J326's Ironman Build: adding to the RPF's Iron man army

[J326]

Hello RPF! Long time viewer first time register. I have had some experience with costuming and Iron Man will be my 3rd costume to make. The first 2 suits ive done
The first being my attempt at noble 6 from the Halo series, an early costume that I no longer have.

and the second a foam version of the reach suit

So like all the people that build iron man costumes, i love the character and the challenge of this suit, so here's my foam attempt at it. I am going to Fanime 2013 in San Jose so that will be the deadline for a suit that can make it out the door. I decided to make a mish mash of pieces that I liked and think are easier and faster to make/better looking. Thanks to all the RPFers that made and unfolded the files.

originally this was a mark 6 helmet but I was having trouble with getting perfectly rounded ears and clean inside gaps since I am still new to dremeling stuff. I ended up cutting them out filled in the gap and made mark 47's ears and stuck them on and bondoed the area. (if i ever end up selling casts of these helmets least I'll know if any1 recasts them haha)

The hand files needed a bit of thinking on my part. I took Zabana's Hand file and moded it a bit for foam ease. i then took a bunch of pieces and stitched them together and then retraced them as one single piece i could use as a base for thin craft foam, that's the pink thing in the pictures below. the grey pep pieces became the raised pieces using thicker craft foam.

Here's an arm the pink stuff is bondo glazing putty, im experimenting to see if it fills in gaps and when washed over with a coat of mod podge will still be flexible.

using the tip of the hot glue gun i loved how i got such clean lines to pop out on the shoulders

 

[J326]

Thighs got done

For shoes I took the mark 42 boot from jackieisrockin file and took a cheap thrift store pair of shoes and glued foam to it.

 

[Pittbull535]

Looks good
I'm working on the same file I only got the chest done so far
You back looks awesome hope mine turns out that good but this is my first foam so we will see

 

[J326]

Looks good
I'm working on the same file I only got the chest done so far
You back looks awesome hope mine turns out that good but this is my first foam so we will see

yeah the back was a bit of a head scratcher because I intended to not include those flaps and have the thrusters stick out from the file but the back looked oddly flat so I put those flaps in to give it a better look, sad that I wont have thrusters sticking out cuz the flaps had to be glued down =/

 

[Daborg]

Nice build so far!! What did you mean when you said you used the tip of the gluegun to get the back pieces so neat? Did you melt the foam with the gluegun?

 

[J326]

Nice build so far!! What did you mean when you said you used the tip of the gluegun to get the back pieces so neat? Did you melt the foam with the gluegun?

i first cut the lines out with a blade and then ran the hot tip of the glue gun over the lines and it kinda heated the edges of those foam lines to curve a bit inward to bring out that line. Hope that helps.

Anyways I didnt like bondoing over the foam helmet too much because every time i create a layer and sand it down the layer is either too brittle/cracks or the sanding takes it back down to the foam layer, this makes it hard to get detailing done on the helmet so I decided to try mold making for the first time and decided to go cheap and make a silicone caulk mold, 5 tubes later and i got this:

unforunately i screwed up on how i cut out the jacket mold and got very sloppy with the shell that the cast was warped and damaged a bit.

since i dont wanna take the time to remake the mold i recast another one and will fix that one best i can. this is the second cast

Here are the copies and the original

so now I will repair the one in the middle and get it ready for a final mold since my friend game me his extra mold making supplies for my birthday =D!
definitely learned from my mistakes for the next one so hope the next mold is better.

 

[J326]

Cut out the Face plate and did some bondo and sanding work

I decided to also try xrobot's painting plastic onto the foam method and see how that'll turn out for me

 

[Glaedr304]

may i ask what "xrobot's painting plastic onto the foam method" is? link to a video or a post that explains it. i'm new here, so if there are tutorials that i missed please tell me.

 

[J326]

may i ask what "xrobot's painting plastic onto the foam method" is? link to a video or a post that explains it. i'm new here, so if there are tutorials that i missed please tell me.

XRobots - How To plastic coat foam & expanded polystyrene prop and costume pieces - YouTube Here you go! =D

 

[Daborg]

My 65D just arrived yesterday--let us know your experience!

 

[J326]

My 65D just arrived yesterday--let us know your experience!

I don't have 65D because its some plastic my friend gave me leftover from his projects in prototyping but its working out decently so far. What i don't like so far with the plastic thing is since it self levels it kind of sets as its being runny so you get the drip patterns on the piece and that becomes kind of a sanding nightmare, and the plastic i have is pretty tough to sand as well. I decided to use some bondo/resin mixture after i coated the plastic to level it out since its not as runny and i can control the consistency, plus it has a longer pot life for me.

Now I have a week till BigWow in which im hoping to attend on sunday in this suit, but if not I got a spartan back up, and will for sure get this suit done by Fanime in San Jose.

here are some update pictures







Im only going to partially coat the backpiece and only the fingertips of the gloves to give them more strength and reduce the amount I have to sand, The abs are going to be plasti dip ->mod podge -> primer -> Paint because I don't have time to sand that piece either plus it looks smooth and level enough on its own that it doesn't require as much detail work.

 

[J326]

update:
started painting

 

[J326]

Picture update! I am in full on panic mode since fanime is on friday! so here's to rushing what i got left!



got 1 day to figure out how to motorize and light the helmet @_@!

 

[J326]

Well Fanime 2013 in San Jose California has come and gone, and i just barely managed to get my suit done, didn't have time to motorize anything but now that it's over I will continue to refine my suit. here are pictures and video of my walk on. compliments to the people that took the pictures! =)

so far this is one of my favorite shots taken

here are some fun shots from fanime:

 

[J326]

Update: So I got an iron man helmet cast a couple months back and have been slowly working on it here and there. It's a mark 3 helmet but either way It's my first time working with a proper raw cast and it's been pretty interesting.




so I learned the hard way that Lacquer painting means no other paint can really stick to it so i ended up re sanding that down to reprimer and I tried to airbrush a gold on it but I've given up doing that until I get a better airbrush to play around with. So I just went back to spray cans and I like this gold a lot better than the gold I used on my first helmet! It could be just the lighting but it's still an improvement over the older shade.

 

[J326]

So I have a question to the Iron Man builders out there with a Helmet cast. What grade of earth magnets do you use to hold the back plate to the helmet? N35/N45 higher? I want something thats about 5mm across and strong enough that it wont be knocked loose as i turn my head and it hits the neck piece. Also how do you glue or attach the magnets if heat demagnetizes them so hot glue is out.

 

[J326]

Fanime 2014 is a month away so I'm starting to feel the pressure to get this done!

Painted the jaw piece




The back plate is being held by a bunch of 5x5x2 mm Neodymium N40 grades probably better idea to have gotten bigger blocks but i needed small ones for the places that connect to the jaw part. I put a bunch of them together and attached them to some thick steel wire then epoxy puttied that whole thing down. Just wanted to be thorough and have it stuck down and not come out on me. I put magnets on both the back piece that comes out and the helmet itself. When attached the piece will not come out if i pull directly from the back plate but it comes out nicely if i pull from the small magnets connecting it to the back of the jaw.







Took me a while to figure out the hinges for my own helmet. The resources on this forum are great for getting you the design idea but still requires some thinking to incorporate into your own helmet.



Used steel wire to go from the hinge to the jaw piece so it can drop as the face plate goes up