[WIP] Ant-Man, Civil War Style

There's a lot going on behind the scenes right now, since I'm working on both this project and several others in preparation for a con. BUT I do want to share one thing about which I am particularly excited:

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The top half is attached to the bottom half. AND EVERYTHING LINES UP! ... Okay, so maybe you won't find that as exciting as I do, but I am excited. So there!

Lots of things currently on order, so I'll have more to share in the coming weeks.
 
A lot has happened since my last post, but I was crunched for time and could not afford to take good in-progress pictures. So you'll have to READ!

The backpack has a base of 1/2" foam, shaped out of 1/4" foam, and the "arms" are covered in a combination of 1/4" and craft foam. The final pic, clockwise from the upper left: top-down view, view of the hollow inside from the bottom, back view, side view. I am not completely satisfied with it because it is nowhere near as cleanly assembled as I'd like it to be, but it will have to do until I figure out a better way to construct the complex shapes (that does not break my bank).

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The gauntlets are made of 1/4" and craft foam. The detail lines were scored with a hobby knife, blasted with a heat gun to open them up, and then painted black with a very fine tip brush (after the greater silver paint application) to make them pop. The red stripe is theatrical lighting gel (which isn't actual gel, more like a sheet of transparent tinted card stock) layed into the foam before gluing it all together. The inside (lower right) was left open on the underarm side of the gauntlet, but is kept in shape by strategically placed elastic, for easy on-off.

Gauntlet Progress.jpg



The belt is made of 1/4" foam and pvc sheet (Sintra). I like the finish of the Sintra better (see top pic), but the shape of the hip parts was just a little too wonky to try and build out of a material stiffer than foam. The Sintra was spray painted and the hips we're sponge painted with Angelus leather paints. Then all the details and crevices received a black wash with a fine tip paint brush. The bottom pic shows what the hidden underside looks like, and the whole thing stays together on a strip of nylon strapping. It connects to the suit with snaps.

Belt Progress.jpg



I needed a way for the shoulder pads to stay up, but I also did not want the slack on the gray strap holding the shoulder pads to be floating there. So I measured a length of elastic and stitched it to the underside of the suit, and the other end to the gray strap. From the front, you can't even tell because they are stitched right along the top-stitching line of the gray fabric panels.

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The hardware was commissioned from 3D modeler @GraphicJordan and I cannot recommend him enough. It looked FANTASTIC. I had it all 3D printed by Shapeways. To paint them, I stuck them to masking tape and then taped down those masking tape strips.

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Unfortunately, my plan for how to do the piping/wiring on the suit completely fell through. The plan was to use black PVC plastic tubing, threaded through tinned copper cable coil (see picture below), which would then be hand-sewn to the suit by weaving silver thread through the coil and the fabric in a spiral fashion. I sewed the arm piece, and then did a test fitting and was disappointed to find that the tubing was a bit too stiff to serve its purpose. It felt like I was lifting a 5 pound weight each time I lifted my arm (which would be tedious over the course of several hours), and it was dangerously pulling at the fabric. The last thing I wanted was for this tubing to tear the fabric after all the work I put in. I unfortunately had to opt not to use it, which was a great disappointment because of how beautiful the hardware had come out.

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However, I still was able to use Jordan's great chest piece to tie everything together. I overestimated the size of the piping (I estimated 3/8" and it should really have been 3/16" or 1/4") and he was gracious enough to modify the design of the chest piece such that it would fit the 3/8" piping I intended to use, but still keep the appearance as accurate as possible (this was before I knew I couldn't use the piping). Once again: I HIGHLY recommend him for any modeling work you may need done.

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The gloves were purchased off Ebay, and the plating on them is Sintra, spray painted and black-washed.

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The knee pads were held up by elastic, which was first sewn to nylon webbing strips, and then glued down so that they would not pull away from the mounting points.

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If you have any specific questions about the construction process of any of the pieces above, feel free to ask!
 
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This is what the finished suit ended up looking like! A big thanks to my friend for snapping this pic of me. I'll post some more at a later date, but this is the version that I wore to C2E2. As you can see, it doesn't have any of the wiring, but I am not too hung up on that because the seam lines really pop. If I can figure out a way to get a clean wiring setup, I will be upgrading the suit.

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