Ironman Costume for 5yr old - LINKS on PAGE 1 - tips & important bits

Great Job! That's Reall Cool....It's cute the fact that its made for a toddler. Hope to see more soon! Keep Building!....

Awesome! love to see other dads working costumes for their kids. Looks like a great start with the helmet. Keep the pics coming as it comes along.

Kids woke up at 6:30am this morning... The only positive thing about this is that I got to do a bit of light weathering on the helmet. I'm always surprised how just a little bit of weathering goes a long way toward making the pieces look very 'real.'

Weathering done with basic acrylic black paint (wiped off with a moist cloth). I tested a bit of silver rub-n-buff, but I didn't like the look of it. I might still consider it on the edges of the chest pieces or elbows/knees, but I'm skipping it for the helmet.

As I let some of the final painting dry on the helmet pieces, I started in on another piece I believe won't be too effected by another 6 months of grown (between now and Halloween). In this case, it's the pep file entitled 'Cod Piece.'

Just for reference, I'm individually scaling each pep file to fit (as it seems like a universal scale % isn't going to work for my a kid at 5-6yrs old). I also plan to modify the pieces I select to create via pep to make it easier for Mikey to move and wear the costume. In the end a very sharp looking armored suit that Mike will wear is more important to me than trying to stay true to the movie-accurate Mark III.

So, with that said, my working plan for the 'Cod Piece' is to modify this into more of a waist\belt-like unit without the rigid crotch piece connected between the legs (front to back). I've read a couple posts from people that have worked on kid Ironman builds and this piece seems to be a hard one to get 'right' for small bodies, so this seems like the best plan for my build.

However, we all know that plans always go out the window when you start to execute. lol

Here is the fully pepped piece after I've painted the inside with fiberglass resin. When this dries I'll paint the outside and then go back and use cloth fiberglassing on the inside before starting the bondo and sanding stages.

wow!! Great work. I love the blackwashing effect on the helmet.

The helmet is awesome

Thanks for all your positive comments! It certainly helps keep my enthusiasm up.

I had a very busy day with the family, so I didn't have much time to work on the Ironman project... I did manage to move the Cod piece along by Fiberglassing the outside (shown here hanging up to dry in my carport) and I touched up the gold 'chin' on the helmet. That should be the final application of the black-washing treatment. I might still do some brushed metal effect work on the gold faceplate, and I'm probably going to clear coat the whole thing for protection and a nice gloss effect - but those will have to wait until I see how some of the other pieces come out.


I've also be playing around with glove options. I purchased two different kinds of gloves and I have a couple materials I think I'm going to test out; however, I haven't landed at the right pep scale yet (despite two different print outs). I think I'll make full post coming up on just the gloves... Until then here's two more pics.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

GENERAL MUSING ABOUT TINY GLOVES
The issue with creating a nearly half-scale Ironman suit, is that some pieces just don't scale well (and remain functional to wear). Ironman's gloves are proving to be one of those pieces for me. I definitely need fully functional gloves for Mikey with as close to 100% mobility as I can achieve; however, Mikey's hands and fingers are tiny - and not perfectly scaled down 'adult' hands.

As this webpic shows, the finger length of kid hands is very much shorter than adult fingers. They are also shaped differently - more tapered toward the ends than adult fingers.

I actually remember Peter Jackson talking about the issue with using small people or kids for hobbits in LotR, and specifically stating that hand-size and shape didn't look 'right' unless they used camera tricks to 'shrink' full-sized adults. That's certainly the issue I'm currently running it with Mikey's armored gloves.

UNDER ARMOR BASE GLOVES - To Stretch, or Not to Stretch:
My first challenge was finding base-gloves that would properly fit Mikey's hands. I knew from last winter, the best fitting children gloves were Magic Stretch gloves.
These are a very tight knit-looking glove made up of 95% acrylic / 5% spandex. They are tiny, but very stretchy. They also only cost $1-$2US each.

I picked up a couple of pairs of these and also purchased a couple of pairs of the smallest cotton dress gloves I could find online.


The non-stretchy cotton gloves didn't fit AT ALL, so I endeavored to modify the fingers to Mikey-Size (via hand-stitching). This fit his fingers perfectly, but left WAY too much material in the palm of the glove and a large (awkward) space between the thumb and pointer finger. The end result of this experiment was to convince me that the only way to get a pair of non-stretching material gloves will be to buy fabric and sew them myself.

So, I have the stretching gloves that fit and I have confidence that I can sew up a pair of non-stretching gloves that will fit. That leaves me with the following conundrum: Do I want stretchy or non-stretchy base gloves?

I think the stretch gloves fit very nicely, but will probably be harder to attach armor pieces to (especially the larger palm pieces) and might prove problematic when I begin painting detail between armor plates. The non-stretch gloves will be easier to attach armor pieces to, but will not fit as well or allow much for growth over the next few months.

PEP vs SCRATCH BUILD
My other decision I'm wrestling with is in regard to using the pep files or just scratch building something relatively close to what the movie gloves look like.

Pepping these tiny pieces will be a pain the arse, and take considerable time. On the other hand (no pun intended), I have purchased some thin styrene sheets from a local hobby shop. I think I could fairly easily create some bands of armor along each finger even if they are just simple circular bands rather than the more movie-accurate squarish shape. I'm currently leaning toward the styrene method.

LIGHT IT UP!
Scale plays another part of my choice of repulsor lights. Most of the simple prefab LED light units folks are using for their adult-size suits will be way too big for Mikey's hands. So, the other day I picked up two 9 LED mini-flashlights, that I will cut down to just the thickness of the LEDs and then wire it to the main battery power pack for the suit. The circumference of the mini-flashlight housing is almost perfectly scale for my 5yr old's hand and the light is intensely bright.

Now, I'm no electrical engineer so this next part will have to trial and error... I'd like to add sound and a nice strobe effect on the LEDs; however, I'm no breadboard-geek, so I have to make due with crap I can wire together (anyone with EE experience that would like to build me up something for this - please feel free!).

I ran across this cheap toy at Wal-Mart last night for $6.
One of it's two sound effects seems to resemble a repulsor sound. My first thought was to pick it up and see if (after I ripped out the lights and other crap) I could connect it to the same circuit that the repulsor glove lights would be connected to so the light and sound would happen at the same time. I would (theoretically) only need one of these toys, as I could house the toy anywhere within the suite. Then I could either let the sound come from the toy (if it was housed in the chest let's say), or I could get REALLY fancy and run speaker wires back to the gloves (where tiny speakers could produce the sound right there at the glove). I might still play with that idea if I have some spare time.

GETTING STARTED...
Finally, I guess I need to get started on the glove project (even if I haven't made all my design decisions yet). The first step is to get a rough mold of Mikey's hands (or at least ONE of them).

I just purchased two kits designed to make plaster casts of an infant's foot and hand. These kits actually use Alginate and were only $10. I figured a package designed to do an infant foot & hand, might do one of Mikey's hands... If I'm lucky the TWO kits I bought will get me BOTH of his hands... If not, I'll have plenty of material for a very good mold of at least one hand.

I doubt I'll use the kit's plaster for the final cast, however. I think I'd rather have a cast done in resin than plaster. I think it will handle the abusive use I plan to put it through while creating the glove pieces and attaching them to whichever type of glove I finally go with.


I'll take some pictures tonight and let you know how it goes. Until then, any thoughts, comments or ideas on the gloves for Mikey would be greatly helpful!

Thanks,
Jon

Wow, awesome work!

You've got one lucky kid there. I'm not often jealous of 5-year-olds (Though I do find myself wishing I could have nap time most days ) but this is an exception. Not only is that a good helmet for a child to wear, that would be a fantastic helmet for ANYONE...if only their head fit.

I've got to ask, how did you get that inner lip (the part that the faceplate rests against) so perfect? It's little things and attention to details such as those that always boggle my mind.

-Nick

TheNickFox said:

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I've got to ask, how did you get that inner lip (the part that the faceplate rests against) so perfect?

Nick,

Thanks for the kind words.

There are two 'lip' areas I created. One for the main helmet section (which the faceplate lays on) and the lip around the removable back section of the helmet (which overlaps underneath the main helmet section).

As a disclaimer, this is my first helmet build - and first time working with these materials so, folks on this site and others might have better ways to execute this. It's probably a good idea to look around and check out all the master builders here.

Anyway, here's what I did...

First off, I built these after I had fiberglassed the pepped helmet, applied and sanded bondo to make everything smooth and then hit the whole helmet with several coats of primer.





I then cut the pieces apart - which left either NO edge, or very ugly edges all around.



I sanded down the rough edges, and with hot glue and card stock paper, I created the lips I wanted on each of the pieces. The card stock is the easiest thing I could think of to make this out of, as you can manipulate it the easiest and still have it hold its shape. I also continually kept checking to make sure the faceplate fit nicely all the way around.

Then I fiberglassed the cardstock to give it rigidity - including a fiber layer on the inside (or backside) of the lip.

In visible areas (like the faceplate overlap), I applied bondo and sanded it smooth with a combination of dremel, small scraps of sand paper and needle files.

Once smooth, I added all the electronics and magnets and then painted the whole thing with primer again. In this image (below), you can actually see some of the slight 'wave' that the card stock had at the top right-hand side of lip. This isn't as noticeable in the final stages as the faceplate (up or down) masks that small issue nicely.



Sorry, I don't have pictures of the creation of the lips. When I do another piece that requires one, I'll definitely take some pictures.

I was able to get my Mikey-hand created last night!!!

It took all the alginate in both kits I bought to get on full-hand mold for my son, but after some resin-pouring help from a friend, I've now got a full-size Mikey-hand that I can begin building the repulsor and glove armor on.



This is only his right hand... I'll probably need to do the same thing for his left hand - we'll see.

PM sent Indie.

Wow and I thought making an adult costume was going to be tricky, good luck and keep us posted on your progress

So, I was wandering through Ace Hardware this week - as I tend to do when I have some free time after lunch. As I zig-zagged through the isles, I found these 5/8" dia plastic furniture feet. They seemed about the right size for the end of the finger tips for Mikey's Ironman glove armor, so I picked them up ($1.75 - 4 pack). I also picked up a pack of 1/2" ones too (thinking they might work better for Mikey's tiny pinky finger tips).



I know that the movie-accurate finger armor is more squarish and these would be round, but I was already leaning toward creating styrene bands for his tiny fingers anyway - rather than trying to create teeny-tiny pep fingers that would require fiberglassing and probably bondo to make them smooth and ready to paint.

I do want to modify them slightly. Here's what I'm currently planning to try...



I'll post the result of this little test whether it works or not - just for reference.

that fingertip idea is genius :P

Cod Piece update...

So, I said I had the scale perfectly on the first try for this piece... and that was exactly true. After hardening the pep with figerglass it was pretty tight to get on and off. If Mikey grows over the next 6 months, it would need to be a bit larger.

Instead of re-pepping a full piece, I decided to just graft in two 1" expansion bands (one on each side of the cod piece unit).



I hot glued these pieces into place (after slicing the sides open) and then began the inside fiberglassing with re-enforcing material (in this case cut up old t-shirts). I'll have to do the other half of the inside tomorrow when this dries, but then I should be ready to start the bondo and sanding process.





Nite all!

wish i was that kid.

wow I have the same flashlight for the arc reactor light I am working on ... good idea for it to also be in the repulsor light

The non-stretchy cotton gloves didn't fit AT ALL, so I endeavored to modify the fingers to Mikey-Size (via hand-stitching). This fit his fingers perfectly, but left WAY too much material in the palm of the glove and a large (awkward) space between the thumb and pointer finger. The end result of this experiment was to convince me that the only way to get a pair of non-stretching material gloves will be to buy fabric and sew them myself.



I had similar problems finding gloves for my 3.5 yr olds Vader costume. In leather no less. I had thought of the magic gloves- but found really tiny leather gloves at a horse and tact store. Not sure if you want to go leather or not, but they are well constructed and have a black spandex material sewn in-between the fingers to allow some stretch. Just something to pass on incase you want to go that route. The magic gloves are a lot cheaper though. The ones I got for Nick were $20.00.

TK171 said:

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I had thought of the magic gloves- but found really tiny leather gloves at a horse and tact store. Not sure if you want to go leather or not, but they are well constructed and have a black spandex material sewn in-between the fingers to allow some stretch.

I'll definitely look into this -- thanks for the heads up!

Do you remember a brand or product name for those? I could probably find a horse and tact shop here in East Tennessee, but it might make finding a supplier on-line easier.

The big make-or-break test for the Magic Gloves that is vinyl/fabric paint. I need to have these gloves painted Ironman red as a base coat, and then detailed (by hand) with a ridged pattern. This will only show up in between the segmented armor plates of the gloves, but it's important for the look of the piece.

So, if the paint looks like crap on this woven material, I'm going to have to go another route... and your tiny leather glove idea might be a great option.

Thanks, again!
Jonathan

P.S. I LOVE the work you're doing on the Vader Costume! Very cool!

Thanks Jonathan!

Still had the tags, just to make sure they fit him and I didn't have to return them.

They are made by SSG gloves/Fargo trading. May make other styles or even colors, I don't know.

The ones I got are SSG pro show leather palm. Style 4000 in size 3. They go from size 2-10.

Tags says:
Thin and soft, Lycra between fingers insures comfortable fit, key areas reinforced, top grain leather. Again, a little more money, but I think you paints will work better on them and they should fit well if the right size. Because of the Lycra, the finger tips will work length wise and if a thicker finger the Lycra will allow for it.

Maybe even check eBay?.

Good luck. Fun watching this

TK171 said:

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SSG pro show leather palm. Style 4000 in size 3. They go from size 2-10.

Awesome! Thanks - there are two SSG retailers here in Knoxville, TN, so I'll definitely go check them out!

Very nice. Your kid will be the envy of his peers.