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[stigeweard]

How can I build a Slender Man?

[slendywasphone]

Re: How can I build a Slender Man?

[nosebleeder]

A) what's your budget?
B) are you having him close up or far away?

I'm not gonna tell you exactly how to do it step-by-step because part of the fun is figuring it out yourself - you feel like a genius when you crack it - but, have a few tips.

But if you're gonna have him far away, and you can avoid seeing his feet, put him on a box. Simple, cheap, yet effective. In fact, if he's up close, and you can avoid seeing his feet, nail blocks of wood to the bottom of a cheap pair of shoes. Cheap-ass stilts.

For the face, make sure you have all the material safety pinned securely. Nothing looks worse than a wrinkly-faced slender man.

Long arms are easier to do than added tallness, and everyone seems to forget his freaky arms. If you're having trouble getting him taller, get the arms that little bit longer, and people will pay more attention to that than his height.

And everything ^ that guy said about camera angles is true. Study up on film techniques, it's worth more than a good costume.

[Noonem]

I used pipes.

[GalaxyAwesome]

I dressed as Slendy for Halloween last year, and all I did was wear a suit with cheesecloth over my head folded so that I could see through but nobody else could see my face. I'm fairly tall though, so if you're shooting a video and need to be a bit taller, I'd suggest standing on a box that's hidden from view.

Oh, and proof that my costume was successful? A little girl saw me and started crying

[SoulHammer]

If you can't seem to get his mask right you can always do something with it using editing software.

[nosebleeder]

[TheFallenenvoy]

Us British children use a morph suit if it helps

[zbeeblebrox]

Coming at this purely conceptually, the ideal Slenderman monster would best be done as a human controlled puppet. Something akin to a bunraku puppet, where the performer is behind the larger slenderman prop moving him and walking him with simple chicken wire or sticks. Dressed correctly for the scene and lit properly, the performer can easily be made invisible, leaving only the terrifying visage of a clearly inhuman figure moving on his own. This has a one-up on a performer in stilts, because first of all you don't need to find someone who actually knows how to use stilts but second of all the walk can be given a human (ie "dangerous") characteristic, while stilts have a cute exaggerated loping look to their stride which isn't very scary. Oh, and with a puppet like this, you also solve the persistent problem of how to properly bend Slendy's long arms, since you're in full control of how the joints work. I wouldn't care too much about not having use of Slendy's fingers, but ideally, a rod that extends from the elbow joint down to his wrist would be nice for allowing simple wrist rotation, so you can having him grab corners as he menacingly walks from a hallway into a room.

Also, while I think a pale fabric covering the head is fine, you'll get better results if you use that fabric to cover an inanimate object rather than a actual person's head - even if you go with a costumed performer. Human heads make problematic creases around the neck, forehead, and jaw area when they move, while mannequin or a hairdresser's head make no such creases when they turn, guaranteeing that Slenderman's head doesn't give away that something is covering his face. This will set you back about $10 on Amazon, or nothing if you know someone with a sister training to be a hairstylist. Bonus points if you convince her to be the costume designer for your project as well. More free props!

On top of that, additional appendages like tentacles or perhaps some kind of spatial warping aura could be added through video compositing and animation. My first choice for adding tentacles would be stop-motion, which is inherently the scariest form of animation, followed closely by CG, which is the most likely to give you a realistic result (and can be composited into the scene the easiest).

Speaking of which, make sure that you avoid unnecessary compositing. Especially if you aren't familiar with doing it. Matching real-world scene lighting is extremely hard even when you have expensive spotlights controlling the lighting arrangement. In an amateur scenario with tons of uncontrolled ambient light from all sorts of directions, not to mention the low-light environments you're probably subjecting your camera to, even the best compositors are going to have trouble.

But the bottom line is movement. Even the simplest movement added to a scarecrow-type slenderman prop will do wonders. Consider the EMH slenderman, which is exactly that. With the addition of nothing more than a headbob and the sense to limit his appearances to between 5-10 seconds in any given scene, they've done quite an decent job selling the effect. (incidentally, they're also good compositors...though I can still tell he's composited in most of the scenes where they've done so :p)

[amrith777]

First--to the poster above ^^^ me--that was very informative,you have a lot of knowledge.
One thing I want to add is that I don't know what country you're from,but I volunteer at Goodwill (second hand store) and they usually have a lot of cool shit for very cheap that you can employ--stuff you might not find at a 'modern' store.Just a little tip.

[Slesk]

Mr Galactic President, you have some excellent advice.

I only want to add that for short clips needing tentacles, one could always use the Alice Cooper method, having the tentacles tied to his arms with "invisible" string.

[amrith777]

[zbeeblebrox]

Re: the "Al Cooper Method". Brilliant.

[Randoman96]

If you have an actor to do it, I made my Halloween costume last year for less than $30.

Found a good suit, tie and dress shoes/shirt at Goodwill (if you don't have one, look for any thrift store really), got some white leg stocking at Wal Mart and put some of that on my head. I didn't have any tentacles, but I'm thinking of using these black springs and mounting them on the back.

Only problem was, after a while it got hard to see and breathe, but if you're doing videos it shouldn't be much of an issue. Halloween parties however...

EDIT: As posted above, try getting Sony Vegas 10 (if you don't want to buy it, just pirate it). If you're patient enough, you can go frame by frame and blur the area of the face, and maybe even stretch the area to make it look taller. Takes a bit of time though.

[Slesk]

This is the first test for my Slendy suit. Face looks a bit... off... due to the hi-contrast photography.

Edit: also crooked tie. Slendy should be a better dresser than this.