Iron Man Costume

Hi! I'm Jason and I have always been a huge fan of Marvel comics, and Iron man in particular. I was inspired to build my own Iron Man suit after seeing Marvel's The Avengers in May. My costume is built almost entirely out of foam camping mats, hot glue, Plastidip, spray paint, and miscellaneous screws, bolts, and washers. There are also several LED lights for the eyes, hands, and arch reactor (chest), and back.

To start the process, I found a tutorial online that helped me with the initial shapes of the individual body parts for the suit. From there, I manipulated foam to make all the pieces fit correctly. After all the small pieces were made for each body part, I used hot glue to piece them together.

After all the glueing was done, it was time to paint the individual pieces. Because I used foam, all the pieces had to have a layer of Plastidip applied to fill in the small pores. After the Plastidip dried, it was time for spray paint. I used silver and red spray paint from the local hardware store. I also used silver and red paint pens for small details.

Once all the individual pieces were painted, I was ready to connect them together. I did this by using various buckles, strips of velcro, chicago screws, and elastic. To create the arch reactor, I used a glass ash tray which I found at a thrift store. For the eyes I had sandblasted glass cut at a local glasswares shop in my hometown.

For the hands, I got a pair of red baseball gloves from a local sports store and painted them to match the rest of the suit. The structure for the lights in the hands were made from plastic vitamin water caps. The shoes were build from a pair of old Toms I had and some extra foam.

To get all the lighted components of the suit lit up, I used various LED lights from all kinds of different sources. These included; tap lights, LED bicycle lights, head lamp lights, and pen lights. For most of these items, I took apart whatever casing was around the light and connected just the lighting component (battery operated) to the suit.

The face plate is held on with magnets. I also placed a magnet on the top of the helmet so I could wear it opened.

Finally, to complete the look of Iron Man, I purchased a silver body suit to wear underneath, to fill any gaps so my skin wouldn't show through. This really helped pull the whole suit together.

All together, the Iron Man suit took me about 5 months and about $250-$300 to build (Foam, glue, paint, Plastidip, buckles, lights, screws, gloves.... there were tons of materials). In the beginning there was some trial and error, but after the first few runs, I found a method that worked for me.