Bane: Dark Knight Rises

Goal                                                                         Reality

My husband LOVED they way they portrayed Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and he was super excited when I agreed to start working on it for him.  Unfortunately, I did not take step by step photos of this one but it is one of the more recent works so I did take some partially complete pics.  If you notice though I did not make the belt (because the other parts broke so many sewing machine needles I couldn't risk anymore) and if/when I do I can definitely post real instructions.

In the mean time, let me give you some close up parts pieces and get into some of the details.

The Mask

 This was by far the most challenging piece of the costume and it is completely from scratch or re-purposed parts.

Materials used:

• Polymer clay (I prefer Sculpey III)
• Craft foam
• Vinyl costume pleather
• Acrylic paint
• Some utility fabric
• Hot glue and super glue
• Aquarium tubing
• A few wires for security
• An old straw from and old souvenir cup
• A post-surgical eye patch thing 

The first thing I did was make a "base" for the front part of the mask using a cut up water bottle and that hard eye-patch thing from my dad's surgery years ago.  I hot glued it together in a shape that would fit his face (I wish I had a picture of that).  From there I overlaid the polymer clay until it was the shape I wanted.  The metallic bits are clay as well, just painted over with high quality iridescent acrylic paint.  Please note that many of the extra add on pieces (metallic bits) were cooked separately and glued on after the fact, it would have warped otherwise because it was too heavy to support itself.  I don't know if I have to say this or not but the water bottle "base" was only for building purposes. It was not cooked together or attached at all in the final mask


Once I had the clay set and oven-baked, I made a mock up of the vinyl part that surrounded the head and back parts.  After some adjustments I got it to fit well enough on his head to attach the craft foam to the sides.  The real mask looks like its a hard matte plastic and the craft foam I think works well because it has a matte look and it is flexible so he can get the mask on and off.

The top 'bumpy stuff' is just a plastic straw cut in half and super-glued along the edges of the vinyl.  Once I had a pretty good idea where it would line up on his head I made the back metallic looking parts- also out of clay.  I forgot to mention that part of the 'adjustments' on the vinyl includes folding over and finishing the edge by the top.  I can give you a basic pattern if you need it but its hard to get a flat piece to act round without molding it exactly to the wearer's head.

At this point I wanted to make sure everything was as secure as possible - wires hold the foam to the vinyl under the little clay toppers that are attached with superglue and I made little joint covers as well that have that hide the ugly parts but still give the ability to move since its all segmented.  Tip: I painted the front metal looking pieces after they were in place so that the black where I didn't paint looked like it was worn or in shadow, but the cover bits I made sure to paint before hand.  Why? because I didn't want to get paint on the vinyl.  It's annoying.  Speaking of annoying, I couldn't find anything to put actual brackets or grommets in the little vinyl pieces that "hold" the straw in place (they don't hold it- its glued down, it wouldn't stay if that's all you used either) so I literally painted the little circles on each one of the pieces. The next step I did after that was attaching the utility fabric to the back sides between the silver parts as you can kind of see here.

I couldn't find black utility fabric in the right size, so that's actually plain white that was then painted black right over top of the vinyl.  The last thing I did was use aquarium tubing right along the bottom edge of the craft foam to connect the back and the front.  It was really lucky we had that because it was flexible and stretchy enough so that he could get the mask on and off without breaking it too much.

That brings us another point, if you do make the mask out of clay it will be VERY DELICATE.  It looks awesome but functionally its bit of a beast.  You can breath through it (depending how you make it) but you will have some very unfortunate logistical challenges.

Sad Bane wants ice cream

The Jacket

The jacket I am really proud of because I made it 100% from scratch.  I used a Suede from Joann's that kind of looked like distressed leather, a woolly looking fleece, a stiffener for the collar and a liner fabric. And buttons, so many buttons.  I had never made a jacket before and if I have one piece of advice for someone who is just starting out it's to make the liner first.  Three reasons: 1) if it sucks no one can see it anyway, its on the inside, 2) it's waaay cheaper than the outside fabric.  That way if you mess up or make it too small or something you aren't out as much money. 3) you can use those pieces as a template for the real deal.  For me this was especially helpful since it was for my husband and having something to measure against other than him meant I didn't need to bother him quite as frequently.

This is another one I don't have many in process pictures of but I did get a good one of him wearing the liner so you can get a good idea of the shapes of the pieces I used.  Tip- Remember when making the liner that you want all of your seems to face outward, that is toward the inside of the jacket itself.  That way you won't have any edges showing that can fray.

Also don't skimp on the collar stiffener.  I like it better when it stands up like it does in the movie and I might go back and add some pipe cleaners later to hold it up.

Since this was a real jacket, he was incredibly hot the entire time he wore it.  But like the trooper he is he kept it on as long as possible to show off my work.  So now he has a tailor made jacket that he can wear out of character as well assuming he ever goes anywhere cold!

Tip:  If he is planning on wearing it as part of the Bane costume make sure to leave enough sleeve room to allow for the wrist brace.  I did not take it into account and it was almost too bad so sad. 

The Vest

The vest is actually 2 separate pieces, I will refer to them as the undervest and overvest.  I can't take close up pictures of it because I stupidly left it up in Georgia when we went to Dragon Con, but I do have a couple of good ones of him wearing it. 

The undervest is 3 different layers- a cool utility looking gray for the outside, a padded almost quilt-like foam in the middle and a cheap gray for the inside.  All 3 had a little give, but not quite enough, so I put a zipper in the front that would be low enough not to be seen under the overvest. The undervest really only shows in the back and around the arms, but when you do see it it has a dark brown edging and the gray has an almost quilted look to it.  Once I had the sizing I needed I was able to cut the 3 pieces out and lay it out on him to make sure everything looked snug enough to make it look fitted and not too tight so that it was uncomfortable or annoying.  As you can probably tell I have random snaps on it in the front- this is because the overvest seemed to shift a lot and I needed it to be more secure while still being a fully separate piece. 

The overvest is where a lot of those found military parts came in handy. The main green front is actually cut from an old duffle bag and the back and the top shoulder pads are from really old army tactical vests that have been pretty much altered beyond recognition.  One of the vests had a lace up back and sides that I really liked and was able to work with.  I was able to sew the sides of the vest (the parts with the holes) to the front piece I made and have that connect to the back panel from the same vest.  The back panel was pretty much left as is but the back had said army, which I covered with a pocket (from the duffel bag).  The straps were from the different pieces of the vest and were mostly sufficient to hold it together.  One exception tho- the straps on the front (the ones with the holes) were from a belt purchased separately.  I physically put each of those grommets in the belt (which took forever) and sewed it into the shape you see there.  The padded pieces on the front of the green vest were gray vinyl wrapped around thick craft foam.  I cut an angle into the edges of the foam to make it look more curved and hot glued the vinyl around it.  I attached them to the vest via hot glue but it didn't look secure enough, so I hand sewed around the edges.  That also took forever and I can get into more details if anyone asks.  The belt on the bottom was used as is, BUT the back panel over the belt was to mimic the real thing- I used brass tacks and brown vinyl to make the belt cover and the snaps.  Ideally the front of the grommeted straps was supposed to tuck into the front of the belt but it came loose several times.  If I were to make it again I would probably make the belt more accurate and use something that looked like the actual buckle from the movie. 

I can see that this is getting long and rambly with no pictures so I will probably rewrite this section later when I have the vest in hand again.  In the mean time comment for any pointers if you want to make your own!

The Wrist Brace

 

I almost forgot about this one.  This was made out of home decor brown vinyl from the clearance section in Joann's.  In case he wasn't sweating enough by this point, he insisted on having something that looked like the stiff leather they used in the real costume instead of something thinner and lighter.  I don't know how to work with real leather, pleather is the best I can do.  So I did. It came out really good I think and it was one of the easier pieces to make, taking only about a day to get it right.

 As you can see, the body of the brace is really just the 3 pieces that wrap around the forearm.  My husbands arm is significantly wider near his elbow and he has a rather dainty wrist (if I may say so myself)- so all 3 pieces use a bottom-heavy hourglass type shape to make the wrist pinch in a bit more while leaving the arm part big.

Ignore my arm in here for now, I swear it fit him just fine

There are 3 straps that hold it closed, the bottom-most one only covers the top part, the middle surrounds the whole wrist and the top one only goes from pinky side to thumb side.  I found it easiest to make the straps first (I did 2 layers sewn together with their outsides together then flipped inside out and stitched around the edge for a nice secure finish) and then pinch them in to the seams of the 3 body pieces.  Two reasons 1) it makes it much more secure and 2) its the easiest way to hide the "tails" of the straps.  There will be  6 tails to hide and its much more feasible to do it this way since you have to sew along that seam anyway. Once its all together I just folded down the top and bottom edges to make a seam that wouldn't fray.  I did NOT, however, finish the edge that would be on the top when its wrapped around his arm.  I wanted to make it blend as best as possible like it was continuous and having an obvious seam would ruin that illusion.


My adjustments:  My husband is a fidgetter, so I saw fit to make a couple of adjustments to the original design.  1) Around the thumb hole I wrapped a thin strip of vinyl so there wouldn't be any loose edges he could mess with.  This step is not necessary and is likely not in the original design, especially if you are using real leather. 2) I sewed in 2 snaps- one on top and one on bottom- to make sure the edges lined up and would stay in place as he wore it.  That would be another thing he would mess with if the edges weren't flush. Again these are not necessary but since the stitches I used were kind of small it was hard to tell they were there but they got the job done. 

Purchased Pieces

I did NOT make: the cargo pants, the knee pads, the lower 2 belts or the boots (obviously).  All of these were purchased from a local military surplus store