We’ve already found the perfect 2020 Halloween decoration, but now, thanks to one extremely crafty dad, we’ve found the perfect 2020 Halloween costume, too.
If you’re searching for a terrifying 2020-themed Halloween look we can think of no better costume than a Zoom meeting. This has been the year of Zoom fatigue and way too many video meetings that could have been emails. So why not pay tribute to the painful form of WFH communication with a costume?
Still not convinced? Let this “killer” Zoom meeting costume that Greg Dietzenbach — a 42-year-old creative director for a creative design agency in Marion, Iowa — created for his 12-year-old daughter, Ada, convince you.
The homemade Zoom costume depicts a virtual meeting with nine people (er, people and monsters) on the call. But here’s the catch: Eight of the Zoom “attendees” are actually Dietzenbach’s daughter. The center square, which is the hole for her head, shows her wearing the costume in real-time, but the really Halloween-y characters — the Invisible Man, Creature (Black Lagoon), Wolf Man, “Frank,” Drac, Mummy, and Blair — are her as well. Dietzenbach took some photos of his daughter and edited them to make the Zoom squares.
“Fortunately, I work for a company that builds corporate environments and museums so I had a large format printer at my disposal. I recreated the Zoom interface (adding subtle jokes like 666 Participants and instead of “End Meeting for All” it says “End Life”) in Adobe Illustrator and transformed photos of my daughter into monsters using an iPad drawing app called Procreate,” Dietzenbach told Mashable in an email. And instead of “Share Screen” the button reads “Share Scream.”
Dietzenbach explained that it took approximately an hour and a half to create each monster, but said that the best part of making the costume was the monster face photo shoot he had with his daughter.
“All of the costumes were found by raiding the kids’ dress-up box and closets. If I couldn’t find something I just drew it, like Drac’s necklace and Frank’s bolts,” he said. After manipulating the photos he placed everything on a foam board and hot-glued some straps to the back.
You’ll notice that top middle Zoom square, labeled “Next Victim”, isn’t Ada. That’s the space where anyone admiring the impressive Zoom costume will see an image of themselves. To make that illusion happen, Dietzenbach taped an iPad with a front-facing camera to the back of the board and enabled a mirror app to achieve “a clean display of the victim.”
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You can see how Dietzenbach created the elaborate costume in the video above, but before you take on this ambitious project yourself just know that this wasn’t his first costume-making session. He does this for his son and daughter every year.
“My kids challenge me every year to make a unique costume. Building a transforming sock robot for my son almost broke my brain, so this year I wanted to make it a lot simpler,” Dietzenbach said.
“Due to COVID-19 we didn’t even know if our town would have trick-or-treating this year. Social distancing has made my kids Zoom experts, it’s how they attended school and see family and friends. It felt like it was a costume idea worth exploring,” he explained. “2020 has been tough, it’s nice to know we’ll be giving some joy to others (at a safe distance of course).”
Some of Dietzenbach’s greatest past costume hits include the aforementioned transforming sock robot, front doors in the neighborhood, and more. You can check out some highlights below and see all of Dietzenbach’s creative Halloween costumes here.
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“They are all a labor of love,” Dietzenbach said. “I’ve become known for my homemade costumes with family and friends and people tell me they look forward to seeing them every year, but I really do it for my kids.”