Distressed Iron Man Armor: Novice Tutorial

Tigerblood

Well-Known Member
Hey guys I know a lot of you are building Iron Man costumes and wanted to do a battle damaged look as well as weathering it. I had some extra time earlier today to show you guys a better way to achieve this look...
iron-man-in-the-avengers-2012.jpg


To start I hated seeing the battle damage look by distressing it with paint after it has been painted with its final coat. It just doesn't look good to me. Having the "paint chipped" look will only look good by... chipped paint. However, you have to hold your guns from the start if you want the distressed look before you even put the primer down.

With this step, I recommend that you should know where you would want your "damaged" areas such as dents, deep gouges and bullet marks (dings or holes). Simulate these damages on the bondo or the surface that you're using for your armor. In this pic I used my pepakura ab piece. I did have an intention to have a distressed look, but no battle damage so it just have some ding here and there.

7961687174_6772d2a3dd_b.jpg


After the primer, rubbed it with steel wool to have a brushed metal texture on it. You have to go in only one direction when doing this to have a uniform grain. Then I proceeded with painting it with Chrome paint.

7961686896_a5f31e48e6_c.jpg


here's a close up of the piece so you can see the texture on it.

7961686588_37e983264a_b.jpg


Ok next step. This is going to seem weird, but this is the good stuff. I'm going to use this Elmers glue to simulate the distressed areas on the piece. However, I recommend using Petrolium Jelly for this step, but I couldn't find some anywhere in my house. Elmers will do just fine for this tutorial.

7961686020_82cdf31993_b.jpg


As what I mentioned before, pre-plan on where you wanted your distressed/ battle damaged areas. Here I applied some glue on the edges and on the dings/dents that I have on the piece. If you have bullet holes, make sure that you put some glue/PJ around the holes. I also brushed some on the side of this ab piece. This will simulate huge scratch marks.

7961685600_aa44509950_b.jpg


I have to paint this quick before the glue dries so I just hit it with a regular red paint. You won't have to rush with petrolium jelly however and I will be using automotive paint for my finished suit. Here you can see where I accidentally touched the glued part. No biggie that part have to be rubbed off anyways.

7961685240_4f64ecef7d_b.jpg


Well after the paint is dry (that means it's not leaving a fingerprint when you touch it), you're going to have to start rubbing on the areas with either your bare hands or with a wet rag. After a few rubs, your piece should look like this...

7961684948_3e4522c1a5_b.jpg


look from the other side. I intentionally left that one side "undamaged" for comparison. You can also see the chrome part with the brushed metal look. I think you just made "damaged" look better!

7961684456_65a368b668_b.jpg


Here I did with some extra weathering with black latex paint with a little brown mixed in it. ONLY USE WATER BASED PAINT FOR THIS STEP!

7961684100_5e440895c2_b.jpg


That's it folks! I hope you enjoyed this novice tutorial :)
 
Last edited:
Looks really great! I love the weathered look and am gonna try this with my proton pack when I repaint it this year.
 
i got a question, how do you get the black color on so thinly? if i use paper towels it either is too dry allready and hardly comes off, or not dry enough and all of it comes off
 
Looks really great! I love the weathered look and am gonna try this with my proton pack when I repaint it this year.
Yea that will definitely give it a lot more character. Are you also using black/black speckled paint for your Proton pack?

That's a cool look, I especially like the brushed metal part, I was wondering how people do that.
yea it actually looks way better in person with that peeking out of the chipped areas. However on this armor in particular, I will be doing the steel wool texturing after the gold is applied then clearcoat.

Well done! Thanks for the tutorial as well.
YW :) I hope more people use this technique.

i got a question, how do you get the black color on so thinly? if i use paper towels it either is too dry allready and hardly comes off, or not dry enough and all of it comes off
Thinned the paint with water and multiple thin layers (depends on what look you wanted to achieve) instead of rubbing it off. I just do colorwashing if I want to darken beveled areas and crevices.

Cool technique! I may be using this on my current project.
:thumbsup
 
Hah, the glue trick is pretty neat, nice tip. It kind of reminds me of dying eggs, using crayons to draw on the eggs and block the dye

Thanks for posting!
 
I was going to do just a simple dry brushing the edges tutorial when I got to painting my suit but this is even better. and gives it such a realistic look.

I'll add this technique as well and give you the well deserved props man.
 
Instead of glue or petroleum jelly i use hair spray, the pump meister one, then i can even scratch with a tooth pick as desired, i learned that one from my scale cars hobby :)
 
Back
Top