Hey guys, thanks to stealth and ROBO, I built, coated and spray painted an entire War Machine and 3 quarters of Iron Man in 2 weeks in a rush effort to get them ready for my birthday night out. Here's how they turned out:
The time scale is something I'm very proud of considering how they turned out. Sadly they took a real beating on the night out and are in desperate need of repairs. Ill be re-coating them in PVA glue then plastic coating them using xrobots method (found here: xrobot plastic coating)... Then obviously a respray.
I also have a full time job and an active social life. If I'd had more time I would have done the plastic coating and it probably would have only added half a week on to the overall time. Hope this inspires people to get cracking.
A few things i learned during the last 2 years since i first became interested in this:
I used interlocking floor mats on war machines chest, back, biseps and forearms, and it is an absolute nightmare to work with. Its way to thick and way to rigid. I used cheap ebay camping mats for most of iron man and it is WAAAYY to flimsy. Use good quality camping mats, around 6-10mm and you should be fine. Sainsburys camping mats are pretty much perfect for you UK people.
The red I used is nightfire red from halfords in the UK. This is too dark for some people, but I really like it, gives him a more sinister presence. The gold was a mock up of some crappy gold the hlafords guy mixed up and i had to lighten it with the silver.
Make sure you do at LEAST 3 coats of PVA glue, any less and you can guarantee the paint will crack.
If the PVA glued piece warps, do not force it back into shape, the part will split and damage. My cod part is screwed due to this.
Craft knives are a nice under certain circumstances, but i haven't found an application that cant be achieved using scissors. To obtain an angle using scissors, just place the scissors as you would normally around the foam to cut. Then pivot them round to the right and cut, the foam will bend round the scissors but achieve your 45 degree angle cut, and you can still follow the line.
Keep your spare off cuts of foam. Stealths duct tape mannequin is great but mine died as it was to heavy packed with clothes. Recycle your off cuts of foam and jam them in the dummy. I would also like to add that my mate nearly ended up circumcised and minus one ball while making the dummy, although I found this absolutely hilarious, do be careful! A ball-less mate, is an unhappy mate.
I found superglue much easier to work with than hot glue. I got sick of being burned every 2 seconds. Having tried many types of superglue, I find loctite is the ONLY option. Buy it in bulk from ebay and you get a good price. Approximately 10 x 7.5g tubes will be sufficient.
I used iron man cod and ribs section on war machine, because the war machine parts were to time consuming. His abs were built by hand, thats why theyre **** lol. I will remake this part eventually with the correct pieces.
The entire abs and ribs section are permanently attached to the COD on both armours (as seen in the war machine foam cod files if you have them).The right side of the abs is hot glued to the ribs part, and the left side is attached using velcro, the split goes from the top of the abs, right down through the crease of the cod. Pissing is not a problem at all. If you look you can see the split. A few extra pieces were added before the PVA glue part for vlecro attachments. Will provide pictures if desired.
I added an extra tier to the top of the ribs and abs to ensure they do not slip out from under the chest. This looks much tidier and never leaves a gap when you lift your arms.
Abs were created by adding an extra cm to the bottom of each big ab piece and just over lapped them onto the next part. Same with the neck piece.
Rush arc section was a smaller triangle that slotted in and out of the chest section with a triangle piece of laminated paper glued to it (picture below), looked absolutely fine. The light was obtained using a head torch clipped into the hole you can see in the middle of the triangle gap. Batteries lasted well over 24 hours (forgot to turn it off as i was drunk).
Notice mario in the mirror in the photo?
Red shiny metalic leggins for Iron man (blush). Seriously guys: RED, I can't say this enough, so many of you wear black underneath and it breaks up the image really badly, looks messy! I would have also worn a metallic red top but didn't have time to buy one. For war machine wear metallic silver leggins and top. You ruin the entire look by thinking you can hide in the shadows of black.
I know iron mans head is to big. This was my fourth attempt at the correct size and it was starting to p*ss me off so I settled with this.
I'm exactly 6 foot tall, slim build, the only scaling I did was 95% on back and chest of iron man and also once the biseps were complete I cut a 2 inch strip up the back of them then glued it back together. Slimmed up the biseps to suit my proportions. Very happy I did this.
I bought 500ml of each colour from halfords then used 500ml of thinner to thin each colour down to make a litre of each. Obviously had some gold and silver left over but the red was just right. I used the remainder of the red to apply extra coats.
I highly suggest everyone ups the scale on war machine a few percent on upper body parts. He looks like an absolute weed. Way to thin. Legs are fine.
I will probably add more tiers onto the iron man neck, I'm like a giraffe.
Again, a huge thank you to Robo and stealth for your amazing efforts.
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