Skull Kid (Majora's Mask) Cosplay

Majora's Mask has been my favourite Zelda game for years, and when I played it I fell in love with the masks in the game. I though they were all extremely expressive and unique, but my favourite by far was Majora's Mask. So when looking for Halloween costume ideas this year I looked back at my games collection for ideas when the thought of going as something from Majora's mask popped into my head. Initially I was just going to make the mask but as so many of my projects do it spiralled into something way bigger than I initially intended, ending with a full Skull Kid cosplay.

When I made Skull Kid for Halloween this year I leaned into a more realistic style, rather than something more stylised. I found this really good 3D model for Majora's Mask and saw that it fit the theme of a realistic Skull Kid so I just went along with it. As such I think they whole costume came out a lot spookier than I initially went in intending. Though I'm not complaining, because now people who have never heard of a Zelda game in their life can point and go look at the forest man!

I should preface this by saying the full costume isn't all that complicated, its really just a shirt, some shorts, a mask, and a few other clothing items if you break it down to it's most basic components. However I go over how to build upon those basic elements, how to add extra details like weathering to the clothes, and how to make other things that are more optional but add the costume as a whole, like the wooden arms, or the gloves.

This Halloween costume was a massive undertaking it took about 3 months for me to get finished. (With a couple long breaks sprinkled in there). But this project ended up being one of my favourites yet and as it was a massive passion project for one of my favourite games of all time.

So without further ado lets get into the build shall we?......

This project has quite a lot of supplies, but they aren't very costly. I tended to use really cheap fabrics, and EVA foam that I bought in bulk to cut down on costs. The only real expense for people may be the 3D printing, the Majora's Mask and a few other smaller things are 3D printed, and I go over this in that step but there isn't much of a workaround for it. Unlike the rest of the 3D printed parts which I help provide alternatives for in their respective steps. But if you have a 3D printer or a Majora's Mask just lying around then you should be set as all the needed supplies are pretty easy to get a hold of.

1.) Orange Broadcloth - 2 meters (I used Broadcloth because its cheap but you can use a different orange fabric I would just recommend a material with a more obvious weave as it helps to sell the costume more)

2.) Paints (Blacks, Browns, Orange, all the colors you see on Majora's Mask all as cheap acrylic paints. It may also help to have some brown spray paint for weathering)

3.) Razor Blades

4.) Wood Burning tool

5.) Sewing Machine

6.) Green Cheesecloth (I can't remember exactly how much I used but 1.5-2 meters should be enough)

7.) Green Broadcloth - 2 meters

8.) Green food colouring

9.) 3D printer

10.) PLA Filament

11.) EVA Foam Dowels (These are an alternative in case you don't have a 3D printer they are used to make the belt rings, so if you have a printer you don't need this)

12.) Ghillie suit material (The dangly threads, you can get a bundle for $15 on AliExpress)

13.) Hessian - 2 meters

14.) Hot Glue Gun

15.) Hot Glue Sticks

16.) EVA Foam

17.) Black Gloves (Ones that go up to 3/4 of the way up your shoulder at minimum)

18.) Armature wire - 2m

19.) Primer Spray Paint

20.) Dremel

21.) Model Foliage (The fake plants stuff they use for dioramas)

The tunic is probably the easiest jumping on point for this project as it doesn't require all that much work or patterning to put together.

To start you are going to want to grab an old T-Shirt. Make sure it is rather loose fitting still, you don't want it draping off of you but you also don't want it to be too short. Take this shirt and trace it onto a piece of orange fabric. I'm cheap I used Broadcloth though you can use a more accurate fabric. I'd suggest looking for fabrics with a more obvious weave to really add to the rugged look if you want. Or you can stick with the broadcloth and be cheap like me, a lot of it gets covered in paint anyways so it shouldn't matter too much.

Once you have your pattern traced you are going to want to extend the base of the shirt down, you want your pattern to extend to cover a little over half of your butt. Once you have your shirt pattern traced out you can cut 2 of these shirt patterns and sew them together.

Once sewn together turn the shirt inside out and we can start to dirty it up. I started by shredding up the shirt in key areas. Places like the sleeves and the base of the shirt are the most important areas to shred because 1.) It makes the clothes look more worn out, and 2.) No one can tell you didn't sew the ends off and its just the raw fabric on the sleeves and the base. You should also create a few extra holes on the main body of the shirt, they shouldn't be too big or symmetrical just some small cuts to sell that this shirt is old. To shred the shirt up I found the easiest way was to get a foam floor mat and put the shirt on top of that then drag a razor blade across the fabric. Using the foam floor mat prevents you from scratching the floors and also helps the blade last a bit longer.

Finally to dirty the shirt up a bit we can use paints to add weathering. The way I did this was I would get a paintbrush and wipe 90% of the paint off of the brush, then I would lightly go over areas of the shirt I wanted to dirty. (Holes are great places to add weathering too because the paint sticks really well to them and they are more obvious places for dirty to theoretically gather). If you still feel your shirt is a bit too bright, you can lightly dust it in brown spray paint. The uneven splotchiness of the paint will hopefully make the shirt look dirty without actually being dirty.

The foliage Neckpiece is one of the easiest pieces to make (Well at least one of the least complicated pieces). You start out by getting a piece of green cheesecloth, and cutting it into roughly a bandana type shape. make sure this shape covers the neck of the shirt fully. (Make sure this initial piece is also larger than you'd think you need you can always cut more off but it's way harder to subtly add more)

Once you have the rough shape of the neckpiece you are going to shred it to pieces. (Not literally keep it one piece please). You want to add as many holes into the cheesecloth as you can, use the razor blade and cut in different directions to not make the whole thing look too uniform. Drag the blade on its side to tear the fabric apart, really just go ham and try to make things look as beaten up as you can.

Once you do all of that you can add a little more detail through paint. Remember how in the last step I said that the holes in the fabric pick up the dry brushed paint? Well here it does that really well. I used a drybrush of black and brown over the whole neckpiece to really grunge the whole thing up. But if you really want the wild look mix in greens, yellows, and greys to add to the whole dirty look.

Now just when you think you have the neckpiece finished you have to repeat the steps at least 3 more times. The way you can get a really good foliage effect is by layering these bandana shaped pieces on top of each other. You want a minimum of 2 layers of foliage on each side of the shirt, though you can do more. Just don't make it too thick. If you think you may have shredded your neckpiece too much you can always glue a piece of un-shredded cheesecloth underneath the neckpiece to better hide the shirt underneath.

Now you have your layered neckpieces you can glue them onto the shirt. I recommend putting the shirt on and layering where you want the neckpiece to go on. Them making a small mark with a sharpie on both the shirt and the neckpiece where you want a dollop of glue to go to keep the neckpiece in place. I also recommend adding glue around the neck of the shirt as this is where you want the neckpiece to be the most secure. Once you have your points marked out you can take the shirt off and start gluing the neckpiece to the shirt. (DO NOT GLUE ANYTHING TO A PIECE OF CLOTHING THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY WEARING. That is a one way ticket to serious burns. Mark everything out then glue, it makes it easier)

To make the pair of shorts we're going to make a template again using just a regular pair of shorts I had lying around. I found when making this template that you want to make the shorts much bigger than you think they are going to be. You want these shorts to be loose and slightly longer than a regular pair of shorts, so when making your template use your original shorts as a rough guide for the shape rather than a sizing guide.

Once you have your shorts template traced it's a pretty similar process to the shirt, cut it out, sew it together, and shred. When shredding the shorts however you want a mix of the destruction from the shirt and the shredding you did for the neckpiece (Go ham but not too ham, you know?). Vary sizes of the holes making them big and small. (Also don't worry if you make the holes too big we'll make a pair of pants to go underneath in a later step)

Now with your shredded shorts comes the weathering. I tested something new here but if you buy a better color of fabric you probably don't have to do this. I used green food colouring to stain the shorts because I though the shorts looked a bit too colourless. You don't have to do this if you buy a more green fabric I just did it to compensate. However we won't just stop at adding green to the weathering, no its time to add more grungy colors. Your browns and blacks will really shine here, so make sure to go really overboard here, I used a mix of Drybrushing and light coats of spray paint to really add to the dirty look of these shorts.

Finally you may have noticed your shorts may be a bit big on you, and they slide off when you wear them. This is pretty normal, the way to remedy this is to cut slits in the waist of the shorts so you can slide a belt on while wearing the shorts. This prevents them from falling (Or being pulled down by the wooden legs we cover in a future step). And the belt gets covered by the tunic, so you don't have to worry about breaking the immersion.

The wooden belt is rather easy to make assuming you have a 3D printer, if not I have a suggestion for an alternative though I haven't done it myself so I can't speak for how effective it might be.

To make the wooden belt I printed the wooden rings using the file I made which can be found here

I used about 5% infill and 0.08mm layer lines to get fine detail, but the print settings don't matter all that much I just recommend a light infill because you will be wearing this after all you don't want it to be too heavy. To treat the rings it's relatively easy just sand down each ring and paint them with a base coat of black. Building on top of the black base coat in layers going over the top of each ring in a light dusting of progressively lighter brown colors.

Once you have the rings finished you can connect them using the "vines", which are actually that material they use for ghillie suits. You can just tie a basic knot around each of the rings using a couple treads of the ghillie suit material, then secure that in place with hot glue.

Once you have the belt fully assembled you want to make sure you can slip the belt on over your shoulders. If the fit is too tight you can add a bit more wiggle room by adding more thread to the links in the belt and just hiding that in the back. But once you have your belt on you should glue it in place to prevent it from slipping and moving around while you wear the costume. (Once again DO NOT GLUE IT ONTO YOURSELF WHILE YOU WEAR THE SHIRT) Mark where the belt lies on the shirt then take the shirt off and apply the glue then. You do not want burns from using hot glue on yourself.

Now if you don't have a 3D printer there are always options. One that I thought of doing initially was using EVA foam dowels. If you cut them to size and make the rings out of that it may be a cheaper and lighter option than 3D printing, at possibly the cost of losing some detail. You could attempt to add the wood grain to the rings by using a wood burning tool and melting the texture in. Though I haven't done that before so I can't speak for the results.

Now we are getting into the more complicated territory of this project. The gloves are ultimately pretty easy to make. You can trace out your hand onto some green cheesecloth leaving plenty of room on the sides for seam allowance. Then you sew the gloves into one piece. Once you have a complete glove you can cut about half of each finger off and pull at the threads on the ends to give them that raggedy look to them.

Before we can paint the symbol on the gloves we need to dirty them up a lot first. I tried to do this subtly, by adding various mixed stains. But instead of Drybrushing this time I used a sponge, dabbing off 80% of the paint before applying to the glove. You can layer this in different colors like black, brown, and various shades of green to give it that patchy look. Then to create the symbol on the glove I found easiest to copy an image off from google. You can eyeball your own template by tracing the design onto a piece of paper. Then you can cut that out and use a sponge to dab white paint onto the glove using the stencil to create the symbol.

Now on the ends of the gloves are these torn foliage bits. I didn't want to ruin the structural integrity of the glove so to remedy this we work in layers, similar to the neckpiece. To start you just want to cut a rectangular piece of green cheesecloth big enough to cover your wrist up to roughly halfway up your forearm. And you just want to shred this piece of cloth to oblivion. Doing roughly the same steps we did for the neckpiece only now we're layering these foliage pieces on top of the wrist part of the glove. These parts can be more loose and flowy than the neckpiece, so feel free to really stretch the fabric or glue on some smaller pieces that have more movement. How it looks is ultimately up to you.

The shoes ended up being one of the pieces of this costume that look like they're incredibly hard to make but in all actuality they aren't that bad.

To begin you want a pair of old beat up shoes, the more beat up the less guilt you'll feel destroying them. You want to take those shoes and draw a rough outline of their shape onto a piece of hessian (Adding that signature pointy tip in your template). Make sure to leave plenty of room on the sides, cut more fabric than you think you'll actually need. Then glue the fabric to the sides of the shoes.

Once you have the rough silhouette you can start to cover the rest of the shoe. You can cut a rectangle of hessian to cover the middle of the shoe and wrap the edges of the sides over the top to make things a bit more seamless. Once you've done that you can cut out a triangle and connect the two side pieces at the front. (Now is probably a good time to mention I didn't bother sewing any of this I just used hot glue to attach the hessian to the shoes). Once you have the shoes covered in hessian wrap a bit around the ankles of the shoes, and pull at the edges to give it a frayed look.

Now that you have the shoes finished they are looking a bit flat. You can add some dimension to them using paint. Around the edges of each seam you want to lightly dust them with some brown paint, to give it a subtle worn look. If you want you can also pull at some of the fabric on the edges to make them more frayed and damaged.

Once you have your shoes painted you can add some of the rings we used for the belt to the shoes. I recommend printing these a little smaller than the size they were printed for the belt, as you just want the rings to cover the sides of the shoes. Once you have the rings though you can glue them in place and wrap the ghillie suit material around them to make it look like the rings are tied on to the shoe, even though they aren't.

The wooden arms are my favourite part of the whole costume. They are made out of EVA foam and act as sleeves that you can wear. If you're going to wear this costume somewhere hot maybe skip these next 2 steps though because these wooden sleeves can get very hot. If you don't want to make the wooden sleeves you could get a black or brown morph suit and paint that to have a wooden texture instead.

However if you want to make the wooden sleeves you're going to want to start with a EVA foam sheet. On that sheet you are going to mark down a wood grain using a marker, and carve that into the foam using a Dremel. Once you have the initial wood grain carved in you can go over the whole sheet with a wood burning tool and using a flat tip drag it across the foam. It tears the foam up and causes a nice wooden texture. Once you have your textures applied you can paint the whole thing black, and cut up the sheet into bark strips.

Once you have your bark strips you want to take a pair of black sleeve gloves and you want to glue the bark strips on while you're wearing the glove. (I know I said "NEVER DO THIS" but this is different. If you wrap your arm in baking paper then slip the glove on over top it mitigates some of the burning). I recommend putting the glue on the bark first blowing on it to cool it a bit them applying onto the glove. If you feel uncomfortable doing this please feel free to skip these 2 steps.

Once you have your bark glued onto the glove you can paint the whole thing. The best way I found to do this is to paint everything in a thick black base coat. Then go over the whole thing in various brown dry brushes, starting dark and building up in lighter shades of brown until you get the color you are happy with.

Once you have the arms painted you can glue the edge of the gloves from "Step 5" onto the end of the sleeve and try and make a seamless look. You can add more shredded cheesecloth if the look isn't as seamless as you were hoping or use model foliage to fill any gaps you may see.

The wooden legs follow mostly the same steps as the arms. Get the foam, carve it, use the burning tool, cut it, paint it, you get the picture. However the steps begin to differ due to the leg's shape. Since you need to walk around in these you want some degree of movement in them, so here's how you can do that.

Firstly you want to make a circle piece of bark to cover your knee and have the strips of bark wrap around that, this way there isn't as much deformation whenever you bend your knees. Secondly on just the back of your knees make sure not to add any foam. This makes moving your legs a lot more comfortable. I also had my pieces of bark a bit more spaced out because they didn't evenly fit together. To fix this you can fill any gaps using model foliage.

Finally to make the legs wearable you can add a small zipper in the back. You can just cut down the middle and glue the zipper to each end. The zipper only has to go high enough to the point that when you unzip the legs you can get your foot in and out.

This hat was the bane of my existence! It took so many attempts to get right and this is the version I am the happiest with. To start you are going to want to 3D print the base of the hat using the model from here I would normally say if you don't have a 3D printer you can make a foam version. Which should work I just couldn't get the subtle tilt right so I didn't bother and printed it instead.

Once you have your base printed you can cut 8 triangles of hessian and glue them to the base, going around in a circle. Don't worry if you don't cover the top fully we'll fix that in a bit. Once you have hessian all the way around the hat you can add the subtle painting over the seams that we did for the shoes to add some dimension to the hat.

Now once you have your base of the hat done we can start working on the little dangly bits. I didn't have an exact technique here, you can just cut roughly rectangular shapes with slight imperfections out of paper and trace that onto foam. Then cut each of the rectangular foam pieces in half (Not to the very end about 3/4 of the way through) and glue in a piece of armature wire. This allows us to pose the hat as well as giving us something steadier to glue onto the hat. Now that you have the dangly bits you can go around in a circle gluing them onto the hat. I recommend putting longer pieces up front as they'll peek over the mask, and any shorter pieces can go in the back.

For the top spikey pieces, you can follow roughly the same steps we did to make the dangly bits. Just this time vary the size and shape. You want bigger more triangular pieces up front and smaller more square pieces in the back. Remember reference images are your friends here.

Finally we'll go over the edges of all the dangly and spikey bits with a light dusting of brown paint to highlight the edges. Then we go over the entierity of the hat in AND I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH a VERY LIGHT dusting of orange paint. You want the hat to feel more saturated but not overwhelming orange. Practice on a test piece before doing the real hat if you aren't sure if you have enough paint on your brush. This method is time consuming but well worth it.

Finally the big focal point of the costume. I saved this step for last because it was probably the most time consuming part of the build (Aside from the 50 million redesigns I had to do for that hat). The mask is 3D printed, and the model can be found here. I don't really have a work around aside from 3D printing for this one so if you can't print one yourself maybe reach out to a friend with a 3D printer, try some foam templates, or check somewhere like Esty for a blank mask.

The assembly of the mask is pretty simple I split it into 4 parts for printing and glued them together using hot glue. If you have a larger printer you can print the mask whole, but it's probably just easier to print in separate pieces and use glue. Once you have the whole mask in one piece you can sand it down to get it as smooth as possible. You can use whatever technique you may have for getting rid of layer lines. I use a primer filler spray paint and sanded that down until I'm left with a perfectly smooth mask.

Now for painting you want to start with a black base coat over the whole thing. Make sure especially to get down into the wood grain with the paint. Once you've done that you want to get a sponge and dab on white paint across the entire mask. Don't go too heavy with it you don't want the paint to seep into the cracks just to stay on the surface so its easier to paint upon.

Once we've done that we can paint the horns. the best method I found to do this is to base the horns in an off white coat, and water down brown paint, smother the horns in that and dab it off with a paper towel. This gives the effect of aged wood. If you want you can also do a drybrush in a bone sort of color for a brighter, more petrified wood look, but I just didn't bother

Once we're done with that we can start painting the body of the mask. For the outer body (Purple part) you want to use a base coat of a darker almost blueish purple. And build on top of that with a drybrush in a light purple. This makes it look like the paint is almost sun-bleached and adds to the realism of the whole thing. For the inner body (Red part) you almost want to do the opposite. You can start with a maroon color and use watered down black paint to drag the color down a lot. This makes the paint much richer, and adds to the aging effect of the whole mask. Once you're done with that you can follow the outlines in a simple black color.

To paint the eyes you are going to want to work in layers again blending colors together to get the subtle gradient. I found the best method is to start with a yellow base coat for each eye. Then around the edge lightly use a brownish red color and while it's still wet on the mask drag it towards the centre. This creates a subtle gradient effect, and you can build upon this using brown, then orange, and finally yellow near the centre of the eyes. Then you just paint the centre of the eyes green and you're done with the eyes.

To paint the tips of the horns you just want to get some coloured paint on a sponge wipe 90% of it off and dab it onto the end of each horn.

Now at this point you may have noticed that the mask actually doesn't have any eye holes. This is because we need to carve our own. You can use a wood burning tool and a heated knife and very carefully carve out the triangular bits at the base of each eye. Then if you flip the mask over you can hot glue in a mesh screen so no one can really notice the eye holes.

While you're adding the eye holes I recommend adding an elastic strap to the back of the mask. No one can really see the back so you can just glue the elastic to the back using hot glue.

And with that you're done, if you ever decide make a version of this costume for yourself feel free to share photos I love seeing what people make.

This project was a massive undertaking and I loved making it every step of the way (Except for the hat I did not enjoy making that "every step of the way"). But if you all enjoyed reading this and plan to make one for yourself feel free to post a comment. All the support really helps me to justify all the work I put into not just making the costume but also writing up the Instructable to share with you all.

But with that I hope you all enjoyed reading this, and I wish you all a very Happy Halloween!!!