Iron Man - my progress and notes.

Hi Group.
This has been a long time coming.
Within this thread, I hope to document my tutorials, tips, and tricks.

My suit is a TMP. It was one of the very first, but was constantly evolving. I recently acquired the final helmet scuplt to change the suit up a bit.

I will eventually detail how I assembled the suit and tips on how I wear it.

When I obtained the suit in Dec 2008, I was 240lb-242lb 6' 2".
From 2008, towards the end of 2010; health issues bumped me up to 258lbs. At 240lb...I was the limit in the suit. Anything heavier than that; the suit was a real chore to put on and wear.
Currently, I am down to 237lb and still going down.

Enough of the jargin - lets get to it.

LED Eye Kit from Darkjerre.
Somewhere's around a Gen 8 TMP helmet.

I wanted eye lenses that had a mirror finish on the exterior. Kinda like C.H.i.P.S Police Sunglasses.
I wound up making custom lenses from 1/8th plexi and covered them in mirror-finish, limo window film.
I had hotglued the lenses in, made some cardboard light boxes to put Darkjerre's LEDs in.
Even though my lenses were flat, I got A LOT of light bleed around the boxes. Not only was I trying to cope with a fix, everything I ended up doing made it worse.
The LEDs are so bright, it seemed as though the entire lense was capturing the light. While outside with the LEDs on, I could see, "okay"...wearing the helmet inside, I lost visibility almost 100%. Not much of a range for vision in such a small eye socket to begin with.

I quickly made up my mind to tear it all out and start over.

I ended up using some old gray speaker grills.
I cut several strips of leather; left-overs from my Darth Vader Chest Box kit from Dale at Galaxy Trading (yea, a looong time ago lol).
You've probably heard of me harping on my super-duper automotive glue I always use. It is emblem adhesive that drys super darn fast, and clear.

In the pics below, you can see the method I deployed to build lightboxes directly onto the circuit board.

I installed some of that 1/8th" plexi with frosting to give a little LED diffusion.

I then strategically plotted where to glue the light fixtures to the speaker grills. I only get one shot at this...the glue is that good.

Once I made my measurements and glued the fixtures; I then hot glued the assemblies into the helmet.

Now - ya might call me crazy...you might hate the gray finish on the grills. BUT, consider this - I have ZERO light bleed. I have ZERO reflections in the helmet. I have ZERO problem with EYE FOG and I also have near perfect vision WITH ventalation. Soooo, losing the traditional, mirror lenses....mmmmm, I'm mkay with it
Plus, yes..you can "see" the light fixtures through the grills...I meant for that on purpose. With my face being further away, folks are going to be hard pressed to see my actual eyes or cheeks.

Darkjerre's LEDs are so bright, pictures do not do them justice. I was 40' away and I could STILL tell there were lights in the helmet.

Hi,

For some reason the pics aren't working. Wanted to check it out as I am glad you mentioned your weight. I am at 230 and funny enough building an IronMan costume is motivating me to loose weight even more then before.

That looks fantastic! I have a question, where can you buy extra speaker cover like you have? That's brilliant to add ventilation inside the black area in the cheeks. You might consider on the eye covers painting the non lit areas black, I'm sure it doesn't stand out very much in real life but when you get it with a flash in pictures you sort of lose the contrast. Great idea though!

Hi Decaturvader, great post and amazing result. Thanks for sharing it with us. We're pleased you like the eye kit.

Keep up the good work,

DarkJerre

MCL34N said:

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That looks fantastic! I have a question, where can you buy extra speaker cover like you have? !

Thanks guys.
Ya know, speaker grills (at least in my town of 75,000 people) are pretty hard to come by. I have even looked in junkyards to see what I could maybe salvage.
One day, a few years ago, I got lucky. My job was retiring a bunch of old Compaq computer monitors that had side-mount speakers. I pulled off some of those grills and just put em away for a rainy day. I got the idea to install this into my eyes while wearing my Vader mask. The sunlight hit my face just right during a birthday party, and the kids saw my face. Kinda ruined the moment. I put some of that inside, behind my lenses, and solved that problem. Looks pretty awesome too. Now, for folks who have eye fog issues, I would not suggest this since you can't wipe the lenses without taking the grill out.
Wish I would have saved more...but didn't. I have just a small amount left. If demand warrants, I could probably make a casting and reproduce the grill in resin for those interested. The castings would be flat, but I imagine you could bend the resin to suit an eye socket just fine.

Active Wire mesh sold at Micheals works great also as I use it in my IM eyes also. Can see just fine out of it.

Paul D.

Thanks to Darkjerre for another awesome set of LEDs.

My new helmet (illustrated above) just doesn't fit. It's cut too low from the back of the jawline all the way around. My earlobes hang out....my hair hangs all out....my neck seal doesn't line up at all....grrr...

So I bought another set of lights and modded my orginal helmet.

The process went far better than it ever has - must be getting good at it.

I changed things up a little bit this time.
I painted the grills black on the outside - just not the area in front of the LEDs.

I did NOT use any material inside the LED lightbox I built per eye; as I had done above on my new helmet.

What I prefer this time around, is the white material I put on the OUTSIDE of the black grills. I cut up a lid from a can of Bondo
It was thin enough, and white enough to difuse the LEDs and give a really neat contrast to the eye socket.
I wanted to make the white pieces more pointed on the far ends as the real mask, but it didn't look right; so I kept em rectangle.

The interior pics show my field of vision is pretty darn good. The field of vision reminds me of a Nike shoe symbol. That little swoop give me a lot of help.

I gotta line the mask a little and put new padding in; but it will be ready to troop in for Free Comic Book Day next month.

Very cool!
Congrats on the weight loss too. Please post pics from the comic book day too.

my son helped me demonstrate the effectiveness of the LEDs.

Here's a quick video in harsh, morning sunlight

http://www.decaturvader.com/rpf/ironman/IMG_0220.MOV

Nice work on the eye set up, looks great!

Free Comic Book Day was just this past weekend.
I brought my Vader suit out of a 3-year retirement so my 16yr old son could wear Iron Man.
I didn't have to tweak the suit much for him to fit into it - he's 5' 11" to maaybe 6'....prolly 200lbs.
I put some foam on his shoulders to raise the chest armor up a bit.
I also shoved some foam in a couple other spots to keep things from tweaking too much.
You'll notice there are two different IM helmets; one is the original, one is the most recent sculpt.
The most recent sculpt helmet does not fit me - it is cut far too short, causing my ears and hairline to hang all out.
However, the neck seals line up better using the smaller helmet on my Son....soooo, looks like I stick with the original helmet for me,
newer helmet when he wears it.
A newer set of untrimmed neck seals might solve the issue, but at this point; I don't care anymore.
The Darkjerre LEDs in the eyes worked great, and lasted us all day.

When I wear the IM suit, the damage to paint is very, very minimal. Perhaps I am just more mindfull of the rubbing points than my son -
but he was hard on the suit. There are spots under the armpits and between the thighs where he rubbed all the way down to fiberglass...
so I get to break out the airbrush and start touching up paint.

On to some pics -

Looks great - both the formally retired Darth Vader and your son in the IM suit! I think it's awesome that you both costumed for FCD! What a cool Father-Son activity!

Thanks!
IT is uber cool that my kid has joined in.
My wife is considering suiting up now too.
On the table for possible outfits for her are;
Black Widow
Boushh
Cobra baroness

Great work mate, Both costumes look the business, your TMP suit looks all the better for the mods Bringing my latest TMP to near completion.

Great to see your pics here. The V1 still looks awesome!

Thanks Steve. I still have not achieved red gloves like yours.
I tried one hand using black leather; and yea - once ya sweat a little, it is really hard to get off. I wish I could have gloves JUST like my Vader ones, but in a burgandy.

ROBOSTEVE 0671 said:

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Could you maybe line the inside with a set of cotton gloves as an 'underglove'? so you don't stick to the leather set? my Iron Man gloves were originally black leather but they were lined, they do stick a little but with someone to help get them off they worked a treat. I'm no longer using them as I've not got a set of solid resin ones with seperate fingers for the new build from Leslee (Masked Rider) . I'll share pics once the new TMP build is complete.

Spray painting leather gloves...how'd that really work out for ya??
I just can't imagine it not drying weird and getting all cracky.

I think I saw a glimpse of those new hands of yours via facebook or sumthin....I'd be interested to see how they work out for ya. It's a fit that I am trying to get away from so I can "feel" things better..grasp things better...

decaturvader said:

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Spray painting leather gloves...how'd that really work out for ya??
I just can't imagine it not drying weird and getting all cracky.

I think I saw a glimpse of those new hands of yours via facebook or sumthin....I'd be interested to see how they work out for ya. It's a fit that I am trying to get away from so I can "feel" things better..grasp things better...

Yeah I thought it'd be a problem with spray painting the leather but it worked out fine, no primer, just straight on automotive paint onto the leather. It cracked just a little but only very slight. Not noticeable at all.
The new gloves, I'll have very little feeling at all as these will have full on hard resin pieces for the fingers all the way around, They look great but I imagine they're not going to allow you grab stuff too well. A look that resembles the film gloves, I guess it's a compromise in aide of something that looks great, I'll have to let you know how I get on with those once I start costuming with this version.

Wow the eyes look awesome, I need to work on my helmet :-)

Zendragon said:

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Wow the eyes look awesome, I need to work on my helmet :-)

thanks Keith!
Ya know when the moment arrives when it all just starts to click.
As soon as I took the lenses out of my masks..and used those speaker grills...perfection.
Having a milky-white, transparent lid to a can of Bondo...perfect for installing on the OUTSIDE of the grills for diffusing the LEDs.
I just couldn't be happier with em. Only took me over two years

You guys look very cool, must have made a serious impression !!

great pics !

Jeroen