdown box (like Comic Art) or play around with the threshold and min area settings at the top (see step3 image).

Copy, and paste back into your Photoshop image.  (I paste it as a smart vector.  Since it’s now vector, you can resize it if you want it larger, and so forth.)

Step 4: Create a Line Art Layer

I got this technique from the awesome Tom Richmond – Go read the whole thing, but here are Tom’s basic steps:

Yeah, all that is a lot of work, right?  I do this all the time, so I recorded it as an Action in Photoshop, so I just click one button and it’s done!

Step 5: Paint the Color Layer

Now I set up my layers.  I have a WhitePaper layer that is just a solid white layer.  I put all my old layers that I’m not using any more under that.

Next layer up is a blank “Under Color” layer, then a blank “Colors” layer, then my Inks layer, then an “Over Color” layer. (You can see the layer setup in the final image below)

Select your Colors layer.  For quicky coloring, I use the magic wand tool (Sample All Layers checked) to select all of the sections that I want to paint a certain color. Then I have another photoshop action recorded that 1-expands the selection by 1 pixel, and 2-fills with the foreground color. (see step5 image)

Step 6: Paint the Under and Over Colors

You don’t have to do this, but I find it easier for the really small areas (like the suckers on the arms) to just paint on the Under Colors layer.  You don’t have to be neat. (see step 6 image).  I use the Over Colors layer for when I want to paint over the black lines.  Some of my suckers ended up like black dots, so I just painted the green suckers on top!

Below is the final image with the layers.

I threaded up some big embroidery needles with embroidery floss, and gave him some sweater scraps to use as patches (why yes, I do have a bag of old sweaters in my closet just for the purpose of things like this!) I showed him what to do, and did a few stitches to get him started, and he did great! Here’s a poor cell phone photo of him in action..

I think the patches actually add a great deal of interest to the original snake. He’s also re-named the snake “Patches”. One of the eye buttons had broken, too, so we replaced the buttons with some eyes I’d gotten from the lovely Colleen at Some Art Fabric (who has actually made a sweater snake in the past!). I’m loving Snake 2.0! Here’s the how-to on how to make the snake, if you’d like one yourself!
He loves his snake, and he loves that he did it himself (with a bit of help from mom here and there).

To start things off… Awesome color changing creepy martini (Full how-to at Instructables!) (via the always awesome Mental Floss, who was kind enough to link to Dabbled’s creepy cocktails!)

Also via Mental Floss: Show Me Vegan’s Eyeball Martini

Here’s an adorable Jack-o-lantern Cocktail, made with OJ and Cognac at Creepy Cupcakes

Bloody Brain Shooter via Craftzine

Including the world famous Instructable Winner:

Creepy Bubble Cocktails – the secret ingredient to these adds a delightfully eerie look!

and…

The Brain Hemorage from TangoPango.

From Talk of Tomatoes:   Black Widow & The Maggotini!

And you need an interesting bar…

More clever ways to label your halloween drinks.

Everyone loves Halloween… Here’s what’s popular right now on Dabbled!

• Halloween Couples Costume Ideas
• The Perry The Platypus Costume
• Halloween Food: The Mummy’s Hand..
• Halloween – Even Creepier Cakes
• Halloween Cocktails – Creepy Bubble Fun!
• Halloween Costumes, part 3 – Homemade Kids Costumes (plus more links)
• Halloween Food – Delicious Eyeballs
• Halloween Wrap-up – Party Food
• Halloween Food – Flayed Skin Cheeseball
• From Funny, to Geek, To Scary… Pumpkin Carving Ideas