I recently developed real obsession about Iron Man suits while seeing amazing costumes made by members of The Replica Props Forum. They use program called Pepakura to unfold 3d model to flat pieces, print them on home printer and assemble paper model of the suit in scale 1:1. They glue it, reinforce with fiberglass, sand and fill holes hundreds of times to make this real, beautiful, wearable object. I want to make it for myself, but still not sure if I will be able to devote half a year of my free time for a single project. Instead of this I decided to make 2 munnies and see if that will fulfill me on Iron Man theme.
This is the first from my series of two custom munnies. This one is based on Iron Man Mark 42 (XLII) suit design from upcoming movie. There is many versions of Iron Munnies made by different artists, to make mine different from others I decided to sculpt Tony Stark inside it. Portraits are still interesting and challenging for me. I spent 3 evenings to sculpt this face with Sculpey. Every day I started with completely changing the facial features getting closer to look like Rober Downey Jr.
It started as realistic, symmetrical and boring face. I started enlarging eyes, bending nose and modified it to look little more like caricature. I was not sure if it will look right till I painted him. After I was pleased with this stage I could proceed with the rest of the body because I knew I will not abandon this project. I wanted to make the suit as detailed as possible. I sketched it on the figure, then drew the pieced on computer, taking measures with Caliper and then used laser cutter to cut the pieces in styrene. It helped me to keep the suit symmetrical and details have good, sharp lines. The pieces were small so it was easy to bend them and superglue it to munny’s body.
Everything was painted with brushes with acrylic Valleyo paints. I tested here for the first time the metal medium. It looks like silver paint, it mixes with any colour and makes it look metallic. I was very satisfied with how it looked so I also started munny version of patriot suit where I will be able to play with other color theme. It needs few more details and will be ready for painting so check this space soon for updates.