This past week I got to cre­ate a hal­loween cos­tume for my 6 year old. He want­ed to be Opti­mus Prime.

Amy was able to get a mask at work pet­ty cheap, but no cos­tume for the rest of it. So he was going to wear a red shirt and blue pants.…we could­n’t have that…so design­er dad to the rescue!

I looked at my mom and said, I need a box…I’ll do like I did when I was 6! She knew what I was talk­ing about.

This project brought back so many memories.

You see, my dad was a Truck­er and I loved to tell any­one who would lis­ten that my dad­dy was a truck­er (even when my TR’s were F’s as I was learn­ing to talk!…I’d tell peo­ple, “My dad­dy’s a Fu…” well, you can just imag­ine. My dad thought it was hilar­i­ous! My mom did­n’t think it was so fun­ny when I would be in a toy store and yell out, “Mom­my I want a Fu..” yeah…not so cute anymore.)

So for Hal­loween one year, I went as a truck dri­ver. My dad drew on a box the image of his truck and I col­ored it in. He let me wear one of his hats, smudged my face with “motor grime”  (I don’t recall what he actu­al­ly used) and I was set! I was so proud of myself col­or­ing in that box. In the pic­ture, he told me I need­ed “snarl” so I looked like a mean tough trucker…I could­n’t quite do that yet!

So I was deter­mined to make this “truck box” so much bet­ter for Riley.

I took ref­er­ence images I found online and drew out the lay­out of the top, side, back, front of Opti­mus in truck mode. I print­ed them out to match the size of the box. I then paint­ed the entire box red with Acrylics. I then used Car­bon Paper (Yep, I still had some) and traced the imagery onto the box as a ref­er­ence. I then out­lined cer­tain details with a sharpie, but then paint­ed in the rest and tried to give some of the items more dimen­sion, with some shad­ing, etc.

I then took a wrap­ping paper tube and cut it in half (well, Amy cut it) and paint­ed it, paint­ed the exhaust holes and then used vine char­coal to give it some “soot”.

Riley loved it and wore it to his Cub Scout Pack meet­ing tonight and got great reviews!

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