Modifying Your Hot Toys TDK Suit Batman

[lforigno]

Thanks buddy. Now I decided that there is no way of modding my figure myself without messing it up. My question is anyone that has done this be willing to do this for me for a price of course. And if so can you shoot me a PM thanks

 

[lforigno]

I decided to work on mine myself today and it actually turned out well. I even decided to put the hot toys original batman cape on it instead of the stupid short one. And it looks much better.

 

[Magnuz]

Ok i think i'll stop messing with this figure now, i dont think theres much else i can do with it:

The pecs were dremelled down, and the chest armor was restraped tighter to his chest to flatten it down more. Then the obvious previous mods the new cape, the neck mod and the bruce head mod, he's as good as he's gonna get now i think.

 

[The Ringer]

Looks good Mag!

I really like how you modified that Bruce portrait.

 

[mpchi]

Ok i think i'll stop messing with this figure now, i dont think theres much else i can do with it:

The pecs were dremelled down, and the chest armor was restraped tighter to his chest to flatten it down more. Then the obvious previous mods the new cape, the neck mod and the bruce head mod, he's as good as he's gonna get now i think.

Magnuz, care to show where you cut & shortened the under arm strap on the chest armor? I have been thinking of shortening it for a while, so that the chest armor hugs the body tighter and lessen the chest bulk even more. But wasn't sure where is the best spot to cut it and reglue. So would be great if you can share how you did yours as an example. Thanks in advance.

 

[eighthsamurai]

that is a seriously fantastic modded batman, magnuz - i love it. would love to see some front-on pics on your latest upgrades when you get a chance!

 

[Magnuz]

Ok here's more pics and i'll try to explain what i can, first the armor strap:

The left is before, the right after, you can see the strap spreads out wider then connects to the shoulder blade on the original, and theres a groove on it. I basically cut most of that spreading end off, and then reguled the end into teh notch of the shoulder blade where the strap originally pegged.

FIRST AND FOREMOST i must say be CAREFUL, remove the armor pop the straps and then test test test fit the crap out of them, seeing how tight you want them. Honestly you can tighten the chest armor without even dremelling the chest, its already that loosely designed. I originally intended to do just this, but in cutting i ended up with straps just a hair too short to be securely glued back, so i dremelled the chest armor so i could tighten the armor down more. Its like the old saying, measure twice cut once. These figures aren't cheap so always be careful.

Now just more pics to show more of the body size and shape now:

His width is not changed very much just because the armors width is preset by the size of the pecs, the sides of the suit could possibly be sucked in but i didnt want to do that, i prefer a straighter look not the hourglass shape ive seen some people do and i didnt want to try glueing the suit to the body and possibly damage it or lessen his poseability.

It should be noted that if you have the figure in hand you can notice that the chest armor is moveable on the suit its overall loosely fit, mine now re strapped is tight to the suit, and snug, it doesnt shift or move, and i prefer this, but its to your own taste when you mod him.

 

[blakus939]

that looks sweet man, but i just dont think i have the courage to go messing with such an expensive figure knowing my luck, i'll screw it up

 

[Valfar]

With that last head on pic..i can't see any difference in the figure from stock...the chest on your figure looks the same as my unmodded one..you got first batch Batman right?.

 

[laudanum09]

hey guys, the left knee joint of my TDK bats has gotten loose. There are two joints, one connecting the knee joint to the calves and one for the upper legs. The one connecting to the upper leg is loose while the other remains more rigid. Is there any way to solve this or tighten the joint somehow? Any advice would be much appreciated thanks.

Oh and I haven't dropped him or over posed him or anything, it was just like that when i took it out of my case the other morning. Very strange.

 

[mpchi]

hey guys, the left knee joint of my TDK bats has gotten loose. There are two joints, one connecting the knee joint to the calves and one for the upper legs. The one connecting to the upper leg is loose while the other remains more rigid. Is there any way to solve this or tighten the joint somehow? Any advice would be much appreciated thanks.

Oh and I haven't dropped him or over posed him or anything, it was just like that when i took it out of my case the other morning. Very strange.

If nothing breaks and simply just plastic wear on the joint, looping and tying knots with dental floss will inbetween the loose gap will fix it, adding tightness back to the joint. Its not hard to do that for the HT knees. Did that for a few of my other HT figures.

However, since its Batman, with the suit concealing the body, its a bigger operation to at least undress him entirely, which take a little work on separating some glued spots on the chest armor(under arm strap to back), as well as the rubber suit itself (elbow to body, waist suit on suit). And when taking the rubber suit off, be very gentle and try not to rub the surface much. There are a lot of painted surface (even though hard to notice). Some rubbing can slowly wear off the matte paint finish on the rubber suit, like all the panels on the thighs.

 

[laudanum09]

ah, fantastic. Really appreciate the help. I've modded him a bit already so i shouldnt have too much trouble. i think a lot of the matte has rubbed off for me but i dont mind too much. he still photographs well and to my human eyes i can't tell too much of a difference from when i first pulled him from the box. thanks again.

 

[Devil_666]

Hopefully this quick chop and paste I did will illustrate what I've been talking about. On YOUR left is an unmoddified TDK Batman posted by -=LoneWolf=- and on YOUR right is the same exact pic with the following: I made the chest armor smaller and touched up underneath it to make the normal chest armor less visible. I didn't slim it up or anything like that. Same exact pic and you guys can do the same thing with a photo manipulation program to see for yourselves.

To me, imo, just simply decreasing the width in the chest slims down the figure considerably. The abs and waist look smaller. The arms look smaller. Just overall it makes for a sleeker look. With the normal chest width.. THAT'S the problem. Wider chest = arms looking bulky, abs/waist looking bulky, etc. Like I said.. Hot Toys had this right on the proto. The chest was a lot smaller in width. But when they "fixed" the problems people complained about (cowl, shoulder pads, leg armor/lower pants and the paint scheme) for some unknown reason they widened the chest!?

Basically you can mod that figure as much as you want and make the armor sit as flat as it can be. It'll only solve the side profile problem. But from the front it'll still look exactly the same but the chest armor is solid and the width can't be modded.

Hope this shows what I was saying. If not.. blah.

 

[LockJaw]

Having just worked on mine to do some tightening of the chest armor i can describe how to get it off and to get to the chest.

The simplest way with the armor is to pop out the underarm straps, those pieces of plastic which are part of the front of the armor peg into the back or the shoulderblades of the armor. Slight pulling and prying with careful tension can pop them out of the shoulder blades, once both sides are popped off they are flexible enough to bend out from under his arms and then pull the armor off (with the head already off).

Once thats done you have the figure without the chest/shoulder armor on it, just roll the very large open collar down over the shoulders, the suits very flexible and is preshaped so it will go back to its original form even if its been rolled down over the body. BUT note that the sleeves are glued to the elbows to keep them in their proper place, so dont go to far with the sleeves, i just rolled the suit down to his abs, i did it with rolling the suit down and outward so the inside of the suit was exposed, so that any debris or mistakes wouldnt hurt the outer suit.

Then you do what you want with slimming, dremelling the pecs etc. I ended up trimming the under arm straps to be shorter, and then reglueing them to tighten the chest armor, because fact is even if you slim the body the chest armor is already preset to a certain size so you have to tighten it, so i just cut some size off the ends of the plastic straps and then sized and got it how iw anted then put the armor back on and carefully glued them on. It's not easy but its the only way i know, since its what i just did.

what kind of glue did you use?
i got my Batman in but his right strap on the back, near the shoulder blade, the glue came off, came like that

and how did you get your cape to fit? my cape came loose, and when i put the tabs in, they are poking out, so he has these sharp looking shoulders
everyone else's capes in these TDK Batman threads look great
what am i doing wrong?

 

[uscmhicks]

I still think its the cape that adds alot of bulk to these figures.
Mine looked alot less bulky once I swapped capes.
I've posted this in about every other thread except this one ( which is ironic since this is probably the correct one to post it in ) but here it is again.

Obviously it still looks " big " but I do think it looks much smaller.
This may sound stupid too but if it bothers you that much its worth a try. When you have the closed fists it gives off the impression his tensed up and showing off his muscles .
Try switching to some regular hands so his ribs come back through his skin .

 

[Thrustmaster]

Finally I had the heart to modify the neck:

He looks so much better with the head looking down. And btw, now I really need a better cam.

 

[mpchi]

Hopefully this quick chop and paste I did will illustrate what I've been talking about. On YOUR left is an unmoddified TDK Batman posted by -=LoneWolf=- and on YOUR right is the same exact pic with the following: I made the chest armor smaller and touched up underneath it to make the normal chest armor less visible. I didn't slim it up or anything like that. Same exact pic and you guys can do the same thing with a photo manipulation program to see for yourselves.

To me, imo, just simply decreasing the width in the chest slims down the figure considerably. The abs and waist look smaller. The arms look smaller. Just overall it makes for a sleeker look. With the normal chest width.. THAT'S the problem. Wider chest = arms looking bulky, abs/waist looking bulky, etc. Like I said.. Hot Toys had this right on the proto. The chest was a lot smaller in width. But when they "fixed" the problems people complained about (cowl, shoulder pads, leg armor/lower pants and the paint scheme) for some unknown reason they widened the chest!?

Basically you can mod that figure as much as you want and make the armor sit as flat as it can be. It'll only solve the side profile problem. But from the front it'll still look exactly the same but the chest armor is solid and the width can't be modded.

Hope this shows what I was saying. If not.. blah.

Its a valid point that the chest armor can be narrower to be more accurate & fitting. But so are a number of other things that can be changed to make it more accurate. Waist can be straighter, arms can be slimmer, face can be slightly modified...etc. But these are not something we can mod, due to the sculpt and limitation of the body & material. We can only work with whats there on the figure. But given the mods you can do to the figure, it still improves it a lot. I know mine did. Thanks to Magnuz's tips, the chest armor is hugging very tight and slimmer on the chest.

 

[Cap'n Cook]

It was strange how HT made the chest piece larger.

Thought I'd post mine in the correct thread too:

Put the Takara cape on mine:

 

[LockJaw]

hey does anyone know how to mod the cowl like this?

<a href="https://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa302/DanielDDJ/?action=view&current=BatmanRealSuit2.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa302/DanielDDJ/BatmanRealSuit2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<a href="https://s197.photobucket.com/albums/aa302/DanielDDJ/?action=view&current=BatmanRealSuit16.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa302/DanielDDJ/BatmanRealSuit16.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

the back of his head is too flat, drives me nuts sometimes, gives his head an odd shape
i want it to be more rounded like the real cowl
i'm thinking the screw method might work
but idk what size screw would be best, mostly because i want to use that screw method to make the head wider
but i would need a small screw to place in the back of the head to make it more round
but it'd have to be a smaller screw so it won't make the head look atrocious

thanks

 

[vodoun]

Can't be done. Well it can but unless you can get the same rubber, make a mold based on the neck detail and it's flexible that then follows the head movement. Giving that curved effect. It would have to be a fake one piece look. Or a sleeve cleverly camouflaged. Otherwise the head and neck will always remain separate giving that flat look.