Sir Anthony of House Stark

Each year I chaperone a trip to Washington D.C. with my 8th grade students.  We typically spend one evening having dinner at Medieval Times.  I typically use this as an opportunity to showcase a costume or two.

My WoW mage and Dragon Age Rogue were good choices.  This year, I've been on a pretty big Iron Man kick, so I decided to build a medieval themed iron man suit of armor.

The armor parts were mostly done with craft foam.  I had a chain mail coif already, so I built the pauldrons and mask to hook onto it.

 






The armor pieces were modified from Mk7 foam/pep files.  The forearm guards were held on with elastic.  I didn't even really sew the tabard as much as I cut a hole in a piece of cloth I had and tossed a belt around it.

Iron Man Hand Repulsors!

I wanted to make some repulsor lights for the palm of my Iron Man gloves.  I also wanted to do it on a tight budget.  What I found was a bike light at Big Lots for $2 a piece.  I got a bunch of them because they were fairly cheap, super compact, and bright.

I dismantled the lights to be even smaller and bent the lights to point the other way.  I wanted to have the button facing outward in my palm.

I found a chunk of nylon plastic that I cut and sanded into a pair of discs.  I drilled holes in the bottom for the LEDs.

The whole assembly fits comfortably into my falm with the glove in place.

On cosplay, physical appearance, and chainsaw disfigurement

I've got some time on my hands as I'm proctoring a state test, so I wanted to share a moment that I had a couple of weeks ago.  I was helping my father chop down parts of a tree that had been growing up and over the house over the past 25 years.  It was the kind of thing where we would look at the thing every couple years and say, "Yup. That'll have to come down some day."  Naturally, we waited until the tree was a monster and the process of removing it would be slightly on the side of lunacy.

I found myself balancing myself on a narrow rooftop, trying to start a chainsaw to hand to my father, who was dangling from a makeshift harness from a branch in the very tree we were trying to dismember.  As I pulled on the starter handle, I lost my balance, let go of the handle, and the chainsaw flew directly into my nose.  I immediately started bleeding everywhere.

My very first thought, before I worried about the tree or my personal health, was that I had done a Tyrion Lannister/Battle of the Blackwater facial modification to myself and that I would be cosplaying with a mask for the rest of my days.  The good news was that the wound wasn't as horrific as I estimated.  I'll have a small scar on my nose and I have since considered myself lucky not to have caught the saw with my eye socket or teeth.

In the past several months, I feel that I've gotten more in touch with my own personal appearance.  I've lost over 20 pounds and am now overly concerned with marring my face.  And it is all because of cosplay.  I lost weight to fit into a morph suit for my Mega Man costume and I've been more and more interested in portraying Tony Stark.  I am wondering if anyone else has had this kind of realization.

Foam Man!

It doesn't exactly have the same ring to it and it is certainly not as protective as the real thing, but I've finally decided to try my hand at making some Iron Man armor out of EVA foam.

I want to have a costume to wear for the opening of Iron Man 3 next week, so I decided on doing the boots and gloves for the shot of Tony standing with his suits of armor.  I don't have enough time to do a full suit, and this is my first real experience working with foam, so I thought this would be the right size of a project.

The pepakura files for this project came from the RPF user jackieisrockin and we designed to be used with EVA foam.  The main difference with normal pepakura files is that the tabs and pieces that add depth have been removed.

The only other thing to be careful of is the thickness of the foam.  I've actually got a sheet of foam that is closer to 3/8" thick and I think it is too thick.  Also, some of the parts are meant to lay over the top of others and I went with some 3mm craft foam.  The trade offs here are stability vs. thickness as an entire piece made of craft foam is too wobbly.  The glove parts, for example, are craft foam because of how small and articulated the parts are.

Thus far, I've got most of a boot, a forearm, and a bunch of glove parts.  I am also planning on making a helmet for my Pepper Potts (wife) to carry around.

Arc Reactor Upgrade!

I started with the Think Geek arc reactor.  I found an image of the new arc reactor and scaled it to the size of the one I already had.

The triangular section was printed and cut out in card stock.

I traced the design onto some plastic I had from a Thai food container.

The plastic from the old piece was trimmed and the new plastic was inserted behind it.

Assembled, no lights.

Powered up.

Hooray!  No more of that pesky palladium poisoning.  It's certainly not perfect.  The LEDs are spread out to accommodate the old piece, but there's a decent amount of light diffusing through the white portion to make it look good.

Tony and Pepper Build!

For halloween last fall, Jaimi and I decided to do a Tony Stark/Pepper Potts combo.  The idea was to have a low maintenance costume that was also fairly accurate.  We already have likenesses similar to Downey Jr. and Paltrow, so there were minor cosmetic changes to be made.

As for the costumes, I finally had an excuse to buy a suit.  I hit up Kohl's during a sale and got a lightly pinstriped affair.  The only addition to this was a pocket square that got pinned to the pocket.  Jaimi had to do a little bit more shopping around to get the right match of business garments.

As for props, I got the Iron Man T-Shirt from think geek.  It has the arc reactor light that velcros into the chest and a battery pack that attaches at the bottom of the shirt.  I cut out the fabric in the arc reactor,becuase I planned on wearing a shirt over it.  Jaimi's "Stark Industries Tablet" is a Light Wedge that began its career as a book light.  I had noticed that the minor scratches on it glowed a bit, so we printed a design, taped it to the back, and scratched the design with an exacto knife.

The finishing touches included a carefully trimmed goatee and some fussing with our hair.

Bonus:  Tony Stark + Commander Shepard

Megaman Build!

For a while now, my wife has had a Samus Aran costume that has evolved over the past few years.  I wanted to build a character to go along with it, but Samus is kind of a solo character.  The next best thing was to go with a classic NES era, arm cannon wielding character.  I decided on a variation of Mega Man X because I didn't want the giant flared boots.

I started by building everything in card stock.  Then I cut the pieces out in 1/8" PVC. 

I was very worried about the boots staying in one piece, so these got bolted together. 

I had some trouble with the compound curves.  Also, there was a lot of fiberglassing going on inside.

The helmet began its Mega Man career as a child sized, used lacrosse helmet.

Because we don't have a garage, the bondo work was all done in parents; garages and basements.  I chose to leave some holes in the helmet for ventilation.  Also, at some point, I didn't like the shape of the arm cannon.  So I smashed it and built it with polystyrene rings around a pvc tube.

Bondo FACE!

Primer.

Paint.

Other colors of paint.

The belt buckle gem and the helmet gem were made with sculpy.

The belt got pockets!  They were sized to my phone.

Nose pick check:  success.

I finished the entire thing with 1/8" thick striping tape from the auto parts store.  I wanted to get a cell shaded look and I think it came out pretty well.  The insides of the boots got some foam to protect my feet and shins.  I was also worried that the boots would fall off of my feet.  

Here's a final shot with Jaimi/Samus.  The suit is a blue morph suit.  Overall, the costume worked quite well.  I later had an issue with a foot bit ripping off.  This was mostly due to an unscheduled off road trek.