Pepper Potts's Rescue Armor

I've been a lurker here for a couple of years now, but have rarely posted. However, my friends and I have started the process of a Rescue armor build and I know that this is something that many people have questions about, so I thought I'd share our process. I will be editing together a video documentary to post once this is all over with, but for now, I will just update with pictures.

I had commissioned Master Le to make the 1616 build for me, but once I saw her new armor, I fell completely in love with it (not actually being a fan of the 1616 in the first place). But I had planned to not worry about it since my 1616 was already being built.

Then Matt Fraction (who is my favorite comic book writer right now) mentioned in a pod cast how he's looking forward to seeing me as Rescue again this year and everything, and my friend Kit Quinn told me that there's not way I can't do the new armor now, lol.

Neither of us have any experience with armor making, but she really wants to learn, so we've both been doing this together under the wise tutelage of Mike Schiffbauer.

Our first stage was to make a body cast of myself. We just used plaster strips bought from Micheal's, cut them, covered my body in saran wrap (cause Vasaline is too messy) and laid the plaster strips on top. We did this in sections, not my entire body at once. I still ended up passing out at the end, though. But the good news: the cast was saved! lol

It took an entire day, but it worked well and didn't cost too much. Once the casts dried, we shored them up by adding more strips to the edges and any weak spots.

Instead of posting pictures for this stage, you can see some in Kit's article on Comic Impact about it. It goes more into detail than I did:

ComicImpact.com » Blog Archive » DIY Rescue Armor Part I

This weekend we will strengthen the casts and start sculpting the pieces out of clay. I'll post pictures and thoughts on that once it happens.

Wow very interesting process!
Cant wait to see how your build turns out!!

very cool, i might have to give this a shot when i begin work on Rescue for my fiancee

*subscribed, look forward to updates!

We worked all through Saturday and Sunday on this project, and Kit and I were joined by two friends to help out on Saturday. The first thing we needed to do was to make the plaster masters more sturdy, since once we start sculpting the clay on top, they could easily break.

We did this by just mixing up some plaster and basically finger painting it on the insides of each piece, giving them about 2 or 3 layers. The plaster died quickly, so this wasn't that painful of a task.



Some of the pieces warped when they dried, so we had to crack them and bend them in the right place, so that's what the tape is holding together.

Here's a before and after of the insides of the pieces:





After this, we took a permanent marker and drew the outline of what needed to be sculpted on each and sculpted the clay pieces on. I won't go into detail here, because we ended up finding a better method, which we will give a try this weekend and I will talk about it then.

But we hit a set back here in that Micheal's gave me the wrong kind of clay. You need oil based for this and I found a bunch of clay that didn't say whether or not it was. All the employees swore it was oil based. Clearly that was not true, seeing as how we left Saturday with this:



And woke up the next morning to this:



We have better clay and we will be using that in tandem with foamies for take two. Honestly, while this is a set back, the good news is, it took far less time then we had thought. So while we have to re-do it, it's not as big of a deal anymore.

I know I probably didn't explain any of this well, so if you have any questions, just ask. And for fun, here's a picture of just one portion of the mess we made:

Looks like a few set backs but this will be amazing once you complete it!!!
Always Love to see determination!

Thanks for sharing. Best of luck to you on this new suit.

The mess is part of the process! Interesting process I will keep in mind.

I told Kit you guys should try Paper Clay. Way easy to work with and air dries and you can sand it and paint right on it, it is also very light weight when it dries. Also, it will not crack like that clay you got. If it does, you simply fill in the cracks with some paper clay and water. I love that stuff. Made my Ulala props with it. Learned about it from another cosplayer who made a helmet with it. It is pricey about $12 bucks for 1 lb. of it but it is totally worth it.

Also, was thinking maybe Wonderflex then overlay your pieces with Friendly Plastic or Plasti-Dip.

I hope this works out for you girl!

Good to see you posting over here on the RPF. I've seen you around on other forums, but never realized I hadn't seen you on this one until you mentioned it...

Looks like a fun project. What do you plan to make the finished product out of? Going the foamie route?

Annisse, I like the sound of that stuff, but it's a little out of our price range. Plus, we have a method and we want to stick with it instead of trying everyone else's tips, cause then it's like having too many cooks in the kitchen. This cracking crap wouldn't have happened if the employee's at Micheal's had their **** together and gave me what I asked for. Or if I hadn't gone against my better judgement, lol. But I will keep that stuff in mine for my Wasp head piece.

Darth Mule, yea, I'm rarely on here because I only sew. I don't do much prop making. This costume is very outside of my comfort zone, but it's a fun learning process.

We are most definitely NOT going with foamie, lol. I figure if we're going to actually take the time to so a body cast and do some sculpting, there's not reason not to continue that and use better quality materials. Fomaie is great if you can't body cast, but we want to do this right. We're going with resin for the final casts.

Lady S said:

Darth Mule, yea, I'm rarely on here because I only sew. I don't do much prop making. This costume is very outside of my comfort zone, but it's a fun learning process.

Click to expand...

I mostly sew as well. That's what the costume forum is for. We leave all the heavy lifting to the prop forum... Well, and the gazillion Iron Man armorers here. :lol

Can't wait to see more progress.

No need to chuck the clay It's just water based so when you aren't working on it you need to keep it all in a plastic bag with a wet cloth, just make sure the wet cloth is not on the plaster or the sculpt.

I actually wish I had a big batch of water based clay as for large pieces like this is it really nice and easy to smooth (sponge and water). That said my budget plasticine is super easy to clean (heat in pot, pour through net, let set) so can be recycled.
(I got my plasticine for $NZ5/pound and have used it on a number of projects so far, it's just DAS if you happen to have any near by.)

ETA: Though the person who sold it to you really really should have been paying attention. I've had a lot of those sorts of interactions... sigh.

It will be interesting to see how this one comes along keep up the good work

Hope this didn't die on the vine after all the hard effort on the casts.