penwiper
Well-Known Member
So here’s my most recent project, and it's been a really fun one. I’ve been wanting to do an MCU costume, but every costume has already been done so many times and so well that I couldn’t get up the necessary interest, until I thought of this one. I’ve seen a few post-treatment Steve Rogers costumes, but I haven’t yet seen anyone who was crazy enough to carry around a full-size cab door. (There probably has been one, I just haven’t seen it!) So, ambitious crazy project – let’s go for it!
(screencap from nerdreactor.com)
Fair disclosure – I’m making this to my costume prop standards, so while I try to be as accurate as possible, this definitely is not up to prop replica standards accuracy-wise. Generally speaking, I try to get as accurate as I can in my research, then fudge as necessary when faced with the reality of materials and budget.
I started out by doing my research and found some great shots of the cab and the door from when they were auctioned off, as well as assorted screen grabs. Even better, since the cab was an actual vintage car (1937 Chevrolet Master 4-door sedan), I could search vintage car websites and get all kinds of useful specs and pics to augment the movie info. This gave me, among other things, the wheelbase of the car (letting me figure out the correct size) and some good shots of the interior and side profile of the door.
(Of course, later in this project, when it was too late to change anything, I learned that the actual prop door was built at ¾ scale. Darn. I think the part of this that upset me the most was that I could have done 25% less sanding.)
So the first thing I did was to use Publisher to make a life-sized printout of the door and its side profile, to use as my pattern.
For a prop of this size, insulation foam was a fairly obvious material to use, so I built up a door-sized block by gluing together multiple sheets of ¾ inch foam. I ended up with two different colors of foam because part of it was leftover from an older project. I mention this largely because I discovered that the bands of color produced by the multicolored layers made it super-easy to make sure I was getting fairly straight lines and flat planes when I carved the foam down later, so that might be a handy tip for others in the future.
With such large pieces of foam, and it not being all one thickness, it was something of a challenge to evenly weight the foam while it dried. Most of y’all probably wouldn’t be using stacks of regency romance paperbacks to even out the weight, but hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. My poor grandmother would probably be horrified by the use I’ve found for her marble coffee table top, but this isn’t the first time I’ve used it as a costuming weight and it works GREAT.
I let the dry for a week or so before proceeding. For the record, this was way too short a time and cause some trouble with having to re-glue later, so allow more time if you can. (I, of course, am always bodging things together at the last minute. Do as I say, not as I do.)
I marked out my pattern pieces on the foam.
Then it was time for Fun With Carving as I used a hot wire foam cutter to cut out the basic shape. As you can see, I had lots of supervision for this step.
My foam wasn’t quite thick enough at the bottom, so I glued my offcut from the front on to the back to deepen the curve. This was apparently an extra-tricky step and required twice the feline supervision. (Sadly enough, my creaky old orange kitty passed away a few weeks later, and this is the last picture I have of him – but what a great way to remember him.)
I’ll continue this later!
(screencap from nerdreactor.com)
Fair disclosure – I’m making this to my costume prop standards, so while I try to be as accurate as possible, this definitely is not up to prop replica standards accuracy-wise. Generally speaking, I try to get as accurate as I can in my research, then fudge as necessary when faced with the reality of materials and budget.
I started out by doing my research and found some great shots of the cab and the door from when they were auctioned off, as well as assorted screen grabs. Even better, since the cab was an actual vintage car (1937 Chevrolet Master 4-door sedan), I could search vintage car websites and get all kinds of useful specs and pics to augment the movie info. This gave me, among other things, the wheelbase of the car (letting me figure out the correct size) and some good shots of the interior and side profile of the door.
(Of course, later in this project, when it was too late to change anything, I learned that the actual prop door was built at ¾ scale. Darn. I think the part of this that upset me the most was that I could have done 25% less sanding.)
So the first thing I did was to use Publisher to make a life-sized printout of the door and its side profile, to use as my pattern.
For a prop of this size, insulation foam was a fairly obvious material to use, so I built up a door-sized block by gluing together multiple sheets of ¾ inch foam. I ended up with two different colors of foam because part of it was leftover from an older project. I mention this largely because I discovered that the bands of color produced by the multicolored layers made it super-easy to make sure I was getting fairly straight lines and flat planes when I carved the foam down later, so that might be a handy tip for others in the future.
With such large pieces of foam, and it not being all one thickness, it was something of a challenge to evenly weight the foam while it dried. Most of y’all probably wouldn’t be using stacks of regency romance paperbacks to even out the weight, but hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. My poor grandmother would probably be horrified by the use I’ve found for her marble coffee table top, but this isn’t the first time I’ve used it as a costuming weight and it works GREAT.
I let the dry for a week or so before proceeding. For the record, this was way too short a time and cause some trouble with having to re-glue later, so allow more time if you can. (I, of course, am always bodging things together at the last minute. Do as I say, not as I do.)
I marked out my pattern pieces on the foam.
Then it was time for Fun With Carving as I used a hot wire foam cutter to cut out the basic shape. As you can see, I had lots of supervision for this step.
My foam wasn’t quite thick enough at the bottom, so I glued my offcut from the front on to the back to deepen the curve. This was apparently an extra-tricky step and required twice the feline supervision. (Sadly enough, my creaky old orange kitty passed away a few weeks later, and this is the last picture I have of him – but what a great way to remember him.)
I’ll continue this later!
(And yay for tree appreciation! That old oak is the best thing about this house and lot - so old and gnarled that I can walk completely around it on the roots without touching the ground. Lovely!)
