How much does it cost to build a monster suit?

Richard Shaw

Hi, it would be great if you could estimate how much it costs (material-wise) to build suits like these. Obviously this can vary based on design and other factors, but a ballpark figure and a rough minimum cost would be really helpful.

In case this has already been answered, I'm currently catching up on day 3 as I'm unable to watch live!

Thanks,
Richard.

Chris Ellerby

The price can very greatly based on the character size, complexity, and types of materials used.  Excluding labor the materials cost can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, so without a specific character design and expected bill of materials cost estimation is not really possible.

Hope that helps!

/Chris

Tom Stewart

The Rhino I built (See How to make a Monster Suit with Ted Haines) Cost me about $1400 in materials. The major cost was L200, Spandex and Paint tints. If I was to build something like this again I would easily charge $4000-$6000 as it took 8 hours a day-for 3 weeks for one person to build. I didn't like the finished product because I did rush to get it finished and if I was to build it again would hire a team of people to spend some TLC on it and make it better in a lot of ways. Hope this helps.

Richard Shaw

Thanks guys, and great work on the rhino Tom!

Ed Martinez

Hello, when will this lesson be available streaming "on demand" or on dvd?

Richard Shaw

Hi Ed, this is the wrong place for your question, but I'll answer it anyway. From what I've read on the course's main comments page, as they have almost 40 hours of footage to edit down to just a few hours of lessons it is going to take some time to do. They haven't given a definite time frame yet, but mentioned it could easily be a year or so before the cut down version is online.

Ed Martinez

Thank you