Ryan Well's Hoggle Cosplay - Another AMAZING Creation !

Henson has truly forged may of our life's, mine was no exception. So much love for the classics that never are aged or overshadowed by modern movies to hold their own special place and be able to be enjoyed by future generations as if they were just released. One of these timeless movies that instantly comes to mind is the movie Labyrinth, and when I was going through ideas of what I felt needed to be cosplayed by myself, represented and honored, I knew I had to do this.

I love a good challenge and only compete with myself. With each new costume I create I teach myself new techniques and learn from new failures. The choice was Hoggle (the misunderstood lovable coward with a huge hidden heart); I new I had to do this. I also knew I was no where near the right height to pull it off, that was the easy challenge. I would play with proportions and pad every inch of myself to turn my height into width to fool the eye and give myself a larger then life shape so that, standing on his own, he would look as close as I could get to being four foot something.

The next challenge was to up my game in my sewing skills, pattern making, leather working (which I have never touched until now), and continue to perfect my work in latex mask making. This was now my third mask I had made, the last two were done with plaster gauze skulls as a base. To build a head this size I was going to need to take on a new challenge, Upholstery fabricating (sadly I did not realize this until after 15 packages of plaster gauze and a weeks work waited on an incredibly heavy head. Try sneaking that one out to the dumpster at night lol).

An unexpected challenge was the lack of reference materials available for all the tiny details such as his "rightful property" bag of goodies, and fighting with bidding wars on online auctions for the exact broaches I needed to get it just right (I don't even want to mention how many bead stores I visited to make his bracelet).

Time line was another challenge, I had now given myself half the time it took me to build Chamberlain but would settle for no lesser quality.

Well, again childhoods everywhere were remembered as soon as Hoggle showed up! He's visited a lot of conventions and even a summer movie in the park where he got to hang out with everyone before the annual showing of the movie. It's amazing how many smiles he brings and as warm as it may be with limited hearing and vision inside the costume I still walk around with a smile for what this guy has done to my heart over the years. Oh, and people quoting the lines from the film when the see me, never gets old.

Ryan Wells

Photography by Morning Star Creative Group

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CLICK HERE to see Ryan's AMAZING Chamberlain Cosplay