Run Barry, Run!! Season 2 CW Flash costume build resource (Pic Heavy)

Greetings everybody!

Hoping to build this up as a resource/ inspiration for anybody else looking to get into a Flash costume build.

First off, I was heavy inspired by SMP Designs thread over heeeerre: http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=239865

I wouldn't be NEARLY as happy with my suit if it wasn't for his documentation and hard work.

Secondly, I tend to work in the shadows...this is my first attempt to try and showcase my build process so it's definitely going to be rough and please bear with me.


I started off taking an old army combat shirt and a pair of wind pants and took them in on my sewing machine until I was happy with the fit in reference to Barry's suit. Used a combination of sharpies and pinstripe tape to make the seam lines and for various patterning (which totally sucked, BTdubs so it's nice to leverage or bring in friends that might be stronger at pattern drafting if you haven't done something like this before) until I was happy with what I had on my scrubby clothes. Afterwards, painstakingly cut it all out and I highly recommend first transferring into cheaper material than what you plan the finished product to be in. In my case, 3 $ a yard rayon. I started with the pants and ended up with this:



Now I didn't bother with a waistline so I had to make an educated guess on that, but overall I definitely learned a few things and documented what needed to be taken in to save me some time on the actual product. Initially, I was planning to use these as a lining for the pants...but after wearing the mostly finished pants I emphatically decided against that because of the sheer heat factor.... (I started to feel like a Wampa in Tahiti)


My next hurdle was the back waistband section....which I affectionately refer to as Barry's butt panels. I had a feeling this was going to be a nightmare on my machine (Call me Miss Cleo...) I wanted them to be textured which meant batting, along with spandex as the skeletal layer let's call it and deerskin leather on top. Luckily my roommate had a bunch of faux red leather lying around which was similar thickness so I began a test on that.



after getting enough XP to be happy with it, I went on to the real thing in the same fashion. I made almost all the way through on my machine but I didn't have the foresight to "stub" the batting short of the seamline and 4 layers of leather + batting + spandex was defintely asking a lot of my off the shelf $150 singer machine. I ended up having to stitch the two "cheeks" together using a boot threading machine a buddy of mine had.






Next up was the knees, I made a pattern specific for them using drafting tools and poster board, the tedious part is cutting darts into the leather so that it will fold over but still have enough extra meat to have a finished look after all the top stitching.





The most frustrating part of the suit build far and away was the piping...so I didn't document most of that... largely due to stress-drinking from multiple failures, but my biggest take away is precision. Pre-cut your cord to the exact length you need, and use as heavy duty a fabric as you can for the finished color, over stitch it a little bit and due each extreme angle as one piece (For example, one lightning bold should be atleast 3 pieces of separate cord). I thought it would be easier to do the leg piping as one piece, and used a thicker cord than on the jacket, and it's one of my only regrets of the end result. But hey!! Learning experience...so takeaways are important.

 
Full Disclosure: I got lazy by the time the pants were finished, so I didn't bother with a mock-up for the jacket (which I came to regret later...). I just dove right into it. The Jacket has a lot more change-ups between what I consider the "spandex" sections and the "leather" ones. I resolved that the bottom four sections were definitely leather so to build up some morale/ motivation I stitched the bottom four together and then top stitched them immediately after.



For most of the spandex sections, I wanted to simulate the texture seen in the show by air-brushing on a sheen. To get a consistent shape, I got a half yard of heavy athletic mesh and laid it over the spandex fabric and sprayed down a couple layers of metallic red acrylic mixed with fabric medium. After that I started stitching the next layer of back patterns in spandex to the leather. This pic illustrates the sheen from the air brush pretty well.

 
Next up was the gloves, I wasn’t concerned with the bottoms since they’d always be covered by Barry’s ninja sleeves, that left me a little freedom to add the accents on the trigger fingers…I feel like the show hasn’t been very consistent with Barry’s gloves but I did notice the accents a couple times in season 1, in season 2 it actually looks like the inside of the gloves may be black but I opted for artistic liberty on that. Gloves are always tricky, they’re a little more forgiving on stretchy fabrics but it still takes a lot of precision if you’re using a machine ( I LOATHE hand stitching).


I used a very small stitch length and a stretch stitch for reinforcement. Before stitching the two halves together I stitched the bottom part of the accent fabric, flipped it over, and pressed it into place with spray adhesive (Dritz temporary adhesive, they sell it at Joanns…it comes in a green bottle…and for any fabric you can wash [i.e. NOT leather :0( ] it’s AMAZING…saved me countless hours of pinning pieces together).


I also broke down and ended up hand stitching some conductive thread into the index fingers so I can still use my phone in-costume (totally worth the time investment!). It works alright in a static environment, but it really shines once you start moving and your body heat goes up…it’s like the gloves aren’t even there :0)



Forearm pieces were difficult, as they were leather and they were short enough where they were hard to rotate through my sewing machine. I handled the paneling very similar to Barry's butt panels, just with a stiff interfacing to pull in the batting and leather more and didn't need black spandex here.



If I could do it over again I wouldn't have stitched the ninja sleeve first as that made everything higher up more difficult and the forearms ended up being one of the only parts I didn't top stitch just because there wasn't enough inner space to work it through my machine. Also...leather isn't forgiving with holes...like..AT ALL. Your stitching has to be 1 and done..otherwise you sacrifice appearance every time you seam rip.

 
I really like how well the leather and spandex match. Thats one thing i don't like about the shows suit, there is way too much contrast for me between the two materials.
 
Haha, thanks! Lately I'm always finding something with the show's costume that grinds my gears..but I think it's just always going to be that way now. It feels like they reused the cowl from season 1 because now it seems dark as ***** compared to the rest of the costume...and even shinier this season for some reason.
 
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A couple more photos of the details on the pants. I noticed from on-set pics that Grant Gustin rocks some suspenders under the jacket so I figured I'd go the same route... $5 chinese lightning bolt suspenders FTW XD .


Since the pants' hem won't ever be seen under the boots, I went with a stronger stretch stitch which also made sense once I decided to add 2 " thick elastic to the bottoms to keep the pants from getting possibly pulled out of the boots or just generally get them to behave better in photos.



After the Elbows,I proceeded onto the chest and that went pretty smoothly for everything in the front up to the leather pectoral panels, it was a little awkward making a zipper up to the chest symbol and then figuring out how to hide that and then apply a lot of velcro for the upper chest seam so that it would all behave and be hidden once the symbol was applied.





I backed the symbol with sew-in medium strength velcro as the symbol isn't particularly heavy being thin resin, and I used several strips just for lack of wide velcro at the time so I reinforced those seams with some hot glue



The symbol was air brushed with a combination of gold acrylic paints. One take away from research is that the chest symbol is lighter than the rest of the bolts on Barry's belt...I tried to rectify that but I might repaint it in a glossier gold somewhere down the line. If you like hugging people, definitely put a top coat on it...I've only worn it to one con so far and it's already taking damage, lol.



bolts for the belt were done with a basic Rustoleum gold


The belt comes across different from the "stunt" suit to the close up suit. I decided to go with the more looser looking belt so it's a separate piece that is attached by 4 different sets of industrial velcro on the jacket. I did the "wrong" side in a thick vinyl and used real leather for the finished side. Initially I tried to stitch it and then press it right sides out but the leather just wouldn't behave with the tight bolt-like corners and incuts on the belt shape, so I resolves to cutting back the vinyl slightly with a rotary cutter and stitching directly on the real leather to make it appear finished unless you're right on top of it or you flip it to expose the inside.

I had to be REAL careful with the belt bolts since they were already painted, so after marking contact points on the leather with disappearing ink and punching my holes, I marked through the leather where I needed holes on the bolts and very very gently drilled two small holes in each and used 1/4 inch long sheet metal screws to fasten them (#8 I believe...I'm terrible about documenting what I end up grabbing from Home Depot since it's usually never what I set out for ahead of time)

The Belt Buckle was made by heat forming 1/4" foam and brushing on some Urecoat which is a Smooth-on product meant to add more strength and impact resistance to foams. After that it was just cutting out more leather and folding it back to get a finished look then hot glue-ing on more velcro to attach to the belt.

 
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The Collar was tricky...collars are really my achilles' heel with jackets..I don't think I'm every going to be expert-level with them but I'm pretty happy with how this one came out. Barry's is a weird shape because it starts almost no-show..maybe 3/4" then goes up a couple inches towards the back. I also was paranoid the bottom of the cowl would stick out/ add girth so I tried to compensate by making that a little bigger



I ordered the 2 part cowl from JesterFX, added bolts to it with this really impressive Loctite superglue which bonds super well between rubber and plastic. After cutting a couple inches from the neck for better fit, I installed a zipper in the back which I also adhered with the loctite for quick removal of the neck. Other than that it was a matter of adding some craft foam and upholstery foam in the cowl for a better fit and then loctiting industrial velcro to the neck and bottom of the chin so that the cowl looks seemless.

PLEASE NOTE! : This was my first cowl and one thing I really wasn't prepared for was head shape. Your own head shape counts A LOT for the overall profile of the mask, so if you're adding things to a cowl like bolts it's really best to use a head cast of yourself or have someone you trust affix said things to your cowl while you're wearing it. I actually had to bend and add additional loctite to the bolts after my first iteration and PRAY they didn't start tearing the rubber because the angle of the bolts just looked very steep/disjointed after putting it on my head.



And here are some pics of the final results: Photo by Proven Gamer



Photo by Dream Forge




Future Improvements I'm already thinking about stitching up that "Hollywood magic" leather Hoodie that Barry's always rocking every time he goes to pull off his cowl (CuZ it's soo easy! lol) and the camera cuts away. It would be nice to wear that on long con days or after parties, etc. And ever notice almost every single time Barry's getting terribly owned, his cowl comes off? These things keep me up at night...

j/k, sewing and fabrication do XD

Also, going to airbrush around the lightning ribbing to make it pop out more in pictures.



I also just started casting bolts For Zoom, so if anybody is interested in Raw casts of Barry's bolts or Zoom's feel free to shoot me a PM.




Hope this was informative and/or slightly entertaining. Thanks for looking Guys!!
 
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