Custom Batman / Nightwing Armor Projects

Hi! I've been a frequent lurker on this forum and finally decided to join myself. A huge inspiration has been Reznor9's Arkham Origins build. I'm going to be mainly designing my suit based around Origins but will be combining elements from Zero Year and Dark Knight Returns. I've purchased material for my cape and foam for the gauntlets and will begin my design journey this weekend. To finish by Halloween and save a few bucks for now, I'll be purchasing a cheap Rubie's cowl (Although soon I will splurge on coofunkcurly's wonderful Origns cowl!). My idea is to buy this Rubie's Blackest Night Batman zombie mask:

Cut out the zombie bit and black plasti-dip it to look somewhat like this:

It will probably need some heavy modifying afterwards, but I'm up for the challenge! I also think I'll be using the Frank Miller-esque emblem for my chest... Haven't decided yet. My belt will be a black utility belt similar to the one used in Dead End. I'm thinking I may incorporate Zero Year's armor down the arms.. I'll post my progress periodically. Wish me luck!

 

Re: Custom Batman Armor Project (My first build)

Began working on my cowl today. In about thirty minutes I was able to take it from this:

To this:

I plan on coating it with black Plasti Dip tonight and I've also decided to film my Batsuit journey. I'll post the first episode of my mini-series later this week!

 

So I quickly got flooded with other things and had to rush my first Origins inspired build to finish before Halloween.

The results were less than incredible, but the majority was made in a matter of two days. Haha. Ended up using the same template for the gauntlets for the shin covers and a round, black table cloth for the cape. The rest were quick basic shapes cut into 12mm, 6mm and 3mm foam covered in Plasti-Dip. This was my first time using a Dremmel to sand anything and the plates ended up being a little rougher than I wanted them to.. In fact, I would love some advice on how to improve on that! I'm currently working on cosplay for Emerald City Comicon in April. My lady friend is going as Starfire and I'm going to be Nightwing, but also wanted to have an Affleck-inspired suit for the movie premiere at the end of March. My thought is to create the armor for the Nightwing costume and wear a fabric compression suit over it for my Batman cosplay.
My armor is taking most of its inspiration from the Batsuit V7.43 from Arkham Knight. Here's the upper armor design so far:

My idea for the Batsuit was to wear tight thermals over the armor. The ones I had looked somewhat like the fabrics on Affleck's suit, so I went ahead and dyed them grey.

I died two long-sleeved shirts and one pair of pants (Or tights... Because they are definitely tights). The extra shirt I'm going to stitch onto the clothes in a similar pattern to the movie suit. I went ahead and did a proof of concept using my old suit from Halloween underneath.
I'm a skinny guy.

But with the original chestplate underneath...

I ALMOST look buff. Haha Here's with the cowl and the material I bought for the cape:

Apologies for the Coca-Cola shorts. Those aren't part of the suit. They're my pajamas.
Once I start the process of creating the armor I would love to hear suggestions and criticisms. Thanks guys!

 

So I cut all of the chest/ab pieces out of 12 mm foam and beveled the edges with my Dremmel.

The problem is that I'm an absolute moron when it comes to using that thing. As you can see, I ended up making some of my pieces less than symmetrical.. If anyone has a tutorial for how to do this better... PLEASE send it my way. :$
Here they are all heat-treated and shaped:

This made a lot of the symmetry problems less noticeable. I'm not sure how I want to attach the pieces since I'm using it both as external armor for Nightwing and internal for Batsy... Here's a test fitting by just sliding the pieces under the shirt:

Successfully looking muscular... Here it is with the cowl and whatnot...:

When I tried it with the belt, the pieces ended up smooshing together since there was nothing really holding them in place, but it was nice to see how it might look.
That's all I've got for now. Working on gauntlets and bicep pieces next. Have a Metallic Gold Plasti-Dip I'll be using for the fins... Very excited.

 

Alright, I know nobody really looks at this but it's become a sort of diary for me. The Batsuit was basically finished for the movie. Bit more I could've done but I got lazy.
The cape was a relatively simple process. Don't have time or patience to make a 6 or 8 panel cape, so I just worked with what I had: About 2.5 yards of pleather. I cut it with four scallops, curved it towards the top, sewed seams and cut out a hole for my head. Easy:

Here's the pieces after being plasti-dipped to give me an idea on how they'll look for Nightwing:

And underneath the shirt I'm using for the batsuit:

Next I decided to cut up my spare shirt to emulate the seams on the Batfleck suit (and to get them to kind of match the seams on the crotch area of the pants:lol)

The suit was just about done at that point. I plasti-dipped a new belt buckle using a gold metalizer, used excess cape pleather to make boot covers and just re-used my Origins gauntlets. The only real pictures I got were from my sister when I stopped by her place before hand and a couple after the movie with my buddy:

Yeah, we were pretty disapointed in the film. Bahahhaa, But we had fun! Also my sister can't take pictures without applying a filter. So there we have it. Hahaha. On to Nightwing in time for Emerald City ComiCon!

 

Have you started on the nightwing costume?

 

I don't have money for plasti dip, could I just spray paint the pieces anyways?

 

I quite like the fabric look of this suit bit more padding and it would be very DKR nice work though. I know the pain of building suits on a budget

Sent From The Batcave