Cathat's Predator Suit V 1.0

[Cathat]

Ok - so here's my first suit.

First - I promise to upload better pics as i get them.

I spent 40 nights - about 2-3 hours a night. Basically working after the kids are in bed - forgoing my video game time - lol.

I want to thank everyone on the boards who's posted tips and tricks I took quite a few techniques from here as well as making a few of my own I'd be happy to share. I think this also shows a lot of what I've spoken about in my own postings here.

I spent about 4 hours on the mask sculpt itself - with only 100 hrs of time to do the whole thing - I had to work judiciously about how long to spend on each element to make sure the level of detail was even across the costume. No one part was unfinished. (ok in this pic I'm not wearing finger tips - but that was intentional since this was me at work in the office - lol - yeah i was busy editing video at my computer in that costume - lol)

Details...

Airbrush the latex in washes and glazes - paint slowly with lite colors to dark - kept color pallets to human skin tone ranges

Sculpy III for Teeth - a nice mix of colors for a good deep ivory look. Did not hit them with lots of paint - let the material do the work.

Working wrist gauntlet and helmet bio lights - scrounged battery operated Xmas LEDs from Amazon.com
Cannibalized a broken star wars light saber to make a collapsing telescopic wrist spear - worked extremely well.

Craft foam armor over the whole body - legs upper torso cut - hot glued - sewn and some leather rivets for extra structural hold... Just painted to look real - simple enough -make it look good then spend days dirtying it up.

body armor underlay - discarded upholstery fabric - sewn and hot glued - mixed with thin layers of craft foam.

Dirty the whole creation with varying washes and splashes of brown, black, white, blue/green acrylic.

Use Rub N Buff creme on any foam edges for metal wear.

Used a lot of remnant fabrics for details (Hawaiian and tropical patterns with tassels actually look natural) for the legs - and crotch loincloths and other bits - I also used these to clean my brushes and my hands as I worked so they'd get naturally jacked up. Nothing worse than a squeaky clean monster costume.


If you've got any questions - ask - I'm happy to answer.



Cathat

 

[newpred]

oh man you did a great job on the whole suit. But my main interest is that bio can we get some good pics of that i like it

 

[Cathat]

oh man you did a great job on the whole suit. But my main interest is that bio can we get some good pics of that i like it

Yup - I promise to take some pics of the indvidual parts tonight - from shoes to biomaks so folks can check it all out.

 

[PredatrHuntr]

Nice work! I always enjoy seeing stuff like this. Need more pics tho

 

[Cathat]

oh man you did a great job on the whole suit. But my main interest is that bio can we get some good pics of that i like it

More PICs - and probably more to come.

Cathat

 

[Radon Cypher]

Man that suit is killer. What is the bio made from?

 

[Cathat]

Man that suit is killer. What is the bio made from?

Building the form

• The Bio started out as scrap bristol board (good, non corrogated cardboard) Cut and taped to make it form fitting on the already finished latex mask
• I coated the taped cardboard with 5 thin coatings of a semi-flexible polyester resin from Tapps Plastic.
  
  I sanded between coatings to get rid of drips and any places where i wanted to emphasise a sharp edge to the piece. Each coating allowed to dry about 30 minutes and applied when its semi tacky on the surface.
  
  This was allowed to rest about a week to cure totally, and stop smelling like stinky resin.
  
• So --After the BioMask form had been coated with flexible resin and allowed to dry totally- I made my detail shapes out of paper till I was satisfied with their look - then I cut it out on thin adhesive backed EVA foam - 'friendly foam" from Michale's craft store - lol.
  
• Now here comes an important part - I a mistake...
  
• I failed to make enough room for my AAA battery pack for my biomask. My bad for getting carried away with the preds teeth and making the mask so tight... I decided to place it externally - that sucker went right on the outside on the face - covered in foam and worked into the details as just another rectangular element. Why not hide something out in the open. This was actually ok since my design was going to have a very crude geometric design - something like a Mayan wall relief sculpt of the "quetzalcoatl feathered serpent" inspiration for this particular mask. And hey - if you went with Pred lore - wouldn't quetzalcoatl be inspired by the alien's aka serpents?
  
• I made sure my design had enough edges to really pick up and emphasize a 'lived in look' (aka looking jacked up and worn a very long time.) it would get in the painting process.
• To protect the delicate, thin foam and help keep it in places - I gave the mask 2 liberal coating of Elmer's glue - this also helped add a little interest to the texture of the otherwise boring foam. I got a few airbubbles and wrinkles and imperfections and went with them.
  
• Wire it up ---- i finished wiring in a mini thumb switch, the battery pack and LED lights - then sealed the bulbs and exposed mini switch with masking tape to keep em paint free.

Time to Paint.

• Rust colored paint primer was applied to the outside - Black primer to the inside of the mask
• Antique Gold paint went on the outside next.
• After this was all dry - I mixed acrylic paint to make a 'blue green' corrosion colored paint. This was applied in washes and slow moving drips and allowed to dry.
• Then came washes of Black - dirty Browns - a few drops of bird poo looking white - ( hey even preds would get crapped on by thick flocks of jungle birds occasionally too right)
• More black washes - more drops of thicker blue green oxidized colors -
• Now its looking like a mistreated - much neglected park sculpture / bird perch - Perfect.. Bring back all those juicy edges I applied in foam were brought back to play by using an antique gold "Rub and Buff" to breath life back into all those obliterated details. I sponged on the pasty metallic stuff to pop the edges and bring out the highlights. Bam! Details Pop out again.

Finally after all of that work - the masking tape comes off of the stitch and LEDs - the Screen / armature Wire gets hot glued over the eyes Hot glue a tiny strap in the back to hang it on belts or armor when not in use.

Done.


Cathat

 

[thebigbadwolf]

looks awesome !!!!!!1

 

[Warrior1]

That is a cool looking suit. I like all the armour and the bio. Very nive job.

 

[celtic0130]

FRIGGIN COOL for a first suit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My first suit is like a junk.. XD... I dont want to remember that costume... But i do like to remember the old days.. so much fun
memories... I wish I can bring that back... But not my costume... NO.. O_O

 

[lancer44]

That suit is bad to the bone bud! Your first suit? That rocks. That's some talent man Keep up the great work and can't wait to see more pics!

 

[Elkman]

I really like the look of that biohelmet. It's got a lot of cool detail in it, and it's painted really well. I can't even tell that it was made from inexpensive materials. I'm really liking the rest of the appearance of the suit as well. The telescoping spear on your right wrist is unique.

You might want to consider getting some foam dreadlocks from one of the sellers here. The ones on your mask seem to hang kind of funny, like they don't weigh enough or something.

 

[Cathat]

I really like the look of that biohelmet. It's got a lot of cool detail in it, and it's painted really well. I can't even tell that it was made from inexpensive materials. I'm really liking the rest of the appearance of the suit as well. The telescoping spear on your right wrist is unique.

You might want to consider getting some foam dreadlocks from one of the sellers here. The ones on your mask seem to hang kind of funny, like they don't weigh enough or something.

Yeah- Considering that for my suit 2.0

The dreads were sewn from remnant material too thick and then filled with - *cough - pillow stuffing using a dowel to ram rod it in - i should have at least filled them with bean bag strofoam beads so they'd fill out evenly and have some thick weight to them - no uneven empty spots like you're spotting there.

Total agreement Latex foam dreads are the best though I might try attempting them again but with thinner material and going with the loose styrofoam bean bag beads - at least its worth a test project for a test dread or two.

Though i think my biggest faults in my first suit were not finishing up with a neck piece gorget and good clawed fingertips on those gloves. At least thats what my eyes goto and feel saddened in missing on my first attempt.

For my V2.0 suit - the upper body will be a latex predsuit - new gorget - proper feet & hands - do it proper. Yeah - that might mean purchasing latex dreads too.

Cathat