Doctor Who: New Series Cyberman

I was inspired at SDCC to finally start work on a project I've wanted to do for years, the new series Cyberman. After mulling over methods and cost for the last few days, today I won a voice changer helmet on ebay and officially kicked off the build. I also intend to buy Weaselfinger's helmet back when he has the opportunity to make more, but the rest of the costume will be made by me.

The pepakura files linked in another thread will be the base for the build, but I'm not sure if I'll use pepakura or foam to actually make the pieces. I love the ease of making raised details with foam but I don't like the sealing methods, I don't think they paint well at all, and I'd prefer the armor not be flexible. I've seen some foam that's pliable when heated but rigid once cooled, but unfortunately I haven't been able to track down what it's called or where I can get it. I'm also not sure if resin and bondo could be used on it without dissolving it. If anybody can point me in the right direction for that stuff or clue me in on the dissolving issue, it'd be much appreciated. I'm also looking for a way to mold some tubing for the undersuit and then cast it in a flexible foam.

As of this moment I don't have anything to show, and the build will take time. My planned completion date is the end of January. I'll be building from the bottom up, starting with the boots.

How about moulding and pulling the armour in fibreglass, to get the benefits of both easy detail buildup (foam) on the original form and a rigid end result? I believe that's the common approach in the BBC workshops.

I don't have the space or the money to make masters and then mold them. If I did I'd do it right in cold cast aluminum.

I couldn't find an answer anywhere, is it possible to coat that foam in polyester resin to harden it? I haven't been able to find the stuff Stealth recommended in his tutorial, but it sounds an awful lot like the same material as the "foamies" you can get from Jo-Ann's. I once got some polyester resin on one of those and it hardened like a rock, but it was a small piece and I don't know if it would have been brittle or otherwise compromised.

Risu said:

I've seen some foam that's pliable when heated but rigid once cooled, but unfortunately I haven't been able to track down what it's called or where I can get it.

Click to expand...

Is that Wonderflex?

if you use pepakura you can use aluminum powder with the resin to give in that metal look and save painting as that what they did on dr who.

" The ration of real aluminium powder to the resin is 1.5 to 1 so certainly by weight there's a lot of metal in it. "

Millennium FX
Cyberman Costume

Do you actually know of a way to do a cold cast surface coat? I've never heard of a way to do that. Millenium FX made molds and poured the aluminum/resin mix into them, a whole different process from pepakura. But if there was a way to paint on a cold cast mix, that would be pretty awesome.

I'll have a look at wonderflex.

I own the CO voice changer helmet proto, its cast from the same moulds that are used for the costumes. It pretty rough and like the voice changer helmets it is missing a quarter of the back. Long story short, with some work it could be made to be a great base master for the helmets. I am just throwing that out there as I am sure there are some that would like to get a cast of an actual helmet as MFX no longer makes them. Risu, if you want to chat more about it shoot me an email. Here are a few pictures of the proto cyber helmet next to a Voice Changer.







To clarify, I am not selling it but will donate resources to the cause for an accurate helmet.

Karsten

Risu said:

I don't have the space or the money to make masters and then mold them. If I did I'd do it right in cold cast aluminum.

I couldn't find an answer anywhere, is it possible to coat that foam in polyester resin to harden it? I haven't been able to find the stuff Stealth recommended in his tutorial, but it sounds an awful lot like the same material as the "foamies" you can get from Jo-Ann's. I once got some polyester resin on one of those and it hardened like a rock, but it was a small piece and I don't know if it would have been brittle or otherwise compromised.

Click to expand...

I think it was Ithica (but might not have been, can't find the video again) who was experimenting with resin on Foamies craft foam. He did a full sheet of 2mm to test it and it warped quite a bit. I'm sure if lighter coats and thicker foam was used it would come out ok. Wouldn't want to flex it to much though cause I bet the resin would crack.

Aww, why'd you have to go and show me that? Haha. Looks great, absolutely cannot afford another helmet. Maybe some day, but not this year.

I looked into wonderflex, it looks cool but not thick enough. I'm trying to track down some stuff that's 3/8" to 1/2" thick. At this point I'm thinking the foam would be perfect to build up the chest, crotch, and details on the arms and legs, and the bases for the limb pieces could be standard pepakura. The feet will be done with craft foam, probably 3 mm thick, possibly 4 mm.

You know I'll be following this with interest, Risu. Best of luck! Mine still has yet to make it off the ground, mostly due to life circumstances.

Ok found Ithica's Foam and Resin experiment. Jeshh it was from back in 2009. I'm sure he or others have done more experimenting since then.

Anyways here is the link to the video.
‪Foam and Resin‬‏ - YouTube

Hm, I'll have to give it a test myself. I've put some resin on a really small piece that was already glued down to a helmet and it turned into a rock, so I'm hoping if it's applied thin enough with multiple coats to let it first soak in, then cover the surface that it'll work out without deforming. If not, I can always resin the suit while wearing it.

After giving the pepakura files a good look and attempting to assemble one of the calf pieces I've decided that they're a bit too inaccurate for the build. The leg bits are what halted my Gordon Freeman costume way back as well because most people create pepakura files for people with legs the same length as mine, but much skinnier, making it impossible to scale the things to fit. I had hoped the Cyberman would be different since the suits were designed to be worn by bulky actors, but I guess not. So I had a look around the Cyberman builders forum and read up on familyman's build over here and decided to go the foam route completely. There were some templates posted on the other forum for all the pieces except the arms that I believe were traced off of the action figure and scaled up. For whatever reason, they were a bit lacking, but I've been working on them one at a time and today (even though it's not much) I wanted to post my first progress picture. Say hello to the first rough draft of my Cyber diaper.



I was going to start with the chest, but I was having trouble figuring out the scaling without having the cod piece to mark where the bottom of the abdomen should end up. At 6'2" with a 38" chest, I don't exactly fit the profile for a Cyberman, so getting the height right without forcing me to keep my arms sticking out will require some inventive tweaking to the templates.

EDIT: By the way, I've been thinking ahead to the undersuit and coming up dry on pictures of the back of the armor as well, and I remember that there was a member here that worked on the suits for the proms special last year that posted in one of the threads here and I briefly exchanged emails with. Unfortunately, I've changed email addresses and lost a lot of emails and I can't seem to find the thread. If you are that member or remember the thread I'm talking about and can link me to it, please either post here or shoot me a PM. It would be much appreciated.

Does anybody happen to know how tall the Cybermen are supposed to be? I'm assuming the helmet is going to add 4" to my height and I can easily get an extra 2" from the heel of my boots and a platform bottom inside the cyber boot, and that will make me 6'8" total. Is that enough? Should I be taller? I'm looking at lifts right now and it looks like I could cheaply get up to an extra 2.5" easy. Will I need it?

If you watch Army of Ghosts,the Doctor goes "Toe-to Toe" with a Cyberman, he is looking up slightly, based upon Davids known height, you should get a fairly good idea.

Oh wow. I just checked out the episode. The Cyber Leader was shorter than Tennant, must have been 5'9" tall without the helmet. That's really disappointing. How menacing are a bunch of tiny robots?

You know, looking through Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, it seems to me there are Cybermen that are at least DTs height (6' 1") slightly taller to the top of the helmet. I would go big like you want!

Yea, there's a whole range. If you look at a shot with a bunch of them you can see the armor pieces spaced out to different degrees. the taller ones have bigger gaps. Actually, now I get why the scale is so off for me on the chest section, because the actors weren't as tall as me. I just have to spread the ab pieces out a bit to try to get more length and close the gap between the abs and the diaper. As it is now the gap is about 6 inches when it should be 2.

Big updates coming soon, I should have the helmet tomorrow and the undersuit is under construction.

The helmet came in. The preloaded sounds and clips work fine, but the voice changer does nothing. I've heard some other people have had the same problem with these, is there some kind of trick? It didn't come with any instructions.

All in all, the helmet's not bad, but it does have a lot of room for improvement, not to mention a TON of air slots to fill. I did a test with rub n buff and the difference is really impressive, not sure how well it came out in the pictures, though.

Before RnB


Partial RnB


So for the undersuit I decided to go with the undersuit I made a couple years back for my Gordon Freeman costume as a base, then I'm going to make pieces of tube sections for the elbows, shoulders, knees, and abdomen area. Most of those parts are simple, but the abdomen is pretty complex. I'm going to use Spoonflower to print an image of the hoses and tubes onto some stretch fabric. Because I don't want any of the hoses to intersect, I'm starting by making a digital pattern of the garment that fits correctly, it's basically like a pair of really high waisted short shorts. Then I'll take the image of the tubes and layer it over the piece and morph the image so that the hoses follow the seam lines. After all the pieces are made, seam allowances are added, and the pieces are arranged on the fabric I'll place the order. Thanks go to E-Wan for helping me come up with this next part. I'll take a stiffer fabric as a base and cut it to shape, then do the same with some 1/4" foam batting minus the seam allowances and spray glue it down to the base fabric. Then I'll lay the stretch fabric on top, sew around the edges, and then quilt it down between each hose. After that's done and all the hoses are raised, I'll sew the pieces together, make a front velcro closure, and weather it with silver and black spray paints. So that's where I'll be going with this over the next few weeks. I may not update again until a lot of that is finished.

OK, I'm actually stuck on the undersuit. The images I have of the hoses and tubes aren't cutting it. Does anybody happen to have any good shots of that part of the suit that I might be able to piece together to make a large enough image? Any decently sized section of the undersuit that's not at an extreme angle might work. All I've got is the one from this page here:

Cyberman Costume

Which was taken at too much of an angle to be very useful.

EDIT: And an update on the helmet. At the beginning of the day I was worried the helmet was too small, but after gutting it I'm no longer worried. The aparatus they had in there before kept my face a whole 2" away from the front of the helmet, but once all that was removed the helmet fit like it should. After that I backfilled all the air vents and button holes with resin, then rondo, and now I'm doing detail work and filling seams with glazing putty. It's all going pretty smoothly.

No pictures, but I got the whole front of the helmet and ears filled and primed. Just waiting on an answer to a question about the back of the helmet and then I can finish the front half and make it silver.

The undersuit has gone nowhere. No feedback or pictures of the tubes, so I figured the next best thing would be to buy a bunch of hoses, cut them to shape, and take pictures to tweak in photoshop. Took one 45 minute trip to Home Depot to find out that's not a financially viable option at all. I might try a google image search for hoses that are lit well and juxtapose them all, not totally sure. Again, if anybody has an idea they think could help me out, I'm wide open.