CW-ish The Flash on a budget.

Irongreymon

New Member
While Halloween may be long since past, I thought I'd share my attempt at making a homemade Flash costume put together earlier this year, on a fairly modest budget I might add.

I'm a huge fan of the CW show so I'd based my design on the one modelled by Grant Gustin.
I did however put a little of the new 52 costume through it as well as some borrowed elements from the original amazing Spider-man suit. I've always thought the bold colours, textured surface and built in tennis shoes of TASM would have worked well with a Flash costume.
 
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I used basic craft materials, measured out the shapes I wanted on the craft mask and printed out a stencil for the shape of the head using a file I found on this very forum.
I can't quite remember where I got the stencil, I'm fairly sure it was a Captain America template. I'll post a link when I figure out where it came from.

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Next I measured the shape of the face of the mask to the size of my own head and used foam sheets to elongate the distance between the chin piece and the rest of the mask.

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Having traced out the helmet template onto a craft foam sheet I cut it to size, taped it into shape with the face of the mask, added some circular pieces for the ears and ... admittedly proceeded to go nuts with tape. Trying it on at this stage I looked absolutely ridiculous, like some sort of strange garbage man ... but It fit my head perfectly.

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Moving forward I began fleshing out certain parts of the mask, adding more definition to the jawline, adding an extra layer of foam under the nose and cheeks, ensuring the mask sat closer to my face and of course, making sure those eyebrows were on fleek.

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Having the shape I wanted I covered the whole thing in red duct tape, giving the entire mask a more smoothed out appearance, giving it a little more durability and ensuring the final layer had something a little more stable to be glued onto once applied.
 
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Giving up on the tape, I then proceeded to hot glue a burgundy faux leather I had cut to shape using a template I had made from the mask in an earlier stage (before duct tape mania 2015) The hot glue sticks to the duct tape like a champ which gave me a surprisingly clean finish once applied.

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I continued attaching the faux leather to the mask, while the glue is still hot you can manipulate the fabric into the shape you want which enabled me to warp it around the brow.
While the seams are still rather messy at this stage and the moulding of the faux leather can cause bumps along the conjoining edges, this can later be rectified by adding additional leather pieces on top.
 

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After covering the seams with metallic 3D paint I then added some gold to the lightning bolt pattern from the brows to the back of the head.

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I outsourced the earpieces from PrintedPropz and attached them with hot glue to the circular foam shapes I coated in faux leather.

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I then added additional pieces of faux leather which both covered the messy seams from earlier and helped give the whole cowl a rather unique look, incorporating a little of the New 52 element in the strong black lines on the mask. I managed to make the neck piece by purchasing a dark red zentai suit mask and sewing the same faux leather into certain portions of the neck, the remaining exposed fabric was covered in a honeycomb slick 3D paint to allow it to remain stretchable. The neck is attached to the rest of the mask which came with a zipper up the back of the head making it fairly easy to slip on and off.
 
Dude, this is looking sick! Love how you approached the cowl! Your ear and neck pictures aren't showing though...might just be me, but again, good work overall!
 
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Sorry about the lack of updates recently. So this was the half-finished product that I sported on Haloween last year. It was rather hastily assembled since I completely underestimated how much time it would take to make the thing. I have finished making the complete costume now and I'll upload some progress shots on how I made the Jacket, pants and gloves soon.
 
The jacket stared out life as the top half of a burgundy morph suit, which I bought because I wanted both the jacket itself and the pants to be very form-fitting and reminiscent of the Flash's spandex comic book suit.

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Essentially I halved the morph suit at the waist and cut the gloves off, using the zipper that typically would to zip up at the back as the front zipper of the jacket. I folded over the collar over once I removed the mask section and stitched the ragged cut edges down.
I proceeded to add the same faux leather I had used for the mask. I wanted the leather-look of the mask to be continued throughout the suit, so it all tied together.

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In the fabric spaces between the leather pieces I'd drawn in a honeycomb pattern by hand and then proceeded to apply the same Tulip slick paint over the pattern that I had used on the neck portion of the cowl.
The idea was to have it look like chain mail between the leather/armour pieces, while making it look sleek and lightweight and allow a great range of movement in the joints with a stretchy surface.
 
I wanted a slightly different design from the CW Flash's suit so I began adding the leather shapes of my own preference that I attempted to keep in theme with a streamlined, sleek design, almost all the edges have angular, jagged edges to help incorporate the lightning bolt element into the suit.

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This honeycomb pattern is an element taken from the amazing Spider-man suit design, I figured it also allows for an easier pattern to hand draw rather than the mini lightning bolt design of the CW Flash suit and gives the suit a nice shine, allowing for a slick and aerodynamic 'Flashy' appearance.


Originally I thought an all red suit would be a little too much and attempted to break up the form with black slick paint over the dark red suit in certain areas. Upon application I changed my mind and decided the completely red costume would look a lot better as the leather and textured, red surface worked really well with the gold accents serving to add the required definition to the suit.

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I purchased a brushed gold vinyl wrap, cut it to shape and wrapped it around some foam cut outs of the same shape to make the belt, cuff and shoe lightning bolts.
I really wanted these gold pieces to be incorporated into the suit as I felt there was just something missing from the CW costume.
I then lined the edges with the same metallic gold tulip paint I used on the mask to give more depth and tie in with the gold lining on the suit itself. I applied these with basic super glue which stuck to the leather perfectly.

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After a few absolutely miserable attempts to make my own, I outsourced the Flash emblem and found a fantastic replica at STACEYPROPS.
I originally bought the red emblem from season one but with a bit of doctoring with some brilliant white card with a bit shine to it, I updated it to the white version from season two and easily switch between them if I ever wanted to change things up.

I attached the emblem with Velcro so it sits nicely on the chest over the zipper and can be removed easily enough.

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I then made a cover for the front of the jacket, similar to the one seen on the TV show, using a foam cutout, wrapped in leather with gold studs punched though it.
Again this was just attached to the front of the suit with Velcro to cover the bottom of the zipper.


I would eventually line the edges of this belt piece with the metallic black tulip paint the same way I did with the edges of all the leather pieces on the suit.
This was both to cover the ... quite frankly terrible stitching I'd done and to tie it in with the strong black lines used on the cowl.
 
I then proceeded to make leather cuffs (with zippers attached to make putting them on easier as they were so form-fitting) to fit over the space between the gloves and the jacket.
I added a brushed vinyl lighting bolt at the top of the cuffs on one side using the same method I'd used to the belt and once again lined it with gold metallic 3D paint.


I wanted to be able to take the gloves off easily and not be stuck in a whole body suit having to take it off completely every time I needed my hands to be free.
Effectively I would just have these cuffs sitting over the jacket on my forearms, I had notions to attach them to to jacket itself but I decided just to keep them as separate pieces.

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The gloves themselves are just the cutoffs from the red morph suit, I applied the same technique I used with the jacket.


I attached some leather wrap arounds across the palms of the hands and added some small, leather patches to a few of the fingers then filled in the exposed fabric with the honeycomb pattern.
I added lightning bolts on the fingertips as a little extra detail.
Basically the leather cuffs would sit over the exposed edges of the jacket sleeves and the ends of the gloves, helping to keep that seem less, one piece look but at the same time being really easy to slip on and off.
 

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Utilising the bottom of the morph suit to make the pants, I started by mapping out where I wanted the gold lining to go from the torso, down the legs and emphasising the legs and shoes, since the Flash's power is all about his speed.


When I had to quickly assemble the suit for Halloween, I basically just used Velcro pads to attach the pants to the jacket section which was fine for standing upright. When I was sitting down and bending it proved to be a disaster though ... I really earned the name the Flash that night for all the wrong reasons ...


Anyhoo, for Flash 2.0 I decided I really needed a better system in place, so I rather lazily cut the waist section off a pair of old skinny jeans and stitched them the the top of the morph suit pants.
I then coated the jeans and the top section of the pants in the same dark red leather I used for the rest of the suit which turned out surprisingly well, I think.
This was basically just to avoid having to sew the buttons and zipper system and making my own pants from scratch, plus I wanted pockets, damn I really wanted pockets.
I then continued to add the leather throughout the pants, once again in shapes reminiscent of the CW show design but with my own touch to it.

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I used a pair of Puma running shoes and cut off the soles to add to the bottom of the suit in a similar manor to the amazing Spider-man suit. I figured if anyone was going to have running shoes attached to their uniform it'd be the Flash and I chose these shoes in particular because I loved having the transparent red soles, which I thought would look great once they were attached to the suit.
I had to reprint the silver sections gold which I did using a gold acrylic-based pen, it took a few coatings but it's held to the shoes really well and hasn't cracked at all since applied.


I decided to add another lightning bolt design (using the same process I used for the forearm and belt bolts) to the sides of the shoes and framed the leather on the lower legs with a double lined gold metallic paint instead of the usual singled lined black paint to create an illusion of boots on the costume.


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