Quick build - Captain America TWS Stealth Suit COMPLETE!

[IronJoe]

Back story: I had a great time building costumes for ECCC, but coming off of the great time I had, I was a little bummed about not having anything else to work on. So why not do a TWS Stealth suit for the Cap 2 premiere?

Yeah - the movie comes out tomorrow. This is going to be a rush job! Not movie accurate, but close enough that you'll know what you're looking at


I started with a plan: I am going for the "See, it's Chris Evans!" look which uses the stealth suit sans helmet, and the classic shield instead of the "stealth" shield. Here's what I'm talking about:





I started by going to the local thrift shop and picking up a navy blue canvas jacket and slacks. I studied the promotional images of the suit, and noticed the base layer of his suit is a far more "dull" material than the top layer, which is fairly shiny. So I oped for a couple yards of blue vinyl to use as an overlay for the jacket. His boots are black with brown straps, he uses brown fingerless gloves, a brown belt, and brown shoulder straps that support his shield attachment point on his back.

Here's the supply list:
Gloves: Fingerless brown leather gloves, Amazon
Shoulder straps: Airsoft shoulder gun holster, Amazon

• I plan on modifying this in order to give it the proper "look"

Jacket: Navy blue "uniform" jacket, front zip with collar.

• I am adding the "design" with vinyl as an overlay that will snap onto the jacket in the front, rear and shoulders.
• I am planning on adding the star and stripes as a reverse applique in order to give it depth

Pants: Navy blue "uniform" slacks

• I'm adding patches of vinyl to simulate the depth and complexity the movie suit has

Boots: Gotham 100s with brown straps added
Belt: Brown "tactical" belt, Amazon

And lastly, the shield. The part that IMHO makes or breaks the suit. A number of years ago, I purchased one of my favorite collectibles: a Factory X limited edition replica shied! I have never cosplayed with it before, although I've always wanted to. Now's my chance! It's a 27" shield and is probably the best rendition of a Captain America shield I've ever seen. It's been on display in my son's room for years, and now it's time to take it off the wall and use it! It has leather straps already affixed and it is ready to use.

Modifying the jacket:

I started by laying out the design based on production stills and the statue I'm using as a model. I cut out paper templates of the basic design for the stars and stripes:


Even though the jacket is a Medium, it's HUGE through the waist and arms. So I cut out the built in pockets which were bulking up the stomach area and started fitting the jacket to my body. Back to the sewing machine! I took the jacket in at the midsection and arms, and now it fits very close to my body.


More to come in the next 24-30 hours, stay tuned!

 

[IronJoe]

Re: Quick build - Captain America TWS Stealth Suit

I have outlined in white the patterns I am using to create the "overlay". The front, rear and shoulder pads will end up being one piece, with a hole cut in the center for my head. It will slip over head and button to the jacket, adding depth.






The pants will be severely simplified detail (if I even get to them!)

 

[Fly4v]

Re: Quick build - Captain America TWS Stealth Suit

Heroic and ambitious effort. Look forward to seeing it completed.

 

[Stronglikebear]

Re: Quick build - Captain America TWS Stealth Suit

Every time I see one of your threads pop up, I'm impressed by the results you can get in such a small amount of time. It's a really great talent, man.

 

[IronJoe]

Re: Quick build - Captain America TWS Stealth Suit

Just got back from opening night in Seattle! I can't believe I finished the costume.... It went in a bit of a different direction, but turned out better than I had expected.

I went down the route of the overlay, but honestly it became clear that the vinyl over the jacket just wouldn't look right. So I ditched the idea and went with the stars and stripes sewn directly onto the jacket.

I used white textured vinyl, originally I wanted Silver to look more like the movie version, but I kept going back to the comic "Commander Rogers" uniform so this ended up being a bit of an amalgam of both.



Extending the stripes onto the shoulders was tough, especially since I had already taken in the arms. Next time, leave the tailoring til the very end! I opted not to add the silver American Flag and Shield logos to the shoulders, it looked too busy with them held in place.



Completed jacket - notice I had a hard time getting the chest-to-shoulder straps to connect, but it ended up not being a problem because the shoulder straps covered the gap perfectly.





I also modified the collar by folding in the points and sewing them into themselves, and reducing the height to about half. There was the jacket logo on the back just below the neck, so I made a small star to cover it.

Completed uniform - For the pants, I simply added some vinyl to the knee pads. I didn't base this on any design in particular, I just thought it would break up the blank space on the legs. (The light is really skewing them in this picture)



The shoulder holster was perfect, except that it had a gun holster and ammo pouch. I didn't want to make any waves with the IMAX staff, so I had to removed them. It took a bit of trial and error to get them properly strapped to one another, but the result was pretty good. The belt was WAY too long, but I did what I could with it.

Had a quick photoshoot before the movie - here's just one, many more to come!

 

[IronJoe]

Here's some better pictures of the suit!

 

[jrenemtz321]

Looks great. Excellent work.

 

[IronJoe]

Every time I see one of your threads pop up, I'm impressed by the results you can get in such a small amount of time. It's a really great talent, man.

Thanks, that's a huge compliment. I'd like to reiterate that I am pretty much completely clueless about what I'm doing! I'm pretty new to the world of cosplay and everything has been trial and error (lots of error!)

Looks great. Excellent work.

Thanks!!


The last thing I'd like to nail down for this costume would be the shield attachment on the back. Does anyone have ideas on a securable yet removable method for securing the shield? I had some ideas around hooks, snaps, magnets, etc but I don't quite know what route to go here. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Straight Razor]

Well done!

 

[steamshovel]

Looks great man!

- - - Updated - - -

Looks great man!

 

[CAPtainAmerica7]

Looks awesome

 

[EndGame94]

Excellent work!

 

[IronJoe]

Finally getting a chance to update this.

Earlier this year, I acquired one of TheRocketeer's TFA Smithsonian helmets. I still intend on using it for a comic-hybrid style Cap suit, but since I had it on hand I decided to repurpose it for this suit for attending the Rose City Comic-Con in Portland, Oregon. I painted it dark blue with Liquitex spray paint - this stuff is amazing! I primed, painted and assembled the leathers and the helmet ended up matching pretty well with the rest of my home-made suit.

I got lots of compliments on the suit and helmet, posed for pictures and had a blast. Here are a few pictures of the helmet and at the Con.

Painted cowl: getting the paint into the recesses of the wings was incredibly difficult, I ended up dipping a toothpick in silver paint and rolling it around the edges.

Leathers attached. Unfortunately e6000 didn't hold up well to attach the ear pieces to the cowl, so some eleventh-hour superglue came to the rescue.

Test-fitting.

At the con, found a legit Cap stealth suit! (I was kind of embarrassed standing next to him with my homemade one!)

And of course, fighting the good fight against Advanced Idea Mechanics!

 

[TheRocketeer]

Great suit and nice paint job..

If you use a liner brush for the silver.. and I use Superglue gel to put the helmets together so I imagine it was a better idea than whatever e6000 is?