Jon as Russell, Up‘s Wilderness Explorer.

As with every year (here’s 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008), Jon chose his costume idea, and we got to work. I admit that expectation was a little high from those outside the household, and in the end, I personally bit off a little more than I could chew entirely. Laura took on the Wilderness Explorer costume, while I took on Russell’s massive backpack, and why not, the balloons and house model. And Photon’s “costume” as well. Packed though it is, in the end, the backpack could never match Russell’s in the movie for the amount of stuff he had.

Pretty much everything that Russell wears in the movie features the fictional Wilderness Explorer brand.

I had elaborate plans to use bubblewrap to cover a mylar balloon, thus making it look somewhat more like the tens of thousands that Carl Fredrickson used in the movie. Sadly, experiments showed that this is impossible. 1) Just enough bubblewrap to cover the balloon actually brings it down and 2) the bubbles in bubblewrap are not fully filled (to be cushy, of course), so if you do paste some selected clippings on, they look like shrivelled boils. My balloon has a skin condition. In the end, it was enough of a challenge to paint the @#$% balloon itself.

Detail of the house and balloons.

The house model is a complex one I grabbed from at paper-replika.com, and I ended up have to leave out a few details due to time constraints. Very nice, all the same.

Laura did a fantastic job on Russell’s uniform. Notice the missing “assisting the elderly badge” Also note the “Wild Animal Self-Defense” badge (north-east of clover leaf at bottom) amongst others.

Yep, we got REAL geeky. Russell is reading from this at Carl’s doorstep at the beginning of the movie.

Photon’s costume, as in other years, was started late and never quite worked, though it did electrically. It was a circuit board amp from an old pair of speakers hooked to a small speaker and an iPod shuffle to drive Dug’s voice from the movie. Sadly, I forgot that outside everyone uses an outdoor voice, especially at social events, which Halloween is on our street. So no one could hear Photon’s voice saying things like “Are you a dog, too?” and “Squirrel!”. Oh well, it did work! 🙂

Photon’s bigger collar

Photon’s circuitry, probably a little too heavy for the collar, was on her chest attached to her car harness strap