GENERAL MUSING ABOUT TINY GLOVES
The issue with creating a nearly half-scale Ironman suit, is that some pieces just don't scale well (and remain functional to wear). Ironman's gloves are proving to be one of those pieces for me. I definitely need fully functional gloves for Mikey with as close to 100% mobility as I can achieve; however, Mikey's hands and fingers are tiny - and not perfectly scaled down 'adult' hands.
As this webpic shows, the finger length of kid hands is very much shorter than adult fingers. They are also shaped differently - more tapered toward the ends than adult fingers.
I actually remember Peter Jackson talking about the issue with using small people or kids for hobbits in LotR, and specifically stating that hand-size and shape didn't look 'right' unless they used camera tricks to 'shrink' full-sized adults. That's certainly the issue I'm currently running it with Mikey's armored gloves.
UNDER ARMOR BASE GLOVES - To Stretch, or Not to Stretch:
My first challenge was finding base-gloves that would properly fit Mikey's hands. I knew from last winter, the best fitting children gloves were Magic Stretch gloves.
These are a very tight knit-looking glove made up of 95% acrylic / 5% spandex. They are tiny, but very stretchy. They also only cost $1-$2US each.
I picked up a couple of pairs of these and also purchased a couple of pairs of the smallest cotton dress gloves I could find online.
The non-stretchy cotton gloves didn't fit AT ALL, so I endeavored to modify the fingers to Mikey-Size (via hand-stitching). This fit his fingers perfectly, but left WAY too much material in the palm of the glove and a large (awkward) space between the thumb and pointer finger. The end result of this experiment was to convince me that the only way to get a pair of non-stretching material gloves will be to buy fabric and sew them myself.
So, I have the stretching gloves that fit and I have confidence that I can sew up a pair of non-stretching gloves that will fit. That leaves me with the following conundrum:
Do I want stretchy or non-stretchy base gloves?
I think the stretch gloves fit very nicely, but will probably be harder to attach armor pieces to (especially the larger palm pieces) and might prove problematic when I begin painting detail between armor plates. The non-stretch gloves will be easier to attach armor pieces to, but will not fit as well or allow much for growth over the next few months.
PEP vs SCRATCH BUILD
My other decision I'm wrestling with is in regard to using the pep files or just scratch building something relatively close to what the movie gloves look like.
Pepping these tiny pieces will be a pain the arse, and take considerable time. On the other hand (no pun intended), I have purchased some thin styrene sheets from a local hobby shop. I think I could fairly easily create some bands of armor along each finger even if they are just simple circular bands rather than the more movie-accurate squarish shape. I'm currently leaning toward the styrene method.
LIGHT IT UP!
Scale plays another part of my choice of repulsor lights. Most of the simple prefab LED light units folks are using for their adult-size suits will be way too big for Mikey's hands. So, the other day I picked up two 9 LED mini-flashlights, that I will cut down to just the thickness of the LEDs and then wire it to the main battery power pack for the suit.
The circumference of the mini-flashlight housing is almost perfectly scale for my 5yr old's hand and the light is intensely bright.
Now, I'm no electrical engineer so this next part will have to trial and error... I'd like to add sound and a nice strobe effect on the LEDs; however, I'm no breadboard-geek, so I have to make due with crap I can wire together (anyone with EE experience that would like to build me up something for this - please feel free!).
I ran across this cheap toy at Wal-Mart last night for $6.
One of it's two sound effects seems to resemble a repulsor sound. My first thought was to pick it up and see if (after I ripped out the lights and other crap) I could connect it to the same circuit that the repulsor glove lights would be connected to so the light and sound would happen at the same time. I would (theoretically) only need one of these toys, as I could house the toy anywhere within the suite. Then I could either let the sound come from the toy (if it was housed in the chest let's say), or I could get REALLY fancy and run speaker wires back to the gloves (where tiny speakers could produce the sound right there at the glove). I might still play with that idea if I have some spare time.
GETTING STARTED...
Finally, I guess I need to get started on the glove project (even if I haven't made all my design decisions yet). The first step is to get a rough mold of Mikey's hands (or at least ONE of them).
I just purchased two kits designed to make plaster casts of an infant's foot and hand. These kits actually use Alginate and were only $10. I figured a package designed to do an infant foot & hand, might do one of Mikey's hands... If I'm lucky the TWO kits I bought will get me BOTH of his hands... If not, I'll have plenty of material for a very good mold of at least one hand.
I doubt I'll use the kit's plaster for the final cast, however. I think I'd rather have a cast done in resin than plaster. I think it will handle the abusive use I plan to put it through while creating the glove pieces and attaching them to whichever type of glove I finally go with.
I'll take some pictures tonight and let you know how it goes. Until then, any thoughts, comments or ideas on the gloves for Mikey would be greatly helpful!
Thanks,
Jon