First Attempt: Captain America AoU

Hi guys,

I've been lurking around the forums for a while now and I am overwhelmed by all the fantastic costumes on here. Previously I was doing more on the Star Wars and Stargate front costume-wise, but after all these builds I wanted to do something from a different universe. After outweighing all the options and different costumes I ended up with the thought of really wanting to do a Cap costume. As the TFA outfit is quite hard to make due to the lack of appropriate material (just to mention the herringbone fabric), I opted out for the Age of Ultron suite, as this outfit really starts to grow on me.

Don't expect it to be a quick build as I will have to buy the material over time, either that or on a budget and I am not much a fan of doing my cosplays on a tight budget. I bought the boots a while back when they were still available in my size in an online auction. So that was quite a good albeit expensive start

Currently I am doing my homework concerning research and I also got a few samples of fabric together. I know most head for the Cordura, but as this is only available in the US in the colors that interest me the most I was trying out some other options first, before ordering samples that would already cost me 27 dollars.

I am still considering if I have already found the ideal colors and here are some fabrics that I have ordered samples from. So, any opinions are welcome.

The dark blue material I consider already as the ideal choice for the dark blue parts of the suit, however, the lighter blue ones cause some headaches.

I tried to take some good photos of it, but that is actually quite hard, as you can see from the dark blue fabric, which looks different in each photo.

Dark Blue (This photo portrays the actual color really good!)


Combination 1 - with Cordura 560 D



Combination 2 with a material called Oxford which is actually close to Cordura



Currently combination 2 is my fav, especially considering that the Cordura starts to bleach out when you bend it.

While thinking about the different colors I guess the next step for me is to make a good blue print, so that I know how much of each fabric I will need to buy. Advice and tips on this costume welcome. Of course you can also start to criticise if you don't like something XD

That's it for the moment. Really looking forward to kicking of this project and sharing the progress with you guys over here

I don't know what your situation is for the reference photos, but here are two high resolution photo albums I made.
http://imgur.com/a/BWY3a#0
http://imgur.com/a/hzDDH#0

Cool, thanks for the help. There are some awesome photos in these albums that will definitively help Although I know most of them, I only have a far smaller version of these, so thanks again.

For references concerning the fabrics I used the wardrobe photo in hi-res.

Okay, currently there is not sooo much going on. I started with the patterns and decided which fabric I will go for.

There is still one thing that gives me some headaches. Maybe you can share your opinion with me on that...

So far I have figured out that the shirt will actually consist of three parts:

A long sleeved shirt
A vest - the very short "sleeves" with the Avengers logo are attached to that
Some sort of vest / protector on the back below the leather vest carrying the shield

In some pictures it looks like this third part is losely attached as it is in TWS, in other pictures it looks like it is fixed to the vest... There are probably pros and cons for both. Which of the two do you think is the best solution?

Fixed to the vest; it allows for a more slim figure and possibly more flexibility.

Okay, so not much of an update, as I am quite busy these days - told you, it's not going to be a fast built costume

Still getting the materials together and working on the blueprints.


So for the dark blue parts I got some Cordura:



For the rest of the costume I got Oxford which seems to be the European version of Cordura. It's still one large role but you can see the colors already and a bit of the texture:



As mentioned above I was already working on the blueprints. They still need some adjustments and I will also try them out on a piece of cheap fabric before I go for the real deal:










I also started with the helmet, for which a made a paper-version from scratch before I applied sculpting clay. Even the basic form is far from finished. It's just a start (although one I am not quite happy with ) and it still needs a lot of adjusting before I can go any further.




Currently I try to figure out how I will be doing these rubber like add-ons on the chest, the shoulders and the trousers, but still no clue. Thought about using foam or silicone plates plus plasti dip, but plasti dip is probably not available in those colors - at least not over here in Germany.

A few days ago I went shopping, getting most of the stuff, that was still missing for getting started. I got some really beautiful material (in my opinion).

Bought some blue and red leatherette material for the stuff around the star and for the tiny spots where it is inserted (pants, boots), some brown leatherette material for the gloves, some light leatherette material (will dye this with leather dye) for the boots, and some sturdy stuff to keep the boots upright.
I also got some dark blue jersey material for the shirt.




I also started splitting up the blue prints and prepared the foam abs that will be inserted between two layers of Oxford.

So I finally started on the outfit itself and decided to go first on the ab section. There is still lots of work to do, but as I do this section by hand, it takes a while... Hope you like it anyway.

Almost done with the abs...

This weekend I had some spare time, so I had to work on this costume, as it is already taking a while.

From time to time I worked on the area around the star on the chest. The star I got from a friend, who also made this version of the Captain America costume. I am still looking for the ideal material for the red and blue rubber stripes around the star. But this doesn't keep me from working on the other areas of the vest.








With the abs section already being finised for a while (including some of the blue areas) I started from there and added the blue areas around the chest. Unfortunately the camera of my cell phone doesn't do a great job on the colors. That's why the colors also differ from photo to photo... :-/



The first layer of the back is darker blue. I put a zipper in, so i can easily get in and out. The zipper will be covered by the lighter blue parts as known from the stills from the movie.



The next step is to create the shoulder area, which is also connected to the chest area.



And some details from the shoulder / chest area:


Next thing will be to sew this to the back and abs section before filling in the dark blue area that holds the star.

Hope you like how it is coming along. And I will do my best, to continue as quickly as possbile...

Still the progress on this costume is quite slow as I do not have a lot of time for it currently. However, I have done quite a lot over the past few weeks.

The vest is almost complete, but I still lack the patches for the shoulders and therefore cannot complete the vest or start on the shirt. For what I have done so far on the vest is a lot of hand sewing for the details and putting the main body together:





As I couldn't move on with the vest and the shirt I started with the pants:

Thanks for sharing your progress! I'm excited to see how it turns out!

Thanks for your comment, really appreciate it.

Work progresses slowly due to a project I am working on job-wise. However over the last few weeks I was able to finish the pants (except for the knees on which I am working whenever I have a couple of minutes to glue them together).

Below are a few photos of the pants. I adjusted them in the meantime a little bit, so they fit much better now. I also bought a pair of suspenders to keep the pants in place.

What annoyed me was the fact, that there is a major discrepency between the red in the ab section and the red at the side of the pants. So I gave the vest an update. The minor descrepency left will be covered by the belt, but what I am really happy with is, that as a side effect the vest fits much better now. I will post some photos as soon as possible.

Wow -- I am seriously impressed! Every time I think of tackling something like this, I just get overwhelmed at the complexity of the design! But you are doing a seriously great job! Really love the choice of fabric, too. It looks very military-style yet advanced, just like the Cap's new suit!

This is amazing. Love your design. I am in the early planning stage of doing a Cap suit but it is so easy to get overwhelmed. I tried to find a pattern that I could use for a base suit but haven't had much luck.

Thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate it! To be honest I had quite a struggle in the beginning as well. I think it was third or fourth version of the pattern, from which I started and still I have to alter things from time to time.

The thing is really basically to think about with which part you can start and which parts depend on each other. In my case I started with the abs section. Then I made a large part of the chest. But as the upper part of the chest / shoulers are dependend on the back, I had to do that first, before adding the chest / shoulder section.

In the beginning I also made a duct tape dummy. However, that didn't help a lot with creating the pattern itself, but it gave me a general idea of what all the parts have to look like. So just get started and work from there