Being a noob to cosplay and prop making I'm hoping some of the veterans can share some of their techniques on how they make battle damage, weathering on their costumes. For me, I'm looking for Iron Man examples. I think it would be great to see some examples and have them explained from experienced people. I think the RPF has a wealth of information but sometimes it's a little spread out. Having some more focused threads would save a ton of time searching.
The best way I've seen a weathering technique is "color washing" the creases and beveled areas. Just youtube that for instructions. As for doing a battle damage for an Iron Man suit, what I've done was add round "dings and dents" to simulate bullet hits and some gouges on the parts before paint. I also used a chrome paint base (before you paint your main color) then used Vaseline on the edges and areas where you have the "damages" and then paint over it. Once the paint dries, you can just chip off the paint on the areas with Vaseline.
Awesome, that's the kind of stuff I'm looking forTigerblood said:
Liquid masking lets u do more fine detail for scuffs and weathering before painting.
Yea, I saw a tutorial where a guy used ketchup.
For areas where you want to simulate the paint having been rubbed off over time as opposed to having been chipped off I like to paint over a base coat of silver or chrome and then carefully sand away using 0000 steel wool. This will gradually sand away the top coat to expose the base coat, this is particularly useful for edges of parts and raised surfaces which would get rubbed away over time.
One thing to keep in mind with battle damage is to think about how old you want the damage to appear to be. If it's (relatively) fresh you don't need to do anything but if it's supposed to be old damage then you'll probably want to darken it down with a black wash or something similar so it's not shiny and new looking. Black smudges along dings are also good, especially if you want to simulate damage from something exploding on the armor.
On the flipside of that, you can use silver Run'n buff to create the effect over the paint, rather than sanding the paint off to reveal the undercoat
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