Greg Dietzenbach is no stranger to awesome Halloween costumes. There was the year he built a transforming sock robot for his son. Another year, his daughter dressed as the family's neighbor's doors, which was a local hit.
But this year, perhaps the strangest one in memory, he had to come up with a costume fitting of the odd circumstances under which we currently find ourselves celebrating Halloween.
"Social distancing has made my kids Zoom experts, it's how they attended school and see family and friends. It felt like it was a costume idea worth exploring," Dietzenbach of Marion, Iowa, told "Good Morning America" in an email.
Dietzenbach reflected the sign of the times by creating a monsters-at-a-Zoom-meeting costume.
How he built the Zoom costume
"Fortunately," he said, "I work for a company that builds corporate environments and museums so I had a large format printer at my disposal."
Each Zoom monster took about an hour and half to create.
"I recreated the Zoom interface -- adding subtle jokes like '666 Participants,' and instead of 'End Meeting for All,' it says 'End Life' and 'Share Screen' is changed to 'Share Scream' -- in Adobe Illustrator and transformed photos of my daughter (Ada, 12) into monsters using an iPad drawing app called Procreate," Dietzenbach told "GMA."
He mounted the art to a 1/4-inch foam board and the handles are straps hot-glued to the back of the board.
"The live video screen was the very same iPad I used to draw the monsters," he said. "It was taped to the back of the board and [I] ran a mirror app so it'd have a clean display of the victim."
The best part, Dietzenbach said, was the photo shoot with Ada, "We were laughing the whole time as we tried to make all the monster faces," he said.
The costumes come from his kids' dress-up boxes.
"If I couldn't find something I just drew it, like Drac's necklace and Frank's bolts," he said. "Part of the fun of making these costumes is all the creative solutions I discover while building them. I embrace the challenge every year and the October 31st deadline is always a good motivator."
And while his Zoom creation is getting lots of attention, he said every costume he's made over the years has been a "labor of love."
"I've become known for my homemade costumes with family and friends and people tell me they look forward to seeing them every year but I really do it for my kids," Dietzenbach told "GMA." "Halloween was one of my favorite holidays when I was a kid and I'm happy to share my love of Halloween with them."
