Introduction
Last year, after a string of great costumes which went winless, I strongly considered re-doing my winningest creation, the paparazzi costume. It was a really fun costume to wear, because it DID something. I controlled 12 camera flashes with my handheld switch box, and I could unleash a storm of lightning at will.

It was genuinely blinding, but its victims also enjoyed being struck by it, because it really does deliver that feeling of being famous on the red carpet, bathed in flash light.

For halloween 2010, I was ready to build it again.

I wanted to build it again, I wanted to wear it again, and I really wanted video of it in action!

I didn't have a sheet of corrugated PVC sheeting, which was the foundation of the last paparazzi costume. I usually depend on expired election signs, but there were none to be found this early in the season.

Why didn't I steal this dogsex billboard when I had the chance?

I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do differently, but I knew I wanted to make it a little more durable, and I wanted to try molding full heads for the photographers, instead of just using masks backed with foam.

On these projects, design goes hand in hand with the materials I am using, and I'm rarely sure of what materials I'm going to use. So I went shopping.

This is one of my favorite parts of the costume-making process. How can I create 12 fake cameras for $10?

I cut some 2" electrical PVC and painted up some long lenses.

Readers of Cockeyed.com probably already know that I don't use an SLR camera. I use a little point and shoot Canon. I use the crap out of it.

For a better idea of how to put some fake cameras together, I did some research at Best Buy.

And Wal-Mart.

The trick to shopping at Wal-Mart is to not look too closely at what the other customers are doing.

The basic shape of a camera body was a box, with a lump on the side and a little awning on top.

For the camera bodies, I cut a block of styrofoam with a hot wire rig.

Once I had the hot wire set up, I went ahead and cut all the bodies.

Piece of cake.

For more information on setting up a hot wire to cut styrofoam, check out the Box of See's Candy costume.

Building 12 cameras, I thought I'd just plow through all the pieces like an assembly line, but I hadn't actually checked my construction ideas, so I ended up making some wrong moves, such as these 24 supports which I ended up not needing.

Hot glue did not reliably attach the lenses to the styrofoam bodies, so I prepared a solution using zip ties.

Please continue reading page two of the Paparazzi 2 Costume.