Morgenes
Active Member
Please be kind, this is my first write-up of a build, excuse that it's not extremely detailed.
A group of friends approached me about wanting to do a group cosplay from Arrow, which I hadn't been watching. I immediately said 'Sure, that looks neat', then binge watched the entire first two seasons. Along the way I hit up the multitude of threads on here and started gathering screen caps and piecing together all the parts of it. I'm not going to go into details that are covered in other threads, the Definitive Deathstroke Arrow Season 2 thread does a great job of covering where much of the stuff comes with. I'm going to share my pics of the suit as I debuted it at DragonCon 2014, as well as some pics of my process in case others want to take from my experience.
First, here are a few shots, from left to right (Full body shot, without the helmet [I got a patch to do casual time], and my group with George Perez):
Credits
First, props to all of you for contributing and sharing your builds, I've learned a lot from hovering on these forums over the years.
Thanks to Mr. Dark for helping design such a great costume.
Huge thanks to Wolfram, who made the mask that I'm using, it was perfect out of the box, and I didn't have to worry at all about that part of the build.
Templating
To template these items, I would hold a piece of paper over the item, and try as best as I could to trace over the contours I could feel and cut them out.
Carbon Fiber Vinyl Wrap
When cutting out the blue vinyl wrap, I extended the template about a half an inch on all sides. That gave me plenty of room to wrap the vinyl around the piece. I found myself cutting notches to make it better hug the foam for the chest. I also found that any pulling to reposition would finish the glue on foam, and so I would go back and apply superglue to keep the vinyl attached.
Forearm Guards
As discussed in the definitive thread, I picked up the Troy Lee designs Elbow Guard Motocross Body Armor, and stripped the logo off and wrapped it in the blue carbon vinyl wrap:
I cut off the straps and sewed on new ones, based on what I saw in the pics, the ones nearest the elbow were repurposed from the existing elastic straps fitted with some velcro. The middle is 1.5" nylon strapping and the wrist is 1" strapping.
Gloves
The gloves are Oakley Pilot Gloves, the knuckles were covered with the vinyl wrap:
Over Vest
The vest was completely created from scratch. I created a template by wrapping my torso with plastic wrap while wearing the equestrian vest. Then, while using reference images, we built a duct-tape template. We tried to carefully determine where the over-vest rested on the undervest. This was most difficult on the back due to lack of reference photos in a standing position.
That was cut off my body and then the excess wrap was trimmed. I then transferred the template over to poster paper. Again, using reference images, I drew where the pads should be on the templates.
I created a copy of this template, and cut out the templates for the pads. The pads were cut out from EVA foam (Harbor Freight floor mats), and then sanded down using a belt sander to give a bevelled edge and appropriate thickness.
These foam pads were wrapped in the carbon vinyl fiber:
We found a pleather material and some polyester knit and some poly-fill batting and sewed them together to form the base of the vest. Then marked using the cut out template where the pads should lie:
These were sewn to look like the pads were sewn in, and then I used contact cement to attach the pads to the vest.
Straps were sewn onto the vest, and carabiners were looped through the straps. Elastic was sewn into loops to keep the vest pieces together and provide flex during movement.
Upper Leg Holsters
I took the Safariland 6004-776 Drop Leg Holster Right Hand (RH) SIG P226 w/ SureFire P114 and pulled it apart to apply the vinyl wrap over it. Doing this required getting a template of it, and so I used that template to build another copy of it for the left-hand side out of fun foam and Worbla.
I cut holes for the straps, and fit a 1.5" nylon strap to attach the Safariland Model 77 Double Magazine Pouch (not pictured above, I changed it after I realized it was different from reference).
I used plasti-dip to coat the Worbla, and then vinyl wrapped it.
One thing I learned from my inaugural wearing of the outfit, was that standard nylon strap is not going to do much of anything for keeping it from sliding down my leg. I've ordered some elastic strapping to try, hopefully it's closer to what is in the original Safariland holster.
Moving to another post due to number of pics...
A group of friends approached me about wanting to do a group cosplay from Arrow, which I hadn't been watching. I immediately said 'Sure, that looks neat', then binge watched the entire first two seasons. Along the way I hit up the multitude of threads on here and started gathering screen caps and piecing together all the parts of it. I'm not going to go into details that are covered in other threads, the Definitive Deathstroke Arrow Season 2 thread does a great job of covering where much of the stuff comes with. I'm going to share my pics of the suit as I debuted it at DragonCon 2014, as well as some pics of my process in case others want to take from my experience.
First, here are a few shots, from left to right (Full body shot, without the helmet [I got a patch to do casual time], and my group with George Perez):
Credits
First, props to all of you for contributing and sharing your builds, I've learned a lot from hovering on these forums over the years.
Thanks to Mr. Dark for helping design such a great costume.
Huge thanks to Wolfram, who made the mask that I'm using, it was perfect out of the box, and I didn't have to worry at all about that part of the build.
Templating
To template these items, I would hold a piece of paper over the item, and try as best as I could to trace over the contours I could feel and cut them out.
Carbon Fiber Vinyl Wrap
When cutting out the blue vinyl wrap, I extended the template about a half an inch on all sides. That gave me plenty of room to wrap the vinyl around the piece. I found myself cutting notches to make it better hug the foam for the chest. I also found that any pulling to reposition would finish the glue on foam, and so I would go back and apply superglue to keep the vinyl attached.
Forearm Guards
As discussed in the definitive thread, I picked up the Troy Lee designs Elbow Guard Motocross Body Armor, and stripped the logo off and wrapped it in the blue carbon vinyl wrap:
I cut off the straps and sewed on new ones, based on what I saw in the pics, the ones nearest the elbow were repurposed from the existing elastic straps fitted with some velcro. The middle is 1.5" nylon strapping and the wrist is 1" strapping.
Gloves
The gloves are Oakley Pilot Gloves, the knuckles were covered with the vinyl wrap:
Over Vest
The vest was completely created from scratch. I created a template by wrapping my torso with plastic wrap while wearing the equestrian vest. Then, while using reference images, we built a duct-tape template. We tried to carefully determine where the over-vest rested on the undervest. This was most difficult on the back due to lack of reference photos in a standing position.
That was cut off my body and then the excess wrap was trimmed. I then transferred the template over to poster paper. Again, using reference images, I drew where the pads should be on the templates.
I created a copy of this template, and cut out the templates for the pads. The pads were cut out from EVA foam (Harbor Freight floor mats), and then sanded down using a belt sander to give a bevelled edge and appropriate thickness.
These foam pads were wrapped in the carbon vinyl fiber:
We found a pleather material and some polyester knit and some poly-fill batting and sewed them together to form the base of the vest. Then marked using the cut out template where the pads should lie:
These were sewn to look like the pads were sewn in, and then I used contact cement to attach the pads to the vest.
Straps were sewn onto the vest, and carabiners were looped through the straps. Elastic was sewn into loops to keep the vest pieces together and provide flex during movement.
Upper Leg Holsters
I took the Safariland 6004-776 Drop Leg Holster Right Hand (RH) SIG P226 w/ SureFire P114 and pulled it apart to apply the vinyl wrap over it. Doing this required getting a template of it, and so I used that template to build another copy of it for the left-hand side out of fun foam and Worbla.
I cut holes for the straps, and fit a 1.5" nylon strap to attach the Safariland Model 77 Double Magazine Pouch (not pictured above, I changed it after I realized it was different from reference).
I used plasti-dip to coat the Worbla, and then vinyl wrapped it.
One thing I learned from my inaugural wearing of the outfit, was that standard nylon strap is not going to do much of anything for keeping it from sliding down my leg. I've ordered some elastic strapping to try, hopefully it's closer to what is in the original Safariland holster.
Moving to another post due to number of pics...
Attachments
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