No Time, No Money: Pegboard's Arkham Asylum Batman 3 Day Speed Build

Pegboard

New Member
A while back, right before the Dark Knight Rises Premiere, which I was planning to dress up for, my brother told me "Hey. I'd like to be Batman when I go to the premiere."
Batman costumes, at least when I've seen them, take a bit of time to complete, and would require money, which were two things I didn't have.

Obviously, a sucker for challenge, I said "sure!"

Below details the labors of my challenge.

I was addressed with these issues:
1. I was on an extremely limited budget, and didn't have anything on me except a hot glue gun, scissors, and some duct tape.
2. My brother is tall and very thin, and unfortunately for us, Batman has a lot of muscle.
3. The premiere was in three days.


With no time to lose, we took a quick shopping trip, ended up spending all the money I had, and bought extra hot glue sticks, some more tape, a ton of craft foam sheets, some EVA foam, a batman mask and a batman belt from the costume store, some pipe insulation, and black and silver spray paint.

Our Reference.
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DAY ONE
Shopping for Supplies

With only three days until the premiere, there was no time for my brother to work out, so I decided to build him a muscle suit. I had an excess of foam, and had seen people use it creatively in the past, so I figured I'd try to build the costume as a great big foam muscle suit.

We spent most of the first day shopping for supplies, and at the end of the first day I started building up the muscles on the torso as well as the general torso shape using hot glue, eva foam, and pipe insulation foam.

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End of Day One.

-------------------------------
Day Two!
Work Marathon

Started the day by working on the legs, using pipe insulation again. I really love this stuff, it's easy to work with, fuses together with hot glue relatively well, and is extremely cheap. It also helped shape the thigh in an appropriate way. Glue wasn't completely reliable to keep them together, so I ended up using duct tape to strap them together as well as reinforce the shape. After I was happy with the first thigh, I went back and replicated it on the second, made sure they were symmetrical and didn't restrict my brother's movement.
(excuse the messy room. I was in project mode)
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The next part was shaping the torso more to his body, and starting to work on his shoulder muscles, collarbone, and arms. I also had to figure out how to get this to stay on him. Luckily the leg pieces slid on and were snug, but I had to be creative with the torso.
We had to add padding to his waist (think there is a blanket tucked under his shirt in this picture) otherwise Batman's overall proportions would be off. Also a good time to test the belt we bought, which worked wonderfully.
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The back was tricky. No one was going to see it, so I figured he'd put the suit on similarly to how you put on a gown at the hospital, or a snuggie. It's taped to him in this picture, and every-time he took it off I would have to cut the tape, and every time he put it back on I would have to tape it together (Kinda like how Wolverine's claws work). Really wish I had some velcro, but I didn't have time to go out and get some. Duct tape would have to do.
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This was also a good time to test out the mask, it didn't fit appropriately and I wanted the proportions to be as accurate as I could in a crunch, so I had to pad the inside of the mask so it would sit better, but it definitely looked better with the slightly bulked up suit than it did plain. I also realized that he had to be taller, so I ended up putting about two layers of the EVA floor mat foam onto the bottom of some old shoes he didn't need anymore, so he would gain 2-4 inches of height.

Here's a picture showing how much taller he is than me. Typically he is about an inch taller than me, but as Batman, it's much more. He was incredibly intimidating, probably The cape we are using is a stand in, just to see how it would work. It's currently four feet too short, which you can see better in later pictures.

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I added some eva foam to give shape for the abdomen muscles, then starting covering everything with craft foam with hot glue, and cutting them to shape.

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I worked through the rest of the torso and played Batman Begins and the Dark Knight in the background while I worked. I tried copying some of the pattern on the Arkham style suits when I could.
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When I was just about done, I had a friend drop by to make a quick robin mask for him and see if my old Robin Costume was able to fit. You can see on batman how the cape is much too short for him, and see the extra foam on the bottom of the shoes.
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Finished up the torso plating and took it outside to paint. Had finished some gauntlets for the forearms in this time as well using tape and a cardboard box I took apart.
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I primed it with black, and used a little silver to try and see what kind of textures I could get. I had never used spray paint for costuming before, so I was excited to see how it was turning out.
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End of Day Two

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Day Three:
Night of the Premiere


Spent today covering the legs with craft foam in the same way I had done the torso, and was pleasantly surprised to see how well it turned out. It was tricky trying to get him to retain his flexibility, making sure he could sit down and run around with it. Ended up using black duct tape in between the legs to help mobility and still keep the appearance somewhat consistent, which is similar to what I did with the elbows.

Getting into the suit was tricky, he would put his feet in first, through the thighs, and then would get his hands through the arms, then I would tie it up from behind. but it fit like a glove!
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Finished it relatively quickly, there wasn't as much to do with it as there was with the torso. It was time to start seriously painting.
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I ran out of black halfway through, and my mom was going out to run some errands so she said she would get some extra paints for me. She was really a life saver.
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Took the lack of spray paint as an opportunity to work on the boots. The shoes I had taken out to spray paint the previous night, and found that I would make the boots the same way as the legs, starting with piping insulation and covering it with craft foam.
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Another view to how it was looking. I was rushing like mad by this point, I barely had any time left.
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Went out and spray painted with the new paint. Got the sort of appearance I was aiming for using the silver and black together. Looking back, this may have been really awesome airbrushed.
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Trying to figure out the bat symbol, initially cutting out to see how much space I had. It took me about 5 tries, but I eventually made one I liked. I ended up not going with my original plan to glue on a craft foam bat, but used what I cut the bat out of as a stencil and spray painted it on.
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After I finished spray painting. I loved this picture. After that moment, I had a feeling I'd be able to make it all work for sure.
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I had quickly done the boots as well. I was glad the day was sunny; the spray paint wasn't given anytime to cure but I was dry enough to not come off too easily.
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----------------------------------------------------------------

Hours Before the Premiere


After I finished the boots, I got everything together. Ended up using small black elbow pads I had for his knees, which filled the gap between the thigh and the boot, and looked pretty good. The belt still fit, and I had to duct tape everything together: the top and bottom of the torso, and his boots. My dad had come home in this time, and as I was running around spray painting and gluing things together he and my brother worked on the cape by dissecting one of my black bedsheets, cutting the end in the classic "bat" pattern, sewing it to give it more shape, and adding ties on it so it could be easily tied together. We wanted it to be billowy so my brother could have it fly out behind him and take full command of a huge cape: good thing that sheet was so large.

And without further ado, here it is, with a before and after comparison to show how much his physical appearance changed. He is probably about 6' 4" - 6' 6".

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Another photo, we had gloves (black snow gloves) but he didn't wear them most of the time because they restricted the use of his fingers too much.

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Our favorite picture:
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All of us at the premiere! I finished with time enough to put together my Joker before we left.
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Besides being able to finish, the most rewarding part of the night was the reactions. It made the rush well worth it, and nothing was better than having Batman and Joker waltzing into a packed theater and hearing them all cheer.

There are definitely a few mistakes I made...neither of us considered sitting in a packed theater for three hours in a form fitted foam suit during the middle of summer. Oops. Needless to say, he was being baked in there.

The costume is currently hiding out in our side closet (it looks like the bat-cave right now), and we have been wanting to take it out, fix it up (the duct tape is falling off and it needs repainting and re-gluing), but we haven't had a good time to do it. Several improvements I would definitely like to make looking back, but pretty happy with how it turned out seeing how little time I had to spend on it.

Thanks for checking it out!
 
Last edited:
Re: No Time, No Money: Pegboard's Arkham Asylum Batman 3 Day Build

Given the circumstances, this turned out really great. I've never needed to do a speed build myself but I doubt it would have come out as good as this if I did. Nice work :)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Re: No Time, No Money: Pegboard's Arkham Asylum Batman 3 Day Build

Given the circumstances, this turned out really great. I've never needed to do a speed build myself but I doubt it would have come out as good as this if I did. Nice work :)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks a bunch! I really enjoyed working on this one because it was cheap, dirty, and finished real fast, and I keep thinking it'd be fun to do more speed builds just to see how far I can push it.
 
Fantastic, cheers! Love the story, the costume turned out great and it looks like you guys had a blast - which, after all, is the reason we do this. ;)
 
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