Custom Batman Forever Robin suit - WIP

[aussieinnyc]

Ok, so I know that there's a lot of hate around for Chris O'Donnell's Robin - frankly I was never quite sure why, it's a different interpretation of the character to the comics I suppose, but as someone who grew up on the movies and re-runs of the old TV show, it really didn't bother me much.

But I've always thought Robin's Batman Forever suit was very cool, and with a whole bunch of free time recently I've started to sculpt a 1/6 version to go with my recent Batman Hot Toys. Right now it's a silicone suit over a Medicom body (the quality of these bodies is terrible - snapped plastic everywhere - but I thought the smaller scale would suit the character). I need to sculpt the gauntlets and totally remold and recast the suit, belt, boots, etc - there are some very nasty mold lines present on the suit in particular that I need to address. I also need to tweak the paint a little...the colours are much closer cto the screen suit in person than they seem in the pictures - I think the metal powders are reflecting the flash and saturating the colour, whereas in person the slightly translucent paint and pigment lets the base black suit show through a little and mutes the colours somewhat. I'll be getting an additive to the silicone paint that matts it a little too - it is quite glossy right now.

Anyway, since I'm packing up my apartment to move back to Australia, I thought I'd take a few pics since I'm not sure I'll get him completed before I leave. There's some gold fabric I have for the cape lining, but will need to go in search of some thin pleather for the outside of the cape, and at some point I'll have to commission a Chris O'Donnell head.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts - I tried to take just a couple of quick shots to show the articulation still possible with the suit. There is very little restriction caused by the suit, the hands are currently sculpted with only cut wrist articulation, but once the gauntlets are added and cast, they'll be back to the full range of movement. The boots also allow for full ankle articulation (at least the left one does, I REALLY need to remold the right!)

(And yes, I know he is missing the nipples. They didn't bother me being there, but I think the suit is a cleaner look without them)

 

[SpawnFan]

You should have gone with a totally custom version to fit in more with Baleman but still gonna be cool to see how Chris ends up.

 

[Badism]

He was the same height as Batman in that abomination of a "film"

Good work so far though.

 

[creecher]

Good job, I reckon it looks great.

 

[katkuru]

Wow! Looks great, could you explain how you casted the silicone suit and how does it close up. Did you use zippers or velcro?

 

[aussieinnyc]

Thanks for the positive feedback so far - even though I'm really not happy with how it looks right now, it's appreciated! Katkuru, as for how I made the suit, essentially I made a solid resin copy of the Medicom body and built up the suit in Sculpy on top of that, then made a mold of the finished body and suit. Then I cast the suit around the original resin copy of the Medi body so I had with a silicone suit cast around the resin body. I cut the suit in half under where the belt is so I basically ended up with a silicone "shirt" and silicone "pants" that I then took off the resin sculpt and put on to the real Medi body. The silicone I'm using is very stretchy and pretty strong so it wasn't too difficult to take off and put on again. Once I get a suit I'm happy with I'l join the two halves back together with a silicone glue.

Hope that makes sense! I'm going to try and remake it tomorrow to get rid of some of the more obvious and bad mold lines, and repaint it - my original sculpt was really quite detailed and I the paint I used obscured a lot of that, so I'm going to have to try another way of colouring the silicone. If it turns out well I'll take a couple of up close daylight shots showing the two-piece nature of the suit.

 

[dwing]

Something looks 1/5 scale to me.. Looks good though. Want to see the final product.

 

[aussieinnyc]

Something looks 1/5 scale to me.. Looks good though. Want to see the final product.

I think that's because it's a headless medicom body - small to start with, looks even smaller without the head.

Meanwhile for the last couple of days I have had resin stuck to my hands and silicone pigment seems to be permanently stuck under my thumb. I am nothing if not messy!

 

[dwing]

I think that's because it's a headless medicom body - small to start with, looks even smaller without the head.

Meanwhile for the last couple of days I have had resin stuck to my hands and silicone pigment seems to be permanently stuck under my thumb. I am nothing if not messy!

Sorry for miss comm-I was refering to his cod piece.

 

[SpawnFan]

I think that's because it's a headless medicom body - small to start with, looks even smaller without the head.

Meanwhile for the last couple of days I have had resin stuck to my hands and silicone pigment seems to be permanently stuck under my thumb. I am nothing if not messy!

1/5th is bigger...you know....bigger then 1/6th......1/7th is smaller.......

 

[kahibbi]

Sorry for miss comm-I was refering to his cod piece.

I immediately thought of Saturday Night Live when I saw this ... "The Ambiguously Gay Duo"!

Not knocking this figure at all because it's cool. But's that's what I thought of.

 

[katkuru]

Thanks for the positive feedback so far - even though I'm really not happy with how it looks right now, it's appreciated! Katkuru, as for how I made the suit, essentially I made a solid resin copy of the Medicom body and built up the suit in Sculpy on top of that, then made a mold of the finished body and suit. Then I cast the suit around the original resin copy of the Medi body so I had with a silicone suit cast around the resin body. I cut the suit in half under where the belt is so I basically ended up with a silicone "shirt" and silicone "pants" that I then took off the resin sculpt and put on to the real Medi body. The silicone I'm using is very stretchy and pretty strong so it wasn't too difficult to take off and put on again. Once I get a suit I'm happy with I'l join the two halves back together with a silicone glue.

Hope that makes sense! I'm going to try and remake it tomorrow to get rid of some of the more obvious and bad mold lines, and repaint it - my original sculpt was really quite detailed and I the paint I used obscured a lot of that, so I'm going to have to try another way of colouring the silicone. If it turns out well I'll take a couple of up close daylight shots showing the two-piece nature of the suit.

Thanks for the explanation, i've been wanting to try this for a long time but could not figure it out.
How do you center the casted body in the mold? And do you just pour the silicone from the top or do you "paint it" on each mold half and then insert the body and put the mold together?

 

[aussieinnyc]

I'll blame the move and late-night posting on my ratio screw-up. Yeah, that's it - late nights.... As for the cod size, well Chris was rather impressively interpreted by the costume designers...

I've tried out a new paint scheme on a silicone cast I wasn't happy with - what do you guys think? Still too shiny (I only got the matt powder today) but he goes better with the Bale version in the darker tones I think. I think maybe the chest is the right tone now, but the arms and legs need to be brought a little lighter/brighter. The pic from the top should show why I am so unhappy with the mold lines - I will be creating much more complex molds to remove them, but am just too busy with the move right now and my attempts to do things quickly are making more problems than solutions.

Katkuru, hopefully the new paint job suit will give you a bit more insight - when sculpting the suit I made sure to leave the ends of the arms, legs and neck/head free of clay - that way when I made the suit mold the wrists, legs and neck were very tight with the mold and held it in the right place. I painted the silicone onto the inside of the mold to start with, I don't have a vacuum degasser so that's a good way to ensure no bubbles on the top of the silicone suit (although the paint, as I've found, can be used to fill these in if they do exist), then when the silicone had "gelled" a little I but a whole bunch extra into both halves of the mold, fit the body core into one side lining it up with the wrists, etc in the mold, and squished the other half on. I created some channels in the mold for any extra silicone to be forced out once the two sides were put together.

 

[katkuru]

Wow the second suit looks awesome! Are you using "Dragon Skin" silicone from Smooth-on to cast the suits? Thanks again for the tips, once I get enough info on it I will try it.

 

[batman717]

Wow this is very cool. Are you going to make a Batman Panther Suit from the Forever
Movie too ?? Great job and look forward to seeing the finished suit.
BTW, for HS you may use the Revell Model Kit which is a pretty good one, I think.

Batman717

 

[KingGrayskull]

Very interesting project!

Is this a common 1/6 Medicom body??? Itis smaller than I thought. Compared to the 1/6 Hot Toys body it looks like maximum 10" long...

 

[KingGrayskull]

Very interesting project!

Is this a common 1/6 Medicom body??? Itis smaller than I thought. Compared to the 1/6 Hot Toys body it looks like maximum 10" long...

 

[aussieinnyc]

Batman 717 - I'd hate to tackle a Batman from any movie - I'd just compare it to my TDK Hot Toys original suit and cry a little. Thanks for the heads-up on the head sculpt!

King Grayskull - I'm using the 301 Massive Medicom body, without the chest addition. The original pics didn't have either of the ankle spacers in, I thought originally that would make for a better scale against Batman (even though Chris was about Kilmer's height I still think he'd look better shorter on my shelf) but that was before I had Batman in hand - looking at them next to each other I'm definitely putting the short ankle-spacers back in, and might even toy with using the larger ones, although I think that would mean his boot sculpts will need to come unnaturally high. Regardless, this is all on temporary hiatus while I move back to Australia and in the midst of trivial things like finding a new apartment to live in, I'll also need to find a new silicone provider - I can't just drop in to The Compleat Sculptor anymore (off-topic - anyone know why those guys can't spell? )