General Materials for costumes?

[Rotzloeffel]

Greetings everyone,

As I mentioned in some other threads im starting with a new costume. My previous costume was Subject Delta from bioshock 2 entirely made with paper and toxic foam. It looks pretty well, I just have to handle it with care. My upcoming costume shall be the skin Project Yasou from League of Legends. This time I really want to use the right materials so I can ensure that it (and exspecially me) wont get any damage.


So I like to know what would be the general way of creating this costume? I've seen several buildings of the Halo costume were people used printed paper models as basement and put some glass fiber material (or something similar) on it. Some others used some kind of foam. Im just wondering if its strong enough for my project, since I want to add some moveable parts into the mask.
I never worked with these materials so I like to ask here at first

So what would be the best material to create this costume?

 

[ThaUselessRock]

Wow thats a pretty massive looking piece of armor. I myself am a complete starter noob, but here is what I found out:

First of all it depends on how much money you´re willing to spend. Higher quality pieces are normally made of polyurethane resin, (aka nearly every resin product from smooth on. Its a fast curing resin so the one from a home depot wouldn´t do it) or higher quality materials like metal/wood so on. The process would be normally to get a Raw Cast of your model (hopefully using the right terminology here) out of Rondo (Fibreglass Resin and Bondo) or if you have sufficient sculpting skill a clay model, then doing a mothermould of it with sillicon, then doing a slush cast/cold cast with polyurethane resin. Your result is a very durable and high quality prop piece. In the US you would get a gallon of polyurethane resin for 90 $ or so, but otherwise.....very expensive.

The paper method you´re speaking of is pepakura, which is currently is for many, including me, the method of choice (I like to call it 3d printing for the poor . No offense). You would normally create your own low polygon 3d model, unfold it then in pepakura designer, print it with cardboard paper, glaze it with epoxy or fibreglass resin (with fibreglass mat/cloth for the fibreglass resin) and sand it as well as applying bondo to it in order for your piece to have the necessary smoothness (and then sand it again). This will make your pieces very sturdy, while giving it the necessary shine and glossiness (like plastic/metal). Pepakura models didn´t need to be necessarily made by yourself. You could look for models on the forums database and other websites.

Otherwise you could make you armor piece of EVA foam/sintra/wonderflex/worbla, EVA foam being the most common and cheapest one. You heat it up, bend it, woouhlaa. Done. Its fast and simple, but not as high quality of course (and sturdy). Sintra is sort of a pvc like polystyrene board, which also bends when heated, but feels sort of more like plastics. So its sturdier and higher quality (but more expensive) . Haven´t made any experience with worbla or wonderflex.

3d printer are soo great. They would make anybodys life so much easier. But in my case its unaffordable.

Alternatively you could ask other users to sell you their raw cast´s or make you the armor. I saw RuthlessFx making the Yasou helmet. So you could check out his facebook page and ask if he commisions/sells this helmet

Hope I could help. If I´am wrong correct me. I´am all willing to learn

 

[Rotzloeffel]

At first, thanks a lot for this very comprehensive summary

I'll propably use the pepakura methode with fibreglass. Im corious about the wonderlfex/worbla/sintra methode either, im just worried to use them, since these are pretty expensive. I'll take a look on these when I've got the pepakura patterns. Its also no problem for me to get the 3D models since im an old model-artist ^^. I also had 3D-printing in my mind but its just very expensive. In addition, its some kind of cheating and too easy to get a costume done in my opinion