Muscle Suits

[BanthaBeard]

Hi everyone! Brand new here, but I have been around the threads fairly often over the years. Anyway, I'd like some advice foremost on muscle suits. I'm hoping to do a Skeletor cosplay eventually, and I need some shtuff for it. This is not very time-sensitive, I'd like to have it for Rose City in early September. I'm hoping to stay under about $250, and I believe I have a skull mask option already. I'm not even sure I'll need his staff, just looking for his armor, hood, boots and bodysuit. I'd like it to still be stylized similar to the MOTU cartoon (so not realistic, like the first cosplay photo), but not too simplistic where it looks "cheap" (not looking for the D Piddy look in the last photo). The gear in the second photo would be perfect, but I'd like a muscle suit similar to the one in the third photo! I don't have my exact measurements, as the muscle suit will differ, but I am about 5'10" and 145 pounds, if that helps at all. I'm asking specifically about the muscle suit for now, as it looks like my best bet would maybe be to just try and sculpt my own. I've done a bit of research on muscle suits you can purchase, and I'd like something fairly dense/hard, and overly bulky, as Skeletor is pretty jacked. That said, anything that fits that description is extremely pricey. So I spose I was wondering if any of you have suggestions/tips/ideas for how I could achieve this look. I will most likely try and fit some sort of "Morphsuit" over the muscle suit in order to achieve his light blue body color. Thanks anyone for the help, I appreciate it

 

[Stinkape]

Best of luck, the suit is the most expensive. keep it up...Flexdesign was who i got mine from..Looking forward to your progress..

 

[n0regret5]

there are a few threads on here with people building their own, one of my favourites was a venom costume,

 

[n0regret5]

this might help.. http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=241920&highlight=venom

 

[Psicorp7]

Check out post #3 of this thread. Good luck!

http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=272870

 

[BanthaBeard]

Thanks guys!

 

[gothic]

could try these

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyoxjX9L2RQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRK2ENghf0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQyejurdtCI

 

[FuzzyDrawings]

I'm currently building a muscle suit for a ninja turtles outfit, and I'm following direction from pros on StanWinstonSchool.com

My thread doesn't go into too much detail on the muscle suit, but you can see some pics here: http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=271650

Here's a quick breakdown of what I'm doing.

1) Each muscle is carved out of 2"-5" upholstery foam. For areas that shouldn't be "soft" like the clavical, I'm using floor mat foam, but overall, upholstrey foam is perfect. It's dense enough to keep its shape, but soft enough to be comfortable and stretch and compress realistically. I'm using Persona blades (glued to tongue depressors) to carve the foam and then using a rasp to smooth things out. I find that carving the inside of the muscle so it's somewhat concave allows the foam to sit on the contours of my body better.

2) Each muscle piece is then covered/sewn into individual pieces of spandex. This is an important step (that a lot of people don't do) as the foam would otherwise catch on your outer layer of clothing/fabric. Covering them in spandex stops this and allows your outer layer of "skin"/clothing to slide over the muscles more realistically. This step can be a little tricky, as you want the spandex to fit snugly, so if you're not familiar with using a sewing machine, you might have to redo some muscles; though you can also do this by hand.

3) The muscles are then sewn onto a morph suit; this keeps the muscles in place and makes taking the muscle suit off and on easier.

4) Once the last step is done, you can then cover this with your final spandex suit. This layer will have some decent definition (depending on your muscle carving/placement, but you can always go in and sew this outer layer to the under suit in certain areas for more clearly defined muscles.

Hope this helps some. Happy to answer any more questions!