Dr. Doom Costume

With a little extra time on my hands in quarantine last year, I decided to take on another pepakura costume for an online Halloween party. The armor parts are made from posterboard, craft foam, wood glue, and spray paint. I created this in less than two weeks, so I used a lot of shortcuts that I will share in each step as well as errors that I plan to correct before the next wear. The costume was both fun to make and to wear and was a hit at the party. I'm looking forward to bringing it to the next in-person comic-con.

I have uploaded the 12" x 12" dxf & pdf files that I used to cut these templates on the Cricut Maker. (They are just as easy to cut with scissors.) I made these patterns using pepakura files from JFCustom's foam armor post on the RPF and Pepakura.eu . Once I found biceps, forearms, and torso that I liked, I made some modifications to the .pdo files and exported DXF files for the Cricut.

Pepakura takes a lot of patience, often a little math, and is not for everyone. I would recommend trying out STEP 1- the pepakura Doom mask first, to see if you enjoy this technique for making things.

I modified a few files I found online and created a lot of parts by hand. I have included downloadable templates for almost everything I made. Good luck! Please send me a photo if you make something using this instructable, I would love to see what you come up with!

• Package of 20 12” x 12” craft foam 2mm sheets
• (LOL, yes, these are sold with imperial measurements for height & width, yet metric "thickness". USA!)
• 5 sheets of 28” x 22” poster board (heavy card stock)
• Circuit or Silhouette CNC cutting machine with 12” x 12” cutting mat.
• (alternately a Jet printer and scissors.)
• Two cans of silver spray paint
• One can of gold spray paint
• 4 sq. yards green fabric.
• Titebond PVC wood glue.
• Hot glue gun
• 1 pack of 20 glue sticks.
• Black acrylic paint. (Any water based paint is probably going to work)
• Nylon clip belt
• large metal snaps (Also need tools to apply these to fabric)
• .5” and 1” thick Eva foam sheets or scraps.
• paintbrushes
• masking tape or packing tape
• War Machine mask (.99 cents!)
• Men's costume boots
• Army surplus store nylon clip belt
• Silver bodysuit
• Men's black costume gloves

* Optional but recommended: Free Pepakura software. Download and install Pepakura (needs win emulator on Mac) to check out files from JFCustom's foam armor post on the RPF and Pepakura.eu in 3D and even create and print your own templates.

I found a great deal of inspiration for this mask in Floyd_Waxler's Doom mask instructable that they built around a store-bought war machine mask. I found the same mask for $4 on eBay, and used it as a base for the pepakura to build a bit faster and easier. However, you can build the full mask using these templates, and do not need the war machine mask underneath.

I started with the eyes, and used hot glue to carefully line an edge of the craft foam piece before holding it against it's corresponding edge. Most parts I glued edge-to-edge, as they are meant to create folds and curves naturally as you glue one edge at a time. But to give the mask more depth than I thought looked good with craft foam, I glued some edges around the eyes perpendicular, and some around the mouth overlapping.

To build the mask, I only used craft foam and hot glue. In the next steps, building the body armor, I cut the pieces first from poster board and assembled them with tape. Then, I cut another copy of the parts and brushed the foam and the poster board with wood glue before laying the foam part on top of its poster board match. If your mask needs more strength, this could help build out the full helmet.

To create the arms, I cut the templates first in poster board, and then cut a second set of the same parts in 2mm craft foam. [Image #3] I attached each of the poster board parts together using packing tape or masking tape. (I tried both, neither was particularly good, but they both worked.) [Images #1 - #2] Then I brushed the posterboad and the foam parts with wood glue and laid the foam parts directly on top of their poster board counterparts. [Image #4 - #6]

This created a sturdy enough piece of costume "armor" that was easy and cheap to make on the Cricut Maker, but there are LOTS of other ways to make foam armor sturdy for wear, and I would encourage you to experiment with different techniques.

Building the biceps and shoulders is fairly straightforward, as each part attaches edge-to-edge. The forearm is built completely differently, with an inner cone that is overlapped by outer and elbow parts. I built the inner cone in yellow foam and the outer parts in red to make it a little easier to see how I overlapped them.

I also used brass brads to detail and functionally attach parts on the forearms. I also made a template for small cones that I used to cover the outer elbows of this template (I also used the same cone template for the cape/chain feature on the torso, and on the belt.)

This is the easiest pattern of the bunch. Cut out the pieces, each template creates enough pieces for one hand. I made some of these parts by hand and some were modified from Punished Props Nazgul Gauntlet template.

Glue the two largest parts together like a sandwich. Glue the fingers near the first knuckle at the hand and at the second knuckle in the middle of the fingers.

I glued the parts to a black costume glove, for speed, but they did not stay at all, hot glue needs a rougher surface to bond with. I had to rebuild them over and again and never found a glue that I was 100% happy with. I considered using the brads or pop-rivets to attach the foam to the glove, but I'm not sure if that would be comfortable enough to wear.

My future plans include rebuilding the gauntlets without the costume gloves as the base.

I spray painted everything silver and gave it a few coats of blackwash (black and brown acrylic paint diluted with water). The blackwash made the holes in the top armor piece look nice and added great depth.

As I was in a bit of a time crunch with less than two weeks before Halloween to build this, so I decided to deconstruct a Worbla torso that I built two years ago. (I created a Worbla base by heating and shaping the Worbla around a scavenged department store mannequin torso. The result was a clamshell-like piece that hinges at the shoulders and cinches at the sides near the waist.) It had the same basic shape as the pepakura torso that I chose, so I decided I would build this new collar and attach it to the old torso. All of the template parts are included here to allow you to build the full torso. Only the collar is visible when wearing as the tunic covers most of your torso. [Image #1] So you may decide you only need the collar or want to attach it directly to the tunic and hood.

I cut the templates first from poster board, and then cut a second set of the same parts from 2mm craft foam. I attached each of the poster board parts together using packing tape or masking tape. Then I brushed the posterboard and the foam parts with wood glue and laid the foam parts directly on top of their poster board counterparts. [Image #2 - #3]

I added a few brass brads to detail the armor. They look like the rivets of Dr. Doom's. own homemade armor and helped to reinforce the collar around the parts running over the shoulder. I was pretty heavy-handed with the wood glue and a 2" wide brush to create a rough-looking, beaten into form, "metal" finish. I spray painted the torso silver, and then added blackwash and other hand-painted details. I used hot glue painted silver to simulate a VonDoom signature "angrily welded" finish. [Image #4 -6]

To attach the cape clasps and chain, I added two neodymium magnets under the cardboard and foam layers. I used epoxy and heat to embed them near the collarbone areas of the torso armor. [Image #4- #5] These magnets are strong enough to hold the chain and gold conical foam clasps in place. But, having worn this costume, they fell off repeatedly all night. So I replaced them with metal snaps that I glued onto the torsop with epoxy and sewed into the cape, clasps.

I recruited some help to make the tunic, so these are the only parts I don't have patterns for, but I hope you can easily create your own using these photos. We decided to make the hooded tunic and cape into two separate pieces that attach with velcro. [Image #7] The tunic design needs to be measured to be large enough to fit around the torso armor, so I had to have that part built before starting this step. The sleeveless tunic opens in the back and closes with velcro, but it only opens up to the hood. The skirt part of the tunic is pleated, and I would like to shorten it up before wearing it again. I didn't build pepakura legs for the original wear (Because it was for a party on ZOOM, lol) but it will look better with armored legs and a shorter tunic.

The fur trim attaches along the same cape-to-hood velcro seam and hides the velcro. I used a holiday garland, but before the next wear, I will probably replace it with fake fur from a small Ikea rug.

I made two cardboard circles and then cut two strips of foam that were the same thickness as the cardboard. I glued the strips around the circumference of the circles. I cut two "pac-man" shapes from foam and glued together the "pac-man mouth" seam to create a short cone. I used epoxy to attach two neodymium magnets inside the cone at the center of the cardboard circle. I glued the ends of a small length of brass chain to the back of each of the cones. When placed near the collarbone areas of the torso, they attach fairly firmly, but overall I wasn't satisfied with building them this way. For my next rebuild, however, I plan to sew these parts to the tunic. I would also like to sculpt the cones from Tap Plastic's Magic Sculpt (I love this stuff) and better attempt to simulate the large metal parts.

For the belt, I started with a green army surplus store "pistol belt" with a flat clasp at the front. I cut a few interesting shapes from the EVA foam and hot glued them to the flat part of the plastic clasp on the belt. Then I added an additional craft foam cone that matches the cape clasps.

I wore a silver bodysuit from Amazon under the armor and tunic. I also silver spray painted some costume boots from the party store, and this costume was ready for the online party world. We're DONE!

Now that your armor is complete, your master plan can begin: 1st - Bring Reed Richards to his knees! 2nd- See to it that all will kneel before DOOM!! 3rd - You now only refer to yourself in the 3rd person

See ya at a post-COVID Comic-con (SOON, I hope!)

Win a few costume contests and report back here with a photo of your work if this instructable helped you to create something! Good luck!