Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style (now with a hand!)

For a long time now I've wanted to do a super villain costume. I prefer costumes with helmets / armor, so Doctor Doom was a great choice. He's also a generally awesome bad guy

Originally I thought I would do the version from the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon since I've been watching and enjoying that...



I dug out some Chavant Le Beau Touche clay and an old face casting and started working on it. I got about this far:



When I realized that this just doesn't look like Doctor Doom to me. In context it would make sense, but just laying on a table it looked more like something out of 300 than the Doctor I knew as a kid.

A bunch of re-working and The Books of Doom version was born!



I pressed rivets into the clay then made a waste mold to get a resin copy to refine more:



Right out of the mold I knew I wasn't happy:

• The cheeks are all wrong
• the mask doesn't go far enough back on my face
• the rivets are too big and too flat

I extended the back edge of the mask with scrap sintra (seen in the last pic) then smoothed it with Smooth On's Free Form Air epoxy dough..



I also sanded off the rivets completely.



A bit more sanding and smoothing then I vacuum formed a test mask over the sculpt (this is why I like to use epoxy/resin masters vs. clay!)



Next was a re-work of the jaw and brow lines to better match the comic reference.





Once it was all smoothed out, I used a tip that I picked up from one of Volpin Prop's blog posts: Using scrapbooking stickers for rivets!



Another mold made, another cast pulled!



(not shown, 2 total fail castings! one was full of bubbles, the other a bad mix of resin that never got harder than rubber)

Casting this is a beast... avoiding bubbles in all those little rivets is annoying! I got the hang of it eventually though, so that's good

Next up: painting and working on the body armor (vacuum formed)

Here's the first small piece of armor:



Pink EPS foam sealed with Smooth On Epsilon epoxy. I'll sculpt the details on that with apoxie sculpt then vac form right over it. I'm only hoping to get a few suits out of it so I'm not worried about long term longevity.

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

Awesome build!! I really like the way the mask came out...what kind of fabric have you thought of using for the hood/robe?

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

Thanks!

I'm on the fence... I am thinking an upholstery velvet would have the appropriate Monarch in a Big Stone Castle feel. I'm not looking forward to paying for that, but I'll do what I have to

First I'm going to take care of the body armor so that I can accurately gauge how much fabric I'll need.

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

I've been playing around with finishing styles on some of the B grade castings I've done:

Rub & Buff:

Camera Roll-592 by stormtrooperguy, on Flickr

Pros: I like the finish of rub & buff a lot. It's got a nice feel to it, goes on easy, and can be shined up nicely.
Cons: Buffing around the rivets is a pain. Buffing over the rivets quickly wears the finish away entirely. Really hard to get a good shine.

Plain old chrome spray paint:



This one was a mask that ended up not having a good finished surface... the material I used (Smooth On Free Form Air) is tough to get really really smooth. Since it was a bit pitted anyway, I just ran with it and weathered the heck out of it. I'm thinking this is a FF trophy room mask!

Pros: Easy. Spray. done.
Cons: It's really tough to get a blemish free spray-chromed surface. I think the chrome might be too shiny anyway.

Next up is using a less shiny spray.

I'm not using cold cast since I want the vac formed armor and face mask to match. So, whatever I do has to work on HIPS.

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

that looks fantastic! (no pun intended) really the best dr doom mask i've seen

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

question where did you learn to do all that the molding and casting because i have no idea.

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

I would be very interested in getting a cast if you are going to do a run of these. Looks "Fantastic" pun intended

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

Thanks!!

GeneralD said:

question where did you learn to do all that the molding and casting because i have no idea.

Click to expand...

Reading lots of posts here and lots of trial and error. If you have a Reynolds Advanced Materials store near you they do on site workshops that are really good.

I may post a few up in the junkyard. I'm still getting the hang of construction. I'm using a thin layer of Smoothcast 65D resin on the surface so that I get a nice smooth finish, then reinforcing that with Free Form Air. If the Free Form is applied while the resin is still tacky they seem to bond well.

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

Looks great, and a wonderful reproduction of the BoD look! Does that Air Dough work well with Bondo or Filler putty to remove the ever so annoying small imperfections?

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

Thanks for posting what you did, and how you improved it. You Mark II was much better. Mark I ain't bad, but you went from walking to super leap.

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

ManitobaMando said:

Looks great, and a wonderful reproduction of the BoD look! Does that Air Dough work well with Bondo or Filler putty to remove the ever so annoying small imperfections?

Click to expand...

The air is interesting to work with... the consistency is sort of like marshmallow fluff. It's a terrible spot filler, but good at building up a lot of mass quickly. It's also extremely light and very strong for the weight, which makes it awesome for masks.

For something where surface imperfections are OK (like the Jason hockey masks I've made), I just use the dough. When I really want a smooth, high shine finish it's easier to use a resin.

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

I've been perfecting the casting process, and have ALMOST got it right. I've got quite a collection of B castings to post up soon!

The big trick is to get all those rivets to be bubble free.

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

Awesome build man, I'm hacking away at my own doom now! I really dig the battle worn look you gave it, how are you making your armor?

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

The body armor is going to be vacuum formed. I'm starting with the right hand and working my way up from there. Under the tunic I'm probably going to recycle some clone trooper armor since it won't be seen. The arms and legs will be new.

Re: Doctor Doom, Books of Doom style

Here is the first finished mask:



Finish is Rub & Buff with acrylic weathering, assembled for display, not wearing. Next up will be the wearable one

I've got the prototype of my right hand done...

Test fit, Doom's right hand - YouTube

The pieces are just taped together so movement is a bit awkward, but I like the look overall. 22 pieces of vacuum formed plastic on one hand! I've started sanding the plates but still have a lot more to do. The finger plates will be permanently mounted to my gloves. The wrist and hand will be connected with elastic straps so that they can flex but return to position. Elastic straps around the hand, foam padding in the wrist. Whee!

Very nice.

love the hand pieces!

nice man, really dig the hand plates.

Work has been slow, but is progressing...

I've got 1 hand complete, and test pulls done on the arm:



I'm hoping to do the final pulls of the arms tonight.

I've also been experimenting with "magic lights" in my hands... how much LED can I power with 1 9v battery (what will fit easily into the gauntlet)

This is 5:


I think I can go a bit further. As it is now I can walk safely in a totally dark room by the light of these... My goal is to have enough light shine from my finger tips that it will blow out any photo that is taken of me, resulting in big balls of green light.

Last, I have the fabric... an entire bolt of dark green upholstery fabric that should look great (slightly coarse cotton, with a satin lining for the cape).

I'm going to reuse the breastplate and shoulders from my clone trooper armor sculpt... they won't be seen, so they are just for shape.