Avengers Black Widow - silk screened fabric experiment

[verdaera]

Hello!

I didn't post a build thread while I was making this, I still have a bit of work to do on it. The first Avenger's movie is still my favorite of all the Avenger's movies, and I love Black Widow's suit from that one. I made a Civil War suit, but I learned some new things in the discussions on this forum that gave me the confidence to do the Avenger's suit. Here's my version. I still need to do a proper belt with Stinger Cases. I ran out of time leading up to Dragon Con for those.

On one or two of the threads here, we were discussing the possibility that the newer Marvel suits were not a woven kevlar or cordura, but rather a heavy weight spandex with a raised ink screen print. So, I started playing around with screen printing. I managed to find on evilBay, that Topps had "relic" cards, that had little scraps of fabric from the cutting room floor, and first I managed to find the Winter Soldier suit, and then I found the Avenger's suit. I was surprised the scale of the print was the same size for both movies! I could have sworn it was a larger scale for WS, but the few hi-rez images that showed texture for WS was so photoshopped it skewed things. So, since I was able to see the scale of the print, which is basically just squares, I made the print up in Illustrator and had a large transparency sheet made to burn my screen.

Now... I definitely bit off more than I could chew with the scale of the print, and it was a comedy of errors trying to print all the pieces I needed, but I did learn a lot, and I'm going to take some classes before I remake the suit, or make something new.

Here's a close up of my fabric and my trim test. I had to custom-make my own trim since I couldn't find anything like it. It is a fold-over elastic from Japan which I put a decorative stitch on with my machine, and top stitched metallic thread under.

I'll post more of my build info shortly. I built almost everything in this; I patterned the suit, I laser-engraved the SHIELD patches out of a silicone sheet, I hand-fronted my wig, made the gloves, and I made the boots from scratch. First time doing that and they are NOT comfortable, but they look freakin fabulous!

 

[Mad Monkey]

that whole suit looks freaking amazing!!!

i agree that first avengers is excellent, hence my MK7.. but your suit is amazing i love the buckles for the holster etc!!!

Great job

 

[verdaera]

Thank you!
Costume Designers love to put Cobra Buckles on everything

 

[13doctorwho]

Your costume looks great!

 

[Goldhawk]

This looks amazing! Following!

 

[AnnaG]

Wow, thanks for sharing this. I have always wanted to figure out a way to mimic the marvel fabric. Nice job.

 

[verdaera]

I have a few things I'll need to fix/improve on this before I wear it again, which won't be until Dragon Con...

One of them is the patch. I made this by engraving the design onto a sheet of silicone on a laser. I rastered out a ridge past the design, which I did a hidden stitch on; I see no stitches on the actual patch, and some shots it looks set into the sleeve, but it could also be adhered directly to it. I don't have direct enough shots to tell. I did this on gray silicone, masked it off, and painted it, which is good enough for now.

But, the paint obviously is cracking. I was thinking I could repeat this, perhaps raster deeper, and cast it. I don't know what kind of rubbers or silicones would be best to use to pour into a mold, I was thinking I could pour black into the eagle and ridge, let it set, then pour gray into the rest, but I've only experimented with mold-making. Does anyone have any pointers?

 

[tiga]

The fabric looks very good. I'm still quite convinced that they used black spacer mesh for the film and the material is 4-way stretch (although limited on one axis), and relatively easy and inexpensive to get. It's also extremely breathable & dries very fast. I also used fold-over elastic for the trim on my suit.

For my current patches (which I haven't used since switching to the Infinity War costume), I made a 3D model that I printed using transparent and black flexible filament. I then painted the back side with silver spray paint and then glued velcro over that. The 2-color print just requires a filament change after the background layers are printed. They are not super soft, but they are quite flexible. I knew I might re-use the suit for other cosplays (which I did for Infinity War), so I used a velcro attachment. It would have been easy to sew the patches on to the suit directly and it's also possible to model the holes for the thread directly for the printable model, making it a lot easier to get the hand-stitching to look professional.

3D printing is good for the patches also because the badges are mirror images (the birds face forward on her costume, backward on Agents of SHIELD uniforms, if I remember correctly), so if you make molds and cast, you may need two molds. I haven't released any of my Avengers 2012 3D models, but I have been considering doing so. All my Infinity War STLs are already on MyMinifactory.

I like the Avengers (2012) and Iron Man 2 costumes for their simplicity and elegance, but from a prop building and crafting point of view, I think the Infinity War costume was a much more interesting challenge and it looks good too. And I'm relieved that the guns are gone - I wasn't happy about taking gun props to events/cons.

I hope you know (or you are already a member) of the Black Widow Cosplay group on Facebook. It is quite active and an extremely friendly environment.

 

[verdaera]

I'm still quite convinced that they used black spacer mesh for the film and the material is 4-way stretch (although limited on one axis),

It's a good solution for looks, but they did indeed use screen-printed spandex for the films, confirmed by the fabric swatch cards I found and a couple panels I attended at Dragon*Con. (Adam Savage confirmed they use this method in a podcast, too!) When I was at pre-judging at the DC costume contest, one of the judges who saw mine commented how he washed the real Black Widow suit so many times! I had managed to find a woven stretch cotton, I believe it was a Robert Kaufmann, that I used for my CA:WS suit that had a decent texture to it, too. It would be great if we could find a screen printer who could do continuous yardage like this and do runs of it.

For my current patches (which I haven't used since switching to the Infinity War costume), I made a 3D model that I printed using transparent and black flexible filament. I then painted the back side with silver spray paint and then glued velcro over that. The 2-color print just requires a filament change after the background layers are printed. They are not super soft, but they are quite flexible. I knew I might re-use the suit for other cosplays (which I did for Infinity War), so I used a velcro attachment. It would have been easy to sew the patches on to the suit directly and it's also possible to model the holes for the thread directly for the printable model, making it a lot easier to get the hand-stitching to look professional.

3D printing is good for the patches also because the badges are mirror images (the birds face forward on her costume, backward on Agents of SHIELD uniforms, if I remember correctly), so if you make molds and cast, you may need two molds. I haven't released any of my Avengers 2012 3D models, but I have been considering doing so. All my Infinity War STLs are already on MyMinifactory.

Thanks for the tip! I didn't think 3D printing had flexible options. I am getting a Maker Space membership soon and they have classes I might take.
I do know about the mirror images, the beak always faces the front of the body, much like flag patches do!

I like the Avengers (2012) and Iron Man 2 costumes for their simplicity and elegance, but from a prop building and crafting point of view, I think the Infinity War costume was a much more interesting challenge and it looks good too. And I'm relieved that the guns are gone - I wasn't happy about taking gun props to events/cons.

I hope you know (or you are already a member) of the Black Widow Cosplay group on Facebook. It is quite active and an extremely friendly environment.

Yes, I'm a bit worried about cons... Dragon*Con isn't a problem, I did have my airsofts zip-tied at a different con. I'm wearing it to the first showing of IW2 but I think I'll have to put bags of skittles in the holsters instead o_0

I'm not, actually, I don't consider my work 'cosplay' so I really don't join the 'cosplay' groups!

 

[AlbertEinstein]

Absolutly great suit looks very good and if you probably would have more infos on the correct belt they used that would be cool as I´m working on the same suit for one of my daughters.

Greetings Heinz