How to make Costume Armor

This is an important first step, you'll need as many pictures as possible of the costume. You can use other costume photos, or photos from a movie,or screen capture from a game or book covers, etc. You'll need a ton of them if you want any sort of accuracy.

The best place to start for a complicated piece is the Armor Archive. There are dozens of patterns that can be downloaded, printed, enlarged and cut out.

But if you were that easy, you would just buy it right?

If you need to make a new pattern - start with paper and tape.

I use thin cardstock rather than regular paper or cardboard. But many people swear by cardboard boxes for patterns (they are free from your local recycling bin). Just keep cutting out shapes until they matches the shapes of the armor you want. Since you're working with paper and cardboard at this point, you don't need to worry too much about messing up.

One popular and easy way to make a pattern is to put a plastic bag over your arm or leg, or wherever, and then wrap duct tape around it until it's form-fitting. Then you cut it to the width you want, and open it up.

Now you have the exact shape you need to cut out, whether you're using sheets of PVC, foam or WonderFlex. The only problem is that duct tape and paper are a lot thinner than the materials you are going to build your armr with, so you'll need to add the thickness of the material to *all sides* of your pattern. Even if it's just an eight of an inch, don't forget this. All of the tutorial links I have here remind people of this strongly, because it's frequently forgotten. For the artistically challenged, now's a good time to use a photocopier with a 101% enlargement.

After you finish making your first pattern, it probably won't look exactly right. Use tape and glue to tape more pieces on (flanges, curves, etc.) until it looks exactly like the armor piece you are making, but unrolled flat.

Don't worry about using lots of tape and glue to get the shape exactly right. When you're done with this, then take out a big, fresh sheet of cardstock, trace the pattern onto it and cut out a clean, unglued "final pattern".

Tape up and assemble the final pattern onto your body so you can see how the final pieces will lay against each other and if it will fit right.

If you have paper or cardboard armor that looks SO good that you don't want to change it... guess what ... you don't have to!

Some of the best armor can be made merely by repeatedly dipping paper molds in plaster, hardening, and then coating with thick layers of various resins (or Gesso).

Most armor is made by cutting the patterned pieces you made (above) out of Craft Foam, WonderFlex, Fosshape, Sintra, etc ... and then heat-shaping the armor to bend around the arm or leg, etc.

One of the issues here is that the materials are very hot when you're working with them, so you'll need to use gloves, etc. (I just used thermal underwear, and heat shaped arm and leg bracers around my actual arm and leg, but I wouldn't advise this for materials that have to get very hot, like PVC... for them you'd need a pipe or a railing or something).

Essentially you're just bending pushing and pulling things into the shape that matches your pattern. Don't worry if it looks bumpy or is missing details... you'll sand things down, smooth things out and add details later.

Mostly, you just uyse a scissor to cut it out. If you're going to use craft foam, read this Craft Foam Tutorial first. There's a ton of WonderFlex/Fosshape tutorial links below as well.

The video above has a neat trick for adding edging to armor to make it look like it's made of metal by rolling up the corners of the WonderFlex. This won't work for Sintra or Foam.

Three-dimensional fabric paint is perfect for adding most piping and raised details. It will dry "raised", and can be painted over again (if you want the color to match exactly, buy white, and paint over it).

Spikes, rivets and other bumps can be made out of Sculpey , and then hot-glued onto your base armor. Sculpey is basically clay-like that you bake in the oven to harden.

But, if you want to make 50 identical rivets, first cast a good one out of Sculpey, bake it, then make a mold. Molding and casting is a bit of an art, but it's not hard to do a decent job, even on the first try.

People have claimed you can make a mold by dipping the rivet, coated with Vaseline, into a cup of partially solidified plaster of paris. Sculpey has a tutorial on mold making which recommends using a silicon molding compound.

Buyt, if you're doing more than spikes and rivets, you may want to read RTV Molding Tutorial on order to make detailed and accurate pieces. Printing out photos of the armor, enlarging them to real-size, and then tracing them is a great way to get exact details without being an artist!

Finally, you can fill in the mold (casting) with Sculpey or use resin casting repeatedly to get the same rivet over and over. One tutorial says it's easier to coat the mold with Vaseline and fill it with hot glue. But this can leave unsightly bumps. You're better off with a "resin release spray" (essentially spray-on Vaseline). Resin and glue techniques work better for shapes that have to be "poured" and can not be "pressed" into a deeper mold.

In order to smooth out and strentgthen your armor, you will want to, depending on what technique you are using, add a layer of Gesso, resin or Friendly Plastic and then sand it down (in the case of plastics). Alternatively you can get sheets of styrene and fabric-glue them onto the shape... which will smooth them out and providing a paintable surface.

Then, you want to do a base coat.

You can use regular store-bought spraypaint. But the problem is that it will probably flake off and chip. After spending all that time getting the armor to look exactly right, why start with spraypaint? Well, because it's cheap and it isn't all that bad if you're not going to wear this more than a dozen times. Otherwise, opt for the more expensive Krylon or Testor's spray enamels.

Finally, detail painting is where you put on all the finer detail points. First, use a tailor's pencil to design all the details. You probably should have done this already when you were patterning, or cutting out your base forms, but by now a lot of that may be hidden or obscured under layers of resin.

Don't forget, you can use 3-dimensional squirt tube fabric paint to do "raised" detailing. It looks great.

Acrylic craft paints are fine, depending on whether you have smoothed out the surface with Gesso or if you used another smoothing technique. If you're not sure, try out a bit of enamel versus acrylic on a scrap piece (if it's your first time, you should have a ton of these by now). Most people find it easier to work with acrylic paints, but enamel will last longer.

You may want to look at this tutorial and also this one.

Notice how different the painting techniques are? Well that's because there are hundreds of ways to do it and there's no best way. Many costumes have been finished with cheap materials such as spraypaint, whiteout, and colored electrical tape that look amazing.

Excellent results require persistence and patience - not skill or expensive equipment.