Tips on building a Slender Man dummy?

Since I can't find anybody that wants to play Slender Man for my Slender-Vlog, I have decided to just build a dummy. I'm not exactly sure what to make it out of, though. I want it to stand 7 ft. tall on its own and take the weight of a suit and pants and such. And I'm pretty sure that they don't manufacture 7 ft. tall mannequins. Can anybody give me tips on building it?

First get yourself an appropriately tall suit. Get to know a seamstress really well, or sew it yourself. There's no real way of getting around that if you want an ACTUAL 7 foot tall Slendy rather than using digital manipulation or camera shot angle trickery. If you can't get your hands on a suit of that size, then i don't know how you planned to do this to begin with.

As for the body, hmm.. Personally, if I could, I'd try and get my hands on a mannequin with detachable parts/segments. (Ask around local-owned mom-and-pop clothing shops. I'm sure ONE has got a beat up old mannequin in the back) After separating the pieces, you could stick the chest in the chest cavity of the suit, the pelvis in the hips, and so on, bridging the elongated gaps in between with some wood you can drill into either end component. I mostly suggest this because it would help the slendermannequin with retaining a full, realistic, "actually has a slenderman body inside of it" shape. Without something to address this, I've seen a few too many slendermannequins look suspiciously pancake-like: going flat because it's supported by thin planks and sticks.

If you can't get a detachable mannequin, and have a friend with a heavy duty saw, then it might be worth the gamble to try and cut it into pieces yourself.

Best advice I could hope to give, but I'm sure there are other ideas floating around.

I made one by taking a friend (or in my case, my dress form) and putting an old shirt over it (them), and duct taping the whole shirt so it made a stiff torso form. Then I took a pair of old jeans (this time I had to use a friend) and I duct taped them tight to her body. Then to get them off, you just cut up the backs, and tape them closed again. This makes a nice stiff body form. Then take some PVC piping, or wood, or whatever you have on hand and use them to make a really simple basic stickman figure so that you have something to serve as the "bones" to your dummy. Now you can lenghen the torso when you attach the pants and shirt together. YOu can also lengthen the arms and legs with more tape if you want. most of all you just want that body shape that the tape holds. (Make sure to use ducttape, as it holds the best).

Now stuff it! I used a single phone book, tearing out pages and stuffing the body with it. Once it's totally stuffed you can tape the bottom of the legs, and arms closed. Now you just need a head. I used one of those styrofoam heads that every costume shop sells, and i buffed down the facial features, before applying latex to it, but you can do that other ways, whever way you think makes the head look best. Tape the head into the neck hole and close it. Now you have a nice body shape, entirely incapable of being unavailable for your shoot! Now just cover it with a suit. Mine looks pretty decent for a duct-tape/phonebook monster.

Does that all make sense? Don't worry if the shirt/pants are loose, just amke sure that you tape them tight to your body double, though not tight enough to become a tourniquete.

I had a step by step "How to build a wooden frame slender man" video up unlisted for a while, but it was purely for one person who asked. Just take some 4x4s for legs, a small 4x4 for a pelvic bone, and a spine out of a 2x4 and get creative with the top of him. The simple tuning fork design works wonders when you add duct tape to hold the appendages. If you need a more travel friendly version, get creative with the way the spine attaches to the pelvic bone. My dummy stands about 7'1" and only has an XL suit and 34" pants.

PostIt wrote:

I made one by taking a friend (or in my case, my dress form) and putting an old shirt over it (them), and duct taping the whole shirt so it made a stiff torso form. Then I took a pair of old jeans (this time I had to use a friend) and I duct taped them tight to her body. Then to get them off, you just cut up the backs, and tape them closed again. This makes a nice stiff body form. Then take some PVC piping, or wood, or whatever you have on hand and use them to make a really simple basic stickman figure so that you have something to serve as the "bones" to your dummy. Now you can lenghen the torso when you attach the pants and shirt together. YOu can also lengthen the arms and legs with more tape if you want. most of all you just want that body shape that the tape holds. (Make sure to use ducttape, as it holds the best).

Now, this may be varsity level Slenderdummy building, but while you're lengthening limbs and torsos it could give a bit of an uncanny valley vibe if you were to lengthen the arms and/or the torso slightly out of proportion to the rest. Another idea I had (not sure how it would look IRL) would be to add joints to the arm other than the elbow or wrist so that his arms can be posed bent in ways that would be impossible for a human. The latter especially requires a good bit of DIY skills though.

Vivi wrote:

If you can't get your hands on a suit of that size, then i don't know how you planned to do this to begin with.

I was actually planning to get a regular-sized suit and adding onto the sleeves in the arms and legs with the same kind of fabric to make it longer.