djd585
New Member
Hi folks, I have decided to try to make the new Superman costume before London Comicon next summer (so I have plenty of time to get it finished), but I want to try to do this as cheaply as possible. So I have started with the chest symbol and I think this has worked ok. Here is how I made this:
Cut a template using thin card.
Traced this onto craft foam.
Using a Sharpie I drew the pattern on the foam - this is the most important part. As you can see my pattern is quite inconsistent. If I were to make another I would put a lot more time into this.
I then used a soldering iron to carve into the foam everywhere except where I had drawn.
After a few hours (with breaks) I ended up with this. The heat from the soldering iron bends the thin foam so I used a heat gun to lightly heat it enough to flattern it back out.
I then glued this to another sheet of craft foam and cut around the outer edge (leaving a border to match the design on the new suit). I used a few books to hold the sheets together whilst the glue dried.
A few coats of watered down wood glue to seal the foam, and then I began painting. First I used a dark red mixed with silver and bronze in the hope of making a red with a slight metalic colouring, but it mostly just looked dark red so I then used gold paint to highlight the raised areas.
Again my hope was that this would allow some of the gold to show through the top layer of lighter red which I then drybrushed onto the piece. However in order to get an even coat it ended up being too thick for the gold to show through in most places (though there are still hints of it in places).
I had originally intended to remove the foam from the middle parts in order to allow the suit fabric to show through underneath, but I changed my mind as I was not certain I could do this at this stage without damaging what I had already done. So instead I used puff paint to paint the pattern into the gaps. Unfortunately this was my first time using puff paint (I would recommend doing a test piece first) so the pattern was very uneven and in most places barely puffed at all.
I then painted the gold which currently has not done a great job of covering the dark blue puff paint. Maybe a lighter coloured puff paint would have been easier to cover with the gold (do they make gold puff paint?), but it is only from some angles that this is obvious (I have tried to take photos showing it both ways).
I will add more gold in order to try to cover the blue more thoroughly, and I need to add some supreglue in a few places where the two layers are not perfectly stuck together, but all in all I am quite happy with it.
Admittedly, I had a soldering iron, and most of the paints available already, but one sheet of A3 craft foam was enough for this (£0.80), the puff paint was £2.00, so I was able to make this for the total cost of £2.80.
It is far from perfect and not screen accurate but more time on the pattern and with the soldering iron would have helped with this. All in all I like it. I ordered a navy blue spandex suit off ebay the other week which has just arrived today so that will be my next step. Updates might be slow though as I want to do more tests with puff paint before I ruin my suit.
Any feedback or advice anyone has would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading.
Cut a template using thin card.
Traced this onto craft foam.
Using a Sharpie I drew the pattern on the foam - this is the most important part. As you can see my pattern is quite inconsistent. If I were to make another I would put a lot more time into this.
I then used a soldering iron to carve into the foam everywhere except where I had drawn.
After a few hours (with breaks) I ended up with this. The heat from the soldering iron bends the thin foam so I used a heat gun to lightly heat it enough to flattern it back out.
I then glued this to another sheet of craft foam and cut around the outer edge (leaving a border to match the design on the new suit). I used a few books to hold the sheets together whilst the glue dried.
A few coats of watered down wood glue to seal the foam, and then I began painting. First I used a dark red mixed with silver and bronze in the hope of making a red with a slight metalic colouring, but it mostly just looked dark red so I then used gold paint to highlight the raised areas.
Again my hope was that this would allow some of the gold to show through the top layer of lighter red which I then drybrushed onto the piece. However in order to get an even coat it ended up being too thick for the gold to show through in most places (though there are still hints of it in places).
I had originally intended to remove the foam from the middle parts in order to allow the suit fabric to show through underneath, but I changed my mind as I was not certain I could do this at this stage without damaging what I had already done. So instead I used puff paint to paint the pattern into the gaps. Unfortunately this was my first time using puff paint (I would recommend doing a test piece first) so the pattern was very uneven and in most places barely puffed at all.
I then painted the gold which currently has not done a great job of covering the dark blue puff paint. Maybe a lighter coloured puff paint would have been easier to cover with the gold (do they make gold puff paint?), but it is only from some angles that this is obvious (I have tried to take photos showing it both ways).
I will add more gold in order to try to cover the blue more thoroughly, and I need to add some supreglue in a few places where the two layers are not perfectly stuck together, but all in all I am quite happy with it.
Admittedly, I had a soldering iron, and most of the paints available already, but one sheet of A3 craft foam was enough for this (£0.80), the puff paint was £2.00, so I was able to make this for the total cost of £2.80.
It is far from perfect and not screen accurate but more time on the pattern and with the soldering iron would have helped with this. All in all I like it. I ordered a navy blue spandex suit off ebay the other week which has just arrived today so that will be my next step. Updates might be slow though as I want to do more tests with puff paint before I ruin my suit.
Any feedback or advice anyone has would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading.
