What's up everyone, I'm very excited to share my first ever completed cosplay suit, The Arkham Knight! I started this back in May after a few months of printing various props and decided to dive into a suit. I've always loved the look of this character so I was really excited to be able to bring it to life. I didn't take a ton of pictures along the way but I'll do my best to describe how everything was created under the pictures i post. All of the armor was printed on a Creality Ender 3 Pro and a Creality CR-10S Pro with Hatchbox PLA and PLA+. At the end I'll detail my prepping process, paints used, and anything else I can think of that will be helpful.
This is by far my favorite shot of the entire suit, it shows off all of the details, the lights, the accessories, the blue REALLY pops, and I think it's just a good looking shot in motion. As you can see, this isn't a full suit of armor like the Iron Man or Star Wars cosplays, so I had to learn some different skills working with all different kinds of fabric like pleather, cotton, elastic, and nylon.
Shoulders: Starting at the top of the armor with the shoulders, those were attached to the jacket with small Chicago screws and washers. These work incredibly well when trying to attach armor to fabric, as long as the fabric is thick (like pleather), or at least reinforced with something because the armor will be fighting gravity and rip the fabric or create a large hole. The large washers helped with keeping the other end of the screw from going through the hole. Below is a picture of Chicago screws for reference, they're basically just a screw that has the ability to screw into itself, and they come in all shapes and sizes.
Biceps: Moving down the arm we have the bicep pieces. These were simply attached with 1" neodymium magnets on the outside of my arm. I used fabric glue to mount the magnet inside my jacket arm, and epoxy to mount the magnet to the inside of the bicep piece. These magnets are extremely strong and one magnet is more than strong enough to hold this in place.
Forearms: The last piece attached to the arms is the forearm piece. This isn't actually attached to my arm, but there is an elastic strap that I have attached to the inside of it that runs along my wrist area. The friction of the elastic strap against the jacket is enough to keep it from sliding (mostly). I did actually have to trim the edge of these that rubs up against the biceps so that I could bend my arm 90 degrees. This wasn't too painful of a process and was well worth doing.
Chest: Going back up to the top, we have the chest pieces, which are my second favorite pieces of armor on the suit. The geometry has a really cool design and I was really excited to get these on the suit. These are also attached with a single 1" neodymium magnet. It's strong enough to hold them overlapping the abs piece and through the jacket, mostly because they weigh almost nothing.
Abs: Moving down the abs section. This took forever to make and went through a number of iterations. What you see here is two thin pieces of foam cut to shape with a black t-shirt wrapped around them. I then cut straps and used fabric glue to attach them going across, and taped off everything for the random geometric camo paint design. I then installed buttons with a button kit from Amazon I could attach the "metal" pieces on the sides to.
Shins: The shins were a large undertaking in terms of printing (a few days per piece) but they came out looking amazing. I printed each side in two pieces where one piece basically overlaps the piece underneath, with the bottom of the blue section being the lowest part of the top piece. I then strapped the top and bottom pieces together with a nylon strap and tied it on the inside. I honestly couldn't think of a good way to attach these to the pants so I just slipped them on and they sit perfectly on top of my boots, and they stay in place without any issues. There's a better look at the nylon straps in the photo of the back below.
Back: That back!! This is by far my favorite piece of armor on the suit, I mean that back design is just stunning. The angles, the different colors it looks all at once, the intimidation factor, it as it all. This piece was also attached with Chicago screws, 4 total, basically in all 4 corners. I started with only 2, one on the top right and one on the top left, but the bottom portion kept pulling away and looking weird, so I decided to add 2 more.
The tail looking section at the bottom of the back piece was originally only attached with magnets but it would pop off really easily. I ultimately decided to just attach this with 2 Chicago Screws as well; one on top and one on the bottom.
Pants: The pants were purchased from Amazon Basics, I believe they are just black cargo pants. I taped them off in random geometric camo designs and painted them with acrylic paints from Walmart.
Helmet: I wish i had pictures of this helmet before I started sanding and finishing. This thing was ROUGH, it looked so bad with holes all over it from under-extrusion, divets, gaps, etc. It was just ugly. This thing needed a lot of TLC but I took my time with the finishing and I think it came out beautiful. The LED eyes are from an LED cosplay eyes kit available on eBay and they're simple to form to the helmet. They form nicely with a little heat so I used that technique to get the curvature needed, and superglued them in place. The lower lights are 5mm LEDs which are wired in parallel with the LED eyes to the same battery pack. It's hard to see but there are also lights coming out of the ear vents, which aren't canon, but I thought it would be a cool addition and they came out looking pretty great. Those were also wired in parallel with the LED eyes battery pack. Because they're all wired together, they all turn on at the same time, and I have them wired with the ability to turn on by either a switch on the left jaw, or a magnet activated reed switch that runs down into my right glove. One thing that would make this design better is if the helmet was able to rotate open. It gets really stuffy in there so maybe that's something I can work on in the future.
Pouches: The pouches were all purchased at Walmart, the smaller ones were $5 each and they all came with a utility knife so that was pretty cool. The larger pouch came with the binoculars and I believe this was $10-$15. Before you ask, no, these Joker influenced designs were not in the video game or on the character in any way. There are a couple reasons why I did this. The first being because the pouches came with a bright white logo on them. I knew that wouldn't look good so I covered them with black paint and sharpie which you can see in the picture above. The second reason being that I wanted to pay homage to the Arkham Knight's time with Joker, and how much influence Joker had on the character. For the top row of pouches with the crossed out Bat symbols, this was a short story I created. Arkham Knight hates Batman and this story shows him starting out by simply crossing out the symbol, and as he goes from left to right he progressively gets more and more mad, and ends up just scribbling out the whole symbol by the end. For the bottom row, this was more Joker influenced (obviously) with his "HA HA"'s all over, and I thought it added a nice touch to show how the Arkham Knight was created and influenced.
Straps: The strapping system was slightly complex but it's mostly just different pieces of strapping material buttoned together. The bomb holsters are made from pleather that was cut to the right shape and sewed together, then sewed to the pleather square, and then attached with the buttons to the larger pleather design on the pants.
Gloves: The gloves were tactical gloves I purchased from Amazon and I attached the armor pieces to them with velcro and superglue.
Prepping Process: My prepping process evolved throughout the build but I ultimately found this process to work the best for me, although I'm aware everyone has their own process for smoothing prints: I start with 80 grit electric sander or by hand to really break down the layer lines or left over supports, then I move on to 120 grit to start the smoothing process, then I spray a light, but full coverage, layer of filler primer, then sand with 220 and see if there's anything that needs to be filled in, if there are areas that need to be filled in, I'll fill them in with wood filler and let that dry, then I'll sand it all down with 220 again, I will repeat this process (wood filler and 220 grit) until the print is basically completely smooth, then I move onto wet sanding with 400 grit and once that dries, you're ready to paint!
Paints Used: For the primer I used gray Filler Primer, the main paint I used on the suit was all Rustoleum spray paint (Flat Soft Iron for the dark silver and Blue Metallic for all of the blue), and I used a matte polyurethane clear coat overtop because I didn't want this suit to be too shiny/plastic looking.
Well I think that's it! If you made it this far, I really appreciate you taking the time to read this and I hope you learned something useful! If I missed something, or if you have any questions/comments/critique I'd love to hear it below! Here are some more pics I took for your viewing pleasure.
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Well, it looks like this suit looks quite similar to the original. I think it turned out really cool. It would be great if in real life you could find the right outfit just as easy.
Haven't you thought about starting doing cosplays? I believe that after a few costumes, you can come up with something decent. I was just a fan as well, I'd visit Printful almost every month and order custom-made t-shirts. But now, I like to do something myself, but I mostly draw something on clothing.