Bumblebee

Here is my attempt at the Transformer Bumblebee, The suit is made for my little girl who is 4. This build took roughly 30 hours and i'm very glad its finished. Well almost, I have to draw an Autobot symbol on the head. Materials needed are as follows:
1) Cardboard for templates
2) Lots of packing tape
3) Metal Flashing Tin
4) Rivet Gun and Rivets
5) Can of yellow, black and silver spray paint
6) 2 Metal tubes
7) 4 feet of nylon rope
8) Velcro straps
9) Bubble wrap for padding
10) Hot Glue gun
11) A child with mucho patience

Cost was around $120.00 Without labor

This where i began, cutting cardboard shapes roughly to fit my little girl. After a couple of days of cutting begging my four year old to stand still while I placed all this ridiculous cardboard on her, we had a template.

I am slowly learning 3D shaping through trial and error. The boots have quite a few pieces bend and stuck together. These boots are meant to slip over a regular pair of boots. In our case a pink pair of rubber boots.

After trimming and sizing we got the rough shape needed to fit her. Its funny how much better cardboard fits than metal. The helmet as usual scares me to try every time.

After cutting and piecing together my daughter tried it on. I had to be fairly careful as the metal is sharp. To remedy this i used a hot glue gun and placed a bead on the edge of anything sharp.

Chest, Back and Shoulders painted.

The belt consists of four metal pieces that are secured to the belt and then individually strapped to her legs with velcro.

Sorry the pictures jump a bit now. This is the Chest, Arms and Back almost completely finished. The boots are made but not painted and I haven't started the helmet yet. I always do the helmet last because to me its the most difficult and I don't want to get discouraged early in the game.

Here is a shot of the helmet with the pieces cut and taped together in the rough shape. Later I riveted them together and added paint.

Here we are all done. Special thanks to my daughter for trying this on again and again. She can actually move around quite easily in this. I added the voice changer and mic from an old Bumblebee helmet in the chest. Takes about four minutes to put on but well worth it she is super excited to go out this year.