- This would make a nice costume for any Halloween Party. Thing is though, the creatures it's based on are the most cowardly in Middle-earth. But you don't have to be a known coward to dress as a Moria Goblin for Halloween. You just need to be willing to wear prosthetics under scratch-built armor. This is a really simple costume to build (or it should be), and one should remember to use plastic for safety reasons, and fake leather for affordability reasons. I'd personally recommend using sand-green tights and a long-sleeved sand-green shirt to match the Moria Goblin mask in the link.
- Think you need a horse to be a Rohirric dude? THINK AGAIN! You just need plastic, fake leather, a huge green cape, and some silver-colored plastic lamellar (auk plates), as well as loose-fitting dark gray clothes. You don't even need to grow your hair long & dye it blond, you can use a wig if you want. A lot of people will recognize that you are dressed a Man of Rohan and you will be very popular at a lot of Halloween Parties in this costume.
- Gondorian armor was an interesting nut for Weta Workshop to crack, as will be for people who want to be one for Halloween. The helmet with the wings embossed out from inside will be quite a challenge to translate into plastic makeshift, in fact you may end up gluing on cardboard strips instead, provided you spray paint the entire thing silver (acrylic paints dry really fast). The rest of the armor should be easy to make though. The White Tree of Gondor symbol you may also have to make out of cardboard. This costume may also call for a black shirt, black pants, black gloves, black boots, and even a knee-length black skirt.
- No, not the rabble kind. The kind from Return of the King that walked upright and wore actual armor and used actual weapons and were medium-speed to act on impulse. These guys tend to wear dark silver color armor on cherry-red tunics with pitch black trousers. They tend to vary in skin color between sand-green, dull teal, dull gray, and dark red, some even dark orange, which makes you have a choice what color body-paint to use for your Orc Warrior costume. You may need red or yellow lens caps though, accessible through the link in #9. You can also stylize your hair in random ways, or just get wigs in the shapes of the hairs you want, since these guys have different hairstyles.
- People may not be familiar with what Mirkwood Elf troops look like, but Legolas is from Mirkwood and coupling that with his popularity made me put Mirkwood Elf here instead of Rivendell Elf (like in film 1) or Lorien Elf (like in film 2). I suspect, though, that these Elves would follow Legolas's mode of dress, wearing leather armor for the forearms, shins, and shoulders, covering everything else but the face with only spring forest colored clothing. This means I'd recommend loose-fitting dark green pants and hooded dark green cape, loose-fitting sand-green shirt with long sleeves, loose-fitting green skirt of knee-length, and armor like I described made of brown colored fake leather. The only prosthetic you may need is fake elf ears, available at the site I linked.
- Yes, I am aware that the first Uruk-hai were created by Sauron in Mordor 500 years before the Fellowship formed, but these Uruks are the ones that are used as the majority troop type of their military. Having said that, the Isengard ones are the ones on this list. You may also have to wear tights with a tight shirt for this one, but dark red. Atop that will be scratch-built armor with fake leather, plastic instead of metal, and the prosthetic they have is already helmeted, so that's your headgear. This will perhaps be the fiercest of Orcish beast costumes, and will make the biggest shocker in your Halloween Party.
- Bamboo armor is interesting because you can make it without having to worry about using a dangerous or expensive material. This is relevant because the Haradrim use this material for their densely-woven armor. All you need to make here is a cuirass, pauldrons, vambraces, and greaves. You can attach bits of plastic and cardboard to paint metallic colors and/or neon colors if you so choose. One thing to keep in mind though: the rest of the Haradrim garb is about sun deflection, so a shemagh of gray, red, black, or brown coloration will go nicely on the head, and looking to some of, all of, or one of these colors for the gloves, boots, loose-fitting trousers, ankle-length skirt, and loose-fitting shirt should make your Haradrim costume complete. This one may require you to explain what you are to those of the Halloween Party attendants who don't know what a Haradrim is, but on the other hand, those that do will like your costume.
- DWARF! Yep, you can be a LotR dwarf that isn't Gimli. The site I linked has an excellent selection of Dwarvish-looking beards, and a Dwarf nose prosthetic. Something to note about the clothing, though, the Dwarves in this world only ever wear browns and grays with shining silver-color armor. To that end, make the helmet and armor our of plastic, paint it a really pale silver, and get some loose-fitting, long-limb clothes of brown and/or gray, added with beige gloves and boots. This will allow you to look like a master craftsman at your party, and people may even ask you if you made certain foods depending on how good they taste. You don't need to be crafty or even a five-foot tall mocho to be a Dwarf, you just have to have a costume with the above specifications. Like the Rohan guy, the Dwarven costume also lets you choose between plastic chainmail and plastic lamellar (newcastle plate)
- Ah, yes, the coolest-looking costumes in Tolkien's fictional world. This is where people with Halloween Party plans can get really intricate. This one calls for a gold-colored, bald-domed Spartan helmet with the three Easterling-style horns made of plastic or cardboard or even wood and painted the same golden hue, added with a chin-guard to connect the chin guards, as would match the source material. Plastic Lamellar dot com has the lamellar needed for the Dwarven and Rohirric costumes, as well as this one. But, this one make you assemble the scale according to what kind of armor they had, rather than according to traditional lamellar assembly. These guys have rerebraces, vambraces, a placard, a heart-plate, cuisses, poleyns, glove armor, a collar, and a groin-guard. None of it protects their backsides. For the glove armor, you may have to custom-build the scales, due to their smallness. Red gloves, dark gray boots, purple trousers, a knee-length purple skirt cut open at the front, a dark grey belt to attach the groin-guard to, and a long-sleeved purple shirt should cover clothes. OH, don't forget about the purple keffiyeh and face-covering black bandanna! After all this is gathered and put on, you will look like an empire building supercommando ready to expand his or her empire to Halloween Party zones all over the host's hosting place! LOLOLOLOL!
~EOTE
