theduggo
New Member
Hi all, thought I'd make a detailed post here of how I made my 2013 Halloween Buzz Lightyear costume. I'm pretty sure I borrowed every good idea from somebody already on the RPF, but perhaps other newbies will join up like me and continue the trend of learning all these awesome techniques you guys developed after seeing my work.
Here's me convincing the party I could fly.
Back:
Me and the Death Star
Here's the toy story crew that went out together:
I've been thinking about making a Buzz costume for years now, ever since I made Bender... but I haven't had the time, effort, or space until this year. When I realized that this year would be possible I started maybe 6 months ago just toying with various ideas and looking around for costume making expertise. Posts people have made on this site comprised most of my reading, and honestly it was damn encouraging to see that people can and do make complex costumes of the quality I was hoping for all the time.
My requirements for the costume were as follows:
Durable, flexible, light, true to the movie as much as possible for scale and quality of look, no need to purchase expensive tools, no need for really messy or bad chemicals requiring special masks, reasonable price*, etc.
*Yeah I totally blew past my original thought and spent upwards of $600. Granted I had ZERO relevant tools or materials to start off with. Not even a hot glue gun!
After looking around and especially focusing on some of stealth's work, xrobotsuk, and the amazing iron man costume for his kid that indifilmgeek made, I was able to settle for the most part on the following process:
1. Base material: EVA closed cell foam, mostly Best Step mats (Sears) but also some thicker green puzzle piece mats (Sears) for the beefier parts and a few foamies (Amazon) for areas like the hands
2. Measuring/Cutting: this was difficult since I found the buzz pepakura files to be not round enough for my purposes, and I didn't want to keep scaling the paper files to then still have to figure out how to get the foam to look more rounded and buzz like. So I bought a buzz lightyear action figure, started measuring and went from there. Had to create cardboard or cardstock starter pieces for some items, and just went straight to foam for others. Cut mostly with scissors, some with exacto knife. I found scissor cuts to be smoother on the side but exacto knife cutting to be more precise with tough shapes. Generally if I needed a part to fit carefully with another part i.e. in the biceps there are flat segments where the bicep armor piece interacts with the forearm, I cut a larger piece of foam then shaped it as required to fit nicely with the rest of the assembly. Drew almost all the curves by hand, which made for some less than desired quality curves and a general lack of accuracy to the actual curves on buzz but it went pretty quick and the parts ended up mating up quite well. I was able to borrow round objects once in a while to trace. I liked using a sharpie best for drawing patterns, but pens worked ok too. Ballpoint seemed to have trouble drying the tip up all the time.
3. Shaping:
I used a heat gun on the higher setting of the two, generally heating up both sides of the foam quite a bit before forming it to the final shape I wanted. I found in general doing a small part of the curve/shaping at a time was better as the foam cooled of quickly so I'd work my way from one end to the other heating and bending. Took maybe 10 seconds for a section to cool and hold its new shape.
4. Sealing the foam:
I really cut corners on this towards the end, but initially at least I was doing 2-3 coats of maybe 60% water, 40% glue, letting it dry in between coats. Had to devise some cardboard stands and hanger and rack-like devices to hold things up and let them dry without sticking to the plastic tarp/newspaper. I'd say this step is pretty crucial to a good final look. I'm definitely much happier with my earlier results than the latter where I only had time for one glue coat. I used Titebond original wood glue from Lowes for this (red label). Mixed with water in a plastic cup. Generally I found a small amount of glue mixture went a really long way. Got a cheapo set of paint brushes on Amazon and only had to use one since the wood glue washed out easily between uses.
5. Prime/Paint:
This was pretty easy, though time consuming. All spray paint. Generally I'd try to do two coats of auto primer - grey rustoleum stuff from Lowes. Then I'd do about two coats of colored paint, some rustoleum, some of other brands - based on color options. Some were paint/primer, but I found to cover up sharpie marks it was always best to prime first then paint. Generally I did this on a cardboard sheet on a bigger plastic tarp on a weed infested parking pad off my driveway. Gotta keep outdoors (unless you have a sexy paint fan/filter room setup) and away from nice objects (I once got a nice grey dusting on everything in my parents garage whilst painting a dresser... whilst firing two guns in the air! NOT). For paint options I picked the closest color, but I also found the quick dry options seemed to look good so why wait for longer dry paint? It was another general rule I found that if you want a good finish it's best to avoid letting thick spray paint pool up on your part anywhere, especially at the bottom so it could stick to the surface your object is sitting on. Sadly in my haste at the end I couldn't do thinner coats. If you had time I'd suggest more like 4-5 thin coats instead of my dumb ass heavy 2. But hey, still looked great!
6. Assembly:
I had a hot glue gun with one setting, and dual temp glue sticks I got on Amazon. Stanley 24 packs. This seemed to work great for attaching just about anything to anything (for my costume anyway). The only thing that didn't work as well was cardboard to aluminum. DUH. But we had to try Foam on foam glue was super strong. Foam to plastic was pretty good if you let the glue on the plastic while still hot, but sadly melted the plastic a little. Foam to garden hose was pretty good, though had to super glue or reglue a few spots that broke off. Cheap garden hose is sorta crappy to bend. Painted pieces to other painted pieces stuck less well then just foam to foam, but still stayed quite well. I almost always waited to attach different color pieces to eachother until after painted since I didn't want to mask stuff. But I'm not sure that was the best way to do things. I thought hot glue was pretty easy to work with despite the damn spider webby stringiness and getting it on my fingers all the time (ouch!). If you let go of the trigger and let the spider web thingy hang in a glob of glue it usually broke off pretty cleanly after a sec. Didn't experiment much with big globs vs thin coats... I simply went with as much glue as I could get for the application i.e. torso to back I really globbed it on, while for decorative stuff I went pretty light. Foamies got bumpy with thick layers, and so did cardstock so I kept those thin. Like other posters I found it better to keep the bead of glue kinda on the side of the connection away from the outside surface. That way when it squished out between the pieces, it was on the inside. But you can wipe off globs that get out pretty quick and easily with other foam bits you have lying around. I held pieces together for like 10 seconds if the glue was thin, but quite a bit longer for big globs.
7. Velcro, magnets, and straps oh my!
I bought some solid 3M velcro strips with sticky backs on amazon. Velcro is surprisingly strong. I suggest using somewhat sparingly as I ripped a foam part taking it off once... i.e. the foam gave before the velcro did. But it's damn good for parts that get a lot of pull or stress but need to stay clasped together. Velcro sticks really well to foam with a light coating of hot glue, don't go too thick or it'll melt the hooks/loops. Also, don't get spraypaint directly on the velcro, because that'll mess it up. Magnets (very small rare earth magnets anyway) didn't seem to hold well for parts that got a good amount of force twisting or opening them. But they were nice for guiding things into position or holding light force. And are SUPER COOL. They stuck to the foam and hot glue fine, just not strong enough to eachother. Sometimes I used a little velcro strap in addition to mostly magnets. Finally, I used nylon backpack straps and plastic clips. These are really easy to use as you can stick the straps directly to foam using hot glue, and then you glue the strap to itself to attach the clips. I only really used this in a few places as most stuff held itself on pretty well but it worked like a charm.
Tools Needed:
Cutting mat
Exacto Knife
Scissors
Hot Glue Gun
Hot Glue
Lots of flat surfaces
Heat Gun
Rubber Gloves (good for when painting and sealing the foam with glue)
Dremel
Sandpaper
Safety Goggles
Sharpie
Pens
Wire strippers
Pliers
Cordless Drill/drill bits
Soldering Iron
Ok... I'll continue more after, I suppose I'd better see if this all comes through ok. Not having posted before after all. I want to talk about each part and the methods for the particular details!
Here's me convincing the party I could fly.
Back:
Me and the Death Star
Here's the toy story crew that went out together:
I've been thinking about making a Buzz costume for years now, ever since I made Bender... but I haven't had the time, effort, or space until this year. When I realized that this year would be possible I started maybe 6 months ago just toying with various ideas and looking around for costume making expertise. Posts people have made on this site comprised most of my reading, and honestly it was damn encouraging to see that people can and do make complex costumes of the quality I was hoping for all the time.
My requirements for the costume were as follows:
Durable, flexible, light, true to the movie as much as possible for scale and quality of look, no need to purchase expensive tools, no need for really messy or bad chemicals requiring special masks, reasonable price*, etc.
*Yeah I totally blew past my original thought and spent upwards of $600. Granted I had ZERO relevant tools or materials to start off with. Not even a hot glue gun!
After looking around and especially focusing on some of stealth's work, xrobotsuk, and the amazing iron man costume for his kid that indifilmgeek made, I was able to settle for the most part on the following process:
1. Base material: EVA closed cell foam, mostly Best Step mats (Sears) but also some thicker green puzzle piece mats (Sears) for the beefier parts and a few foamies (Amazon) for areas like the hands
2. Measuring/Cutting: this was difficult since I found the buzz pepakura files to be not round enough for my purposes, and I didn't want to keep scaling the paper files to then still have to figure out how to get the foam to look more rounded and buzz like. So I bought a buzz lightyear action figure, started measuring and went from there. Had to create cardboard or cardstock starter pieces for some items, and just went straight to foam for others. Cut mostly with scissors, some with exacto knife. I found scissor cuts to be smoother on the side but exacto knife cutting to be more precise with tough shapes. Generally if I needed a part to fit carefully with another part i.e. in the biceps there are flat segments where the bicep armor piece interacts with the forearm, I cut a larger piece of foam then shaped it as required to fit nicely with the rest of the assembly. Drew almost all the curves by hand, which made for some less than desired quality curves and a general lack of accuracy to the actual curves on buzz but it went pretty quick and the parts ended up mating up quite well. I was able to borrow round objects once in a while to trace. I liked using a sharpie best for drawing patterns, but pens worked ok too. Ballpoint seemed to have trouble drying the tip up all the time.
3. Shaping:
I used a heat gun on the higher setting of the two, generally heating up both sides of the foam quite a bit before forming it to the final shape I wanted. I found in general doing a small part of the curve/shaping at a time was better as the foam cooled of quickly so I'd work my way from one end to the other heating and bending. Took maybe 10 seconds for a section to cool and hold its new shape.
4. Sealing the foam:
I really cut corners on this towards the end, but initially at least I was doing 2-3 coats of maybe 60% water, 40% glue, letting it dry in between coats. Had to devise some cardboard stands and hanger and rack-like devices to hold things up and let them dry without sticking to the plastic tarp/newspaper. I'd say this step is pretty crucial to a good final look. I'm definitely much happier with my earlier results than the latter where I only had time for one glue coat. I used Titebond original wood glue from Lowes for this (red label). Mixed with water in a plastic cup. Generally I found a small amount of glue mixture went a really long way. Got a cheapo set of paint brushes on Amazon and only had to use one since the wood glue washed out easily between uses.
5. Prime/Paint:
This was pretty easy, though time consuming. All spray paint. Generally I'd try to do two coats of auto primer - grey rustoleum stuff from Lowes. Then I'd do about two coats of colored paint, some rustoleum, some of other brands - based on color options. Some were paint/primer, but I found to cover up sharpie marks it was always best to prime first then paint. Generally I did this on a cardboard sheet on a bigger plastic tarp on a weed infested parking pad off my driveway. Gotta keep outdoors (unless you have a sexy paint fan/filter room setup) and away from nice objects (I once got a nice grey dusting on everything in my parents garage whilst painting a dresser... whilst firing two guns in the air! NOT). For paint options I picked the closest color, but I also found the quick dry options seemed to look good so why wait for longer dry paint? It was another general rule I found that if you want a good finish it's best to avoid letting thick spray paint pool up on your part anywhere, especially at the bottom so it could stick to the surface your object is sitting on. Sadly in my haste at the end I couldn't do thinner coats. If you had time I'd suggest more like 4-5 thin coats instead of my dumb ass heavy 2. But hey, still looked great!
6. Assembly:
I had a hot glue gun with one setting, and dual temp glue sticks I got on Amazon. Stanley 24 packs. This seemed to work great for attaching just about anything to anything (for my costume anyway). The only thing that didn't work as well was cardboard to aluminum. DUH. But we had to try
Foam on foam glue was super strong. Foam to plastic was pretty good if you let the glue on the plastic while still hot, but sadly melted the plastic a little. Foam to garden hose was pretty good, though had to super glue or reglue a few spots that broke off. Cheap garden hose is sorta crappy to bend. Painted pieces to other painted pieces stuck less well then just foam to foam, but still stayed quite well. I almost always waited to attach different color pieces to eachother until after painted since I didn't want to mask stuff. But I'm not sure that was the best way to do things. I thought hot glue was pretty easy to work with despite the damn spider webby stringiness and getting it on my fingers all the time (ouch!). If you let go of the trigger and let the spider web thingy hang in a glob of glue it usually broke off pretty cleanly after a sec. Didn't experiment much with big globs vs thin coats... I simply went with as much glue as I could get for the application i.e. torso to back I really globbed it on, while for decorative stuff I went pretty light. Foamies got bumpy with thick layers, and so did cardstock so I kept those thin. Like other posters I found it better to keep the bead of glue kinda on the side of the connection away from the outside surface. That way when it squished out between the pieces, it was on the inside. But you can wipe off globs that get out pretty quick and easily with other foam bits you have lying around. I held pieces together for like 10 seconds if the glue was thin, but quite a bit longer for big globs. 7. Velcro, magnets, and straps oh my!
I bought some solid 3M velcro strips with sticky backs on amazon. Velcro is surprisingly strong. I suggest using somewhat sparingly as I ripped a foam part taking it off once... i.e. the foam gave before the velcro did. But it's damn good for parts that get a lot of pull or stress but need to stay clasped together. Velcro sticks really well to foam with a light coating of hot glue, don't go too thick or it'll melt the hooks/loops. Also, don't get spraypaint directly on the velcro, because that'll mess it up. Magnets (very small rare earth magnets anyway) didn't seem to hold well for parts that got a good amount of force twisting or opening them. But they were nice for guiding things into position or holding light force. And are SUPER COOL. They stuck to the foam and hot glue fine, just not strong enough to eachother. Sometimes I used a little velcro strap in addition to mostly magnets. Finally, I used nylon backpack straps and plastic clips. These are really easy to use as you can stick the straps directly to foam using hot glue, and then you glue the strap to itself to attach the clips. I only really used this in a few places as most stuff held itself on pretty well but it worked like a charm.
Tools Needed:
Cutting mat
Exacto Knife
Scissors
Hot Glue Gun
Hot Glue
Lots of flat surfaces
Heat Gun
Rubber Gloves (good for when painting and sealing the foam with glue)
Dremel
Sandpaper
Safety Goggles
Sharpie
Pens
Wire strippers
Pliers
Cordless Drill/drill bits
Soldering Iron
Ok... I'll continue more after, I suppose I'd better see if this all comes through ok. Not having posted before after all. I want to talk about each part and the methods for the particular details!
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