Well, no, i am not a professional. A good amateur, yes, but no pro. There are things far more awesome than this costume and they are mostly made by amateurs with too much time on their hands.
And... there is a good thing to say about onewheelwizzards post, what they and others made years before: Those pictures, those videos of "big monsters", albeit cheaply and quickly done... those pictures and vids floated along the community of larpers that are our customers... and made them ask us: "Hey, say, have you ever thought about making us BIG things to battle with?". This golem and others were done because we were asked for it. Oh... ok. And because we really liked to one up a few other groups that really made extreme cool stuff like functioning 1:0.5 Warhammer Steam Battletanks and such. There is this friendly rivalry that always makes us all raise the bar to make the players speechless.
So, from the history, there is nothing bad to say about that Super Soaker Dragon. This thing (and the danish 40 Ton Truck Dragon, the swedish Stone Golem and others) are truly one of the reasons why this thing i helped down the plank exists.
Btw... this is our Iron Golem in Action (Slow Motion Video by one of our guests):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGf3hvjPVp8PS to onewheelwizzard:
Our budget is tight too. The golem costume was way under 1000 USD and about 100 Working hours for 5 people. The most expensive thing on it was the Dura-Stilts (same name for the firm in Oklahoma that sells them) with 300 USD. Oh, and the high amount of Games Workshop Citadel Colours. Can you imagine how many small pots of Bolt Gun Metal, Chaos Black, Shining Gold and Codex Grey you need for the airbrush finish this big? Unfortunately there are not many "metal" effect colours that work together with liquid Latex and Boat Gelcoat finish without destroying the Latex chemically or make the Gelcoat go yellowish in a UV reaction... Nothing beats Citadel. ;o).
