TMNT Shredder Costume

I started my costume back in March when I decided I wanted to go to Comic-Con. I originally wanted to be a samurai, and then got the idea of becoming a robot. After a couple of weeks I saw the New Ninja Turtle Movie trailer and it hit me, a mixture of robot and samurai, I will become Shredder. The first photo attached is the photo I used to create my costume. I then was told about a program call Pepakura that I could utilize to cut out my blue print for my costume. The following pictures attached shows the steps I took while creating my costume (very time consuming). The material I used for my costume include: Paper Cardstock, superglue, wood glue, hot glue gun and hot glue, yarn, 550 cord, white clay, Bondo, fiber glass resin, Purple, black, silver, gray and clear coat paint, popsicle sticks, Velcro, EVA Foam and purple and black mesh fabric. Surprising the total cost of the costume was about $150 dollars.
I started the costume by printing and cutting out the pieces and gluing them together. After each piece was put together I had to make sure it fit my body property. This took a lot of measuring and redoing pieces (after all this was my first costume). Once the piece fit properly I covered one piece with 3 layer of fiber glass resin. This was expensive so I looked for other cheaper way for the say effect. I found that wood glue would give me a similar effect. Wood glue is not as strong as fiber glass resin, but you can use wood glue indoors and it does not weight down the piece. After all the pieces were given a couple of coats of the wood glue I would sand down any rough edges and fill in the low spots with Bondo. After all the Bondo was complete it was time for some paint. I started with the gray primer paint. When the paint was dry I used a light sand paper ( 400- 600 grain) to put a light sand on the paint. To get the weathered look on the armor I would put on a couple of coats of the black paint and then went over with the silver or purple paint. After the paint dried, I would sand with 400 grain sand paper until the black appear from underneath. This is how I got that battle scorn look. Once a I was satisfied with the look I would apply a couple of coats of the protective cover or clear coat.
The cape is made out of approximately 5000 coke tabs that I collected from friend’s coworkers anyone I could get to help me collect them. I did a diamond weave on them and then around the edges used black yard to tie it all together. I used the purple mesh for the backing of the cape. My weapon is made out of a double edge hand weapon I found at the dollar store, that I cut in half. I attached it to a broom handle one blade on each end and then wrapped the handle with black yarn. I also used purple 550cord for the two hand grips for the costume. After 7 long months my costume was ready for Halloween. Sad to say I missed Comic-Con due to a change in my work schedule, but got great reactions Halloween night. I had people stopping me in the middle of the street asking for pictures. This made me feel really good about my home made costume, because I had to teach myself everything when creating this costume. I hope you enjoy.