War Machine, my first Pepakura project...

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I'm about 85% done with my first Pepakura project, the Iron Man 2 "War Machine". I got it up to a wearable level for Halloween but it still has quite a ways to go, loads of things I plan on fixing and missing parts to complete. I tried to take lots of photos of the process and I'll post them here with description as I have time. I'll try to be sure to give proper credit to the maker/s of the pep files as I post images of individual parts.

The suit is a paper/fiberglass and foam hybrid suit and I'm actually planning on remaking a few of the fiberglass parts out of foam due to the comfort factor.

This is about two months of work, after hours weekends, etc...
With the amount of mistakes made I've learned a heap of "what NOT to do" and the next build (whatever that turns out to be) will go much more quickly and considerably smoother

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The eyes actually light up (the eyes are red now) but my setup is crap and too much light leaks inside the mask and makes it difficult to see out at night.
It's almost fixed now and should be good to go by next time I have a chance to wear the costume.

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It looks really good, I can't really tell which parts you did with foam but i agree the pep stuff does get a little uncomfortable to wear, I did a complete pep suit that was based on Halo and it was heavy uncomfortable and hot, since I discovered how to build with foam its my prefered choice to build armor with, but awesome job on the War Machine
 
With the amount of mistakes made I've learned a heap of "what NOT to do" and the next build (whatever that turns out to be) will go much more quickly and considerably smoother

Thats so true. I feel the exact same with my costume.

That costume is sick!!! I'm kinda curious about that pepakura thingy, I've never tried it.
 
Thats so true. I feel the exact same with my costume.

That costume is sick!!! I'm kinda curious about that pepakura thingy, I've never tried it.
its a hell of a lot work, but its pretty addictive :)
i started with a helmet, and did the whole suit because i liked it so much

but its not for everyone, you have to be very patient, and dont mind hot glue burns :)
 
Great suit and I also see you live in Tampa Bay as these photos are in Ybor. I am in St. Petersburg, Glad to meet another local.
 
Thanks for the kind words! :)

I started out with and iron man mkVI helmet by cutting out lots and lots and lots of paper. I realized shortly that the paper I used was way too light weight and I just wasted loads of time. When I decided to start over War Machine seemed like it might be a little bit more fun. back to cutting paper and tiny little tabs...
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I pepped up the helmet, torso, shoulders and arms first.

The first war machine paper helmet came out pretty decent. And yes, I did say "first". I began glassing the model and was making decent progress. I set it outside the to start the next round of resin coating and went inside to get some supplies. When I came back out, maybe 10 minutes later, a freak rain shower had happened and my helmet turned to deformed mush. So.... back to square one...
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Shortly after this I made the legs but didn't get any photos of them before glassing. :(


Fiber glassing the parts came with a whole set of new challenges. I experimented with different methods on almost every part I built to see what would work best. On most of them, what seemed to work was a thing coat of resin on the outside of the piece first. On some of the parts I would do a second coat on the inside and let it cure before adding the fiber glass mat.

One of the hardest parts to manage were large pieces with big, low detail areas. These were very prone to deform once the resin started to soak into the paper. I found that doing a few areas at a time worked better than trying to coat the whole thing. I would start in areas that needed lots of support and reinforce the seams, edges and corners with a light coat of resin and allow to cure before venturing out into the open areas. This helped the rigidity enough to keep the parts from collapsing under the full coat of resin.

The shoulders were particularly tricky and wanted to curl in on themselves. I ended up using a box and building a support structure inside to help them hold their shape.

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The were both attached and needed to be cut apart.
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with a few distortions to fix and lots of filling and sanding to go, (plus a few other troubles I'll write about in a future post...) In the end, I was in too much of a time crunch to do all the extra work required on the shoulders so I moved over to a quick foam version which, I think, worked nicely (even better than expected) in such a pinch. and actually convinced me that more of the parts could have been made from foam.

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I will go back and finish the fiberglass versions in the future.

Some more will be covered in the next post... got work to do. ;)
 
as every WM project, im following this :)

one tip: dont do arms and legs in Pep. you will thank me when you try to wear it (i did the whole suit in pep, arms and legs are painful to wear over time :)
 
as every WM project, im following this :)

one tip: dont do arms and legs in Pep. you will thank me when you try to wear it (i did the whole suit in pep, arms and legs are painful to wear over time :)

haha, you're SOOOO right. unfortunately I learned this the hard way!
the arms and fiberglass shins are actually alright. I replaced a few parts of the shins with foam and they don't hurt to wear anymore. The thighs on the other hand.... OMFG. you should see the marks on my legs from halloween. terrible. I'm working on the full foam upgrade for those now. ;)
 
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man... your war machine is pretty neat... awesome job:)(y)thumbsup!

it reminded me of the first ever pep we did... unfortunately, we only managed to do the helm...Ironman/Warmachine Motorized faceplate pRoJectEarth7 - YouTube

Our warmachine helm became a guinea pig for our first time molding process and was totally destroyed afterwards:cry

Anyway, your build along with other WM thread here inspires me to rebuild our warmachine...

thanks for the inspiration...

cheers!
 
Working on wm pep myself. Thanks for the tips about using foam for some pieces, I will consider this.
I have never seen anyone do the gattling gun on the shoulder... THAT would be neat! ( but probably heavy and bulky to wear). Great work. Inspiring.
 
Working on wm pep myself. Thanks for the tips about using foam for some pieces, I will consider this.
I have never seen anyone do the gattling gun on the shoulder... THAT would be neat! ( but probably heavy and bulky to wear). Great work. Inspiring.

sure it has been done :)

even working ones, with airsoft, or just with rotating barrels, or even only static :)

look at masked riders build, his is probably the most accurate build :)
 
sure it has been done :)

even working ones, with airsoft, or just with rotating barrels, or even only static :)

look at masked riders build, his is probably the most accurate build :)


I just checked it out, that is awesome!!.... I had never seen one before.
 
Nice job. I've been looking at all the pep threads and it's making me really want to start a project like this. Just not sure I would have the patience.

Oh, and I love the shot where it looks like War Machine is about to get attacked by a rabid Scooby Doo. :)
 
Working on wm pep myself. Thanks for the tips about using foam for some pieces, I will consider this.
I have never seen anyone do the gattling gun on the shoulder... THAT would be neat! ( but probably heavy and bulky to wear). Great work. Inspiring.

I'll be making the shoulder gun starting this week. (first version anyway, probably upgrade it later) I'll be sure to post some photos. Also getting ready to put up some pics of how i did my chest/back it's mostly fiberglass but has some foam parts that made a huge difference in wearability. check back later today or early tomorrow for a better description, maybe a quick video if i get some extra minutes...
 
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great job, could u share the paint you used?

Sure! Nothing crazy was used, I got cheap stuff. For the metallic parts I used Krylon Matte Aluminum and the Grey parts are done with Rust-Oleum "Charcoal Grey" The foam pieces all had different treatments before painting, but used the same paints listed above as the final coat.

i'm making some more parts this week and I'll do a comparison of the foam sealing methods and show my results.

Both of the paints I used are slightly too reflective but after weathering the reflections were deadened some and I think it looked better.

The weathering is a bet excessive and was done extremely quickly (literally 35 minutes or something before I went out for Halloween) I'd like that to look better so I'll be redoing the whole thing soon. paint, weathering, the whole nine yards.
 
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