How to Make a Big Hero 6: "Baymax" Costume

"Hello... I am Baymax... Ba-la-la-la-la-la." Probably one of my top three favorite movies of all time.. Big Hero 6 is awesome! Well, my friends and I wanted to create the Big Hero 6 team for the 2015 Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo. Well, since we had the rest of the cast, it was time to make the main man himself.. er.. main bot I should say. Good thing i have very large friends! Ready to get your upgrade on? Let's get started shall we?

*Costume works well with big people 6'5 and above

Materials

- EVA foam

-hot glue

-plastic buckles

- wood 2x4

- long screws

-dremel

- comfortable gym shoes

-electric sander

-Chalk

- Mattress foam

- Clear Caulk

- wood dowel rods

- parachute chord

-Black pants

-Black long sleeve shirt

-shoe laces

-measuring tape

- heating gun

-exacto knife

- worbla

- see through white fabric

-cardboard

Abdomen

1) Since my friend is quite large, we had to glue who pieces of EVA foam together to make a girdle type thing. Just wrap the sheet around his chest and stomach. Cut some space under the armpits to allow it to fit snuggly. (pic 1)

2) I used large plastic buckles and secured them to the back of the girdle. (Pic 1)

3) i took some shoe laces and made shoulder straps so the abdomen would now slide down.

4) there are little striations on the front of the abdomen, but this should be done AFTER the chest is made due to sizing.

Pelvis

1) take your tape measure and measure the new waist WITH the abdomen on from left to right hip.

2) take your scrap piece of paper and cut out a rectangle to the length of the hips. Fold the paper in half and draw out the shape. Unfold, cut out, and trace and cut out of EVA foam (pic 2)

3) repeat step 5, but take the measurement from back side.

4) once you have the front and back side of the pelvis, glue one hip and the crotch together. do NOT glue the other side of the hip together.

5) I used a soldering iron to burn a "canal" on the inside of the pelvis in the butt area. be cautious because you are NOT trying to burn completely through the foam, but only create a canal that will you to bend it and fill it with hot glue. (seen in pic 1)

6) Glue on small buckles to the unglued hip of the pelvis (as seen in pic 1)

Attaching Pelvis to Abdomen

1) put on the abdomen and the pelvis together

2) take some chalk and mark where you want the pelvis and abdomen to align

3) take some parachord straps and some large plastic buckles and glue them to the side of the abdomen. The other side will attach to the outside of the pelvis. (pic 5)

* We were quite rushed and I had not figured out how to make it look clean yet in the picture. The only thing different is that the parachord that is attached to the stomach was eventually hidden underneath the details of the abdomen and then painted.

5) There is also one more buckle/ parachord attached to the inside of the crotch area the pelvis piece and the abdomen piece. The reason we did this was that the abdomen would continuously pop out. (pic 6)

1) First, with the abdomen piece on, measure from the the collar to the sternum of the body. Then add a few more inches to compensate for the curve in the chest. We wanted the chest to sit high, so we wanted it to be about chin level.

2) measure and cut a rectangle the size that you measured. Fold the paper in half and draw out your design. unfold, cut out template and use it to cut out the middle piece from EVA foam.

3) Now, curve that middle piece of EVA foam, and press another piece of EVA into the curve to see how much EVA you will need to make the side pieces. We wanted the chest to be extra big, so we made it into 5 pieces. (pic 1).

4)Duct tape the pieces together and flip it over to start hot gluing. It may be helpful to dremel some of the edges to get a smoother joint. (pic 2 and 3)

5). you can see how big the chest pieces is in the following pictures (pic 4 and 5)

6) Create the back piece from 2 separate pieces of EVA foam. With the abdomen on and the chest piece pressed against you, measure the width of the back, along with the general height.

7) measure and cut a rectangle the size that you measured. Fold the paper in half and draw out your design. unfold, cut out template and use it to cut out the middle piece from EVA foam.

8) we glued in some mattress sponge on the shoulders to keep the height and comfort of the wearer. we also put in some sponge on the area near the ribs. The reason for this is that the wearer's arms would naturally begin to get heavy and start to put weight on the sides of the costume, this causing it to indent. We wanted to eliminate that problem, so the sponge helped with support.

Chest Details

1) Baymax has his access port on his left side. draw out your template, cut it out. use a dremel.. and then cut in the details.. Use a heating gun to open the cut. (pic 1)

Back details

1) Measure and cut a rectangle in paper the size that you want.

2) Fold the paper in half and draw out your design. unfold, cut out template and use it to cut out EVA foam. I used a jar lid to cut out the circles (pic 2)

3) glue in place onto the back piece (pic 3)

4) Remember that backmax has two wings that come of those sides. however, when they are retracted, you can only see the tips from the back.

5) to make the hand and knee attachments, cut out 4 circles of EVA foam that are the exact size of the circle from the paper template.

6) glue the 2 pieces together like a sandwich. If needed, you can sand off the grooves from the bottom of the EVA foam. you should now have a foam "sandwich"

7) find a slightly smaller circle and draw that circle onto the top of this sandwich.

8) take it to your sander and sand at an angle, using the top circle and the bottom edge as a guide.. think "volcano"

9) does this to all 4 sandwiches and glue into the four back slots (pic 4)

Abdomen details

1) Baymax has a "U" shape indented into his stomach. Use an exacto knife and cut that section into the foam. do NOT cut all the way through. Use a heat gun to open up the cut.

2) Baymax has these little indentations on his stomach. measure them out with your tape measure, cut them out of Eva foam, and dremel (pic 5)

4) Glue in place. We made three all together. (pic 6)

1) the shoulders consist of 3 top pieces. This process is somewhat similar to making the chest

2) Start with the middle piece by cutting out a rectangle.

3) you will then be cutting out 2 side pieces. I curved the middle piece first and then pressed some EVA foam into the curve to see how much i wanted. I cut it out, transferred it onto paper so i could have the same size, and then glued it in.

4) The best way i found to do this was inverting the pieces while i was gluing it together. think "bowl"

5) revert them back to normal (like a turtle shell) and then take 3 more pieces of EVA and create the bottom. The easiest way is to once again start with the middle piece, and then create the side pieces for the underside of the shoulder.

1) start by taking a measurement of the width and height of the front thigh.. you will want it to be a little wider in order to make the thighs proportional to the body.

2) use the measurements to cut out a rectangle on a piece of paper. Draw out the image an cut it out. Then use the template to cut out your front thigh pieces from EVA. (pic 1)

3) do the same process for the back of the thighs (pic 2)

4) how you will want to make some type of inner and outer thigh piece to connect the front and back thigh pieces. (pic 3)

5) it should all look proportional when completed. If needed, take some mattress sponge and put it on the inside.(pic 4)

6) Baymax has 2 plates on each thigh.(pic 5)

7) Make your templates from paper and then cut them from EVA foam (pic 6)

8) Glue them in and use caulk to fill in any gaps between seams (pic 7)

9) take some elastic and glue it to the inner side of the outer thigh piece.. take the other end of the elastic and glue it onto the pelvis piece. So just for clarity, your pelvis piece and two thigh pieces should all be attached together now.

1.Take your shoes and remove the laces (save laces for later). it is good to use low tops for these shoes. Cut further along the tongue of the shoe, because you need to be able to get a drill all the way to the toe part of the shoe. (pic 1)

2. Then, take your exacto knife and cut across the width of foot sole where the ball of your foot is.. The easiest way I found out is to bend your foot forward a bit with the shoe on, and that way you can see where the shoe naturally bends. This is because when you walk, your shoe needs to “give” a bit so that it can bend while walking. (pic 2)

3. Now, get your 2x4 and use a saw (or get it cut) so that you can get two boards for the front and back part of 1 foot. (pic 3)

* this photo was used for my transformers costumes, but the premise is still the same. HOWEVER, instead of cutting a diamond shape, we went with two rectangles and just rounded the edges off the toe and heel area. This is because baymax has circular feet.

4. Take 4 slender pieces of wood ( about 1 inch thick, and however long your two pieces are)and drill them underneath so that you are even more elevated. (pic 4)

5) cut and smooth off the excess screws if they are sticking out.

5.Place your shoe on the two pieces so that the “cut” of the shoe sole is right in between the two pieces of wood. Due to the notion that the two pieces of wood are on either side of the cut in the shoe sole, your robot foot should naturally bend when you walk. (pic 5)

6). At this point, take out the pad inside the shoe. Take your screws and drill inside the shoe directly into the wood. I used 3 screws with washers for the front of the shoe and 4 for the back piece. Replace pad into your shoe so that your foot is not directly on the screws. replace the shoe laces.

8) Encase the entire shoe in EVA foam. you can use some EVA foam to act as "spacers" on either side of the wood planks to help retain form. (pic 6)

1) Similar to how you made the thighs, you are making the shins. However, when you are measuring, it is best to wear the pelvis/ thigh pieces and the feet. This way, you can determine how big to make them. As you can see in the picture, the shins somewhat overlap the feet, so don't forget to take that into account (pic 1 and pic 2)

2). in order for the shins not to swirl around, we lined each with mattress foam and crated a little ledge that can rest on the top of the shoe. This is to ensure that the foam cannot be seen .

3) in order to make knees, we just made a small trapezoid shape out of EVA foam and glued them directly onto the shin pieces themselves. That should be it for the lower half! (pic 4)

Bicep

1) Once again, you are making the same shape you made for the thighs and shins. Do the exact same process and just remember to keep the proportions. (pic 1)

2) The only thing to remember is that he has two circular joints on either side of his elbow. In order to get this, first cut out the "U" shape from your outer bicep you made in step 1. (pic 2)

3) add an entire strip of EVA foam to the bottom inside of the bicep piece. (pic 3)

4) Cut out the circle t from EVA that will fit inside the "U" shape. Do this 4 x.

5) get two of those circles from step 4, and cut out a smaller circle from them. that way you get an "O".

6) take it to your sander and trim down the top edge at an angle. think of the shape of a volcano.

7) seal the seams with caulk and glue in place.

Forearm/ Hand

1) You will be making the hand first. it is quite large in comparison to baymax's body. in addition, it only has 3 fingers an 1 thumb.

2) first make the entire hand from cardboard. You are first creating a 5 sided cube that will be the size of the overall fist.

3. I made it so his thumb would stick out. It's best to just take a look at your fist and see how your thumb lays. don't try to overcomplicate it.

4) Encase the entire hand in EVA foam

5) you can cut and add layers of EVA foam to add depth to the fingers. I also added some dremeled ovals to the knuckle regions (pic 5+6).

6) similar to the biceps, shins, and thighs, you are making a cylinder. just fiddle with the shape a bit so that the wrist area can be a tad smaller than the forearm area. We added a little "lip" to the elbow area. (pic 7)

1) Here is a reference picture of the helmet (pic 1)

2) So start off with a a strip of EVA foam that goes from front to back. Then two side strips, and then four horizontal strips that go on either side of the jawline and back of the head.

3) Fill in the gaps with EVA foam so that the entire head is covered (pic 3)

4) get a rectangular piece of paper, fold it in half, and draw in your visor shape. use the paper template and draw it onto the helmet and then carefully cut out. (pic 4)

5) because the helmet should be larger than the person's actual head, take a strip of EVA foam and glue it in the shape of a "C" within the actual helmet. This way, the wearer's head can fit snuggly inside without rattling around in there.

6) Baymax has the ears on each side. I first drew up a paper template and then cut it out of EVA foam. (pic 5)

7) I dremeled the edges and then i used a exacto knife and heat gun to expand the cut on the circle portion of it. (pic 6)

8). i thought that EVA would probably bend with us being so active so i worbla'ed each ear. that way, it was nice and hard (pic 3 + 4). 4)

9). glue each ear to the side of the helmet and then fill in the gap with caulk.

1. Seal all the foam first with modge podge or plastidip. This is because EVA foam is absorbent, so your colors won't come out as vibrant if you don't seal them first

2. gesso/ primer them first to get a nice base coat.

3. paint everything the designated colors.

4. finish with a clear coat or more modge podge

5. Wear your black clothes underneath your suit and suit up.

*If you really wanted to, there should be enough room to install a fan in the chest. Or maybe put some type of ice pack holder in it If there person is too hot.

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