Wednesday 19 December 2012

Custom Superman Suit

Hey y'all

So, anyone who knows me well enough will know that im a superman nut job. Literally, i named my son after him (Clark, not superman, that would just be silly, also his mother will vehemently deny this but its true).

I have paintings (thanks to my bro), clothes, toys, whatever etc, but the one thing that every die hard superman fan should have is of course a costume. Now when i say costume, i don't mean a cheap rubies one you can pick up for twenty quid, no no, i mean their own proper superman suit.


I hear you ask "But Steve! where oh where can i get such an awesome thing?"  and if you didnt ask, well im going to tell you anyway!


The answer is, make one, duh.

Todays printing technology has given us Dye Sublimation printing. Which literally means you can print a design straight onto a fabric (such as lycra) from a large printer without the need for screen printing. A lot of costume designers that have low budgets are making them this way and yeilding fantastic results! If you don't believe me, take a trip over to The RPF and do a search for Dye Sublimation Costumes and see what you find!

Anyways, to the design!

The first and foremost thing i wanted to work on was the S shield.


This is the original movie shield that most people are familiar with when they think of superman, its also the one you see on most t-shirts. Although this one is great, its not my favorite.


The second is the shield from the Superman Returns movie which i thoroughly enjoyed (even though most thought it not the greatest) and i did enjoy routh as superman. My biggest gripe with the costume is that the shield was just too small. I don't know why they chose to make it smaller, but i think in the end it took away from the over all look. The shield itself though was a great design, staying true to the original but still having that updated look to it.

 Last of course is the Man Of Steel movie suit which is slowly growing on me. Although the movie at this point hasn't been released so i will reserve full judgement until ive seen it in action.
First, i'm not sure about the colours. Just like every superman fanboy out there, i wonder, why so dark? I know todays hero movies are all about gritty atmosphere (which naturally we have christopher nolans fantastic batman trilogy for) and dark stories, but come on! This is superman there messing with!

Anyway moving on before i go into a rant. The Shield for me is spot on, its perfect size and shape, although i find the S might be too thick in the middle, but thats just being fussy. 
Also not sure about the whole textured look, i think printed texture is one thing but i think the screen printed pattern doesn't work with a superman suit. I think it certainly worked in The Amazing Spiderman for the webs/hex patterns but thats a completely different style costume.

So, onto my design!

I combined elements from all three shields to make my own design, the colors from the original, with the roundness of the returns suit and similar design elements of the man of steel suit. Instead of having two yellow sections in the top right i designed one, and then reduced the thickness of the middle of the S. There are a few other tweeks but i don't need to go into their detail.

I spent hours glaring at photoshop working on this bad boy. Heres a breakdown!



 So once i was happy with the shield i moved onto the suit! This is where i had the most difficulty, i had no idea how to make a suit pattern, but thankfully, a gent named TaylorMcManus over at TheRPF (funny how i keep mentioning there? Go there after you read this!) was selling pattern layouts for cheap! So naturally thought this was a good base to start with, it even had a basic muscle pattern (even though i wouldn't need it now) which was handy!

So with my pattern bought i had to decide on what type of supes costume i wanted to make and in the end after an annoyingly long amount of pondering i went with the New 52 look.


I practically had a geekgasm when i saw this for the first time. The suit looks almost like armor but with the tight fit lycra look, perfect for dye sub!

This is my design so far. I wanted it to have that armoured look but still retain my own details. Eventually if i were to make this, i wouldn't include the shield or belt in the print and make them seperately, it just looks cooler that way.





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