Foam Rubber suits

Good luck.

FXMan

By the way, NONE of it is too cheap regardless. All of it runs right around $100 bucks for a gallon kit. Some more, some a little less. Prices rarely go down and I've never seen a foam rubber product that was ever low budget - of course that's a completely relative term to how much you have in the budget.

If this is what you were thinking about, here is what I can tell you from working with it:

You can buy large sheets of foam from a variety of sources - sewing stores, upholstery shops, and even foam distributors if you live near a large enough city. We have a local one called "Foam City" and they aren't kidding. Miles of foam in materials, colors, and densities that I didn't know existed, although it is hard to find rolls more than 5- 6 feet wide.

Precast foam is most likely to be flexible, open cell Polyurethane. It may have a thin fabric or plastic sheet bonded to one surface for sewing, so thread won't pull through it. You will have to sew it or glue it. Working with it is a lot like sewing - you need to cut shapes that will be curved and bent to conform to the body or project out into space somewhat.

Hot glue works well for adhering the foam, just don't let it soak into the foam so much that it doesn't adhere the pieces. Be very careful, the glue and especially the tip of the gun can give you a nasty burn, especially if you use the high temp guns like I prefer to!

Once the suit/construction is finished, you can coat it with liquid latex. This will require a number of light coats followed by a layer of facial tissue or toilet paper applied very much like paper mache to form an actual skin over the foam.

Other glues: Spray glues like 3M's "Super 77" and "High-Strength 90" bond fabric and sheets of foam together well. Check hardware & home improvement stores. Hot glue is better for gluing down an edge. There are industrial glues intended to be sprayed under pressure that work marvelously, but they are a bit expensive and not easy to find.

A body suit is likely to tear when being donned (even if you powder yourself down the way you are supposed to) so I advise reinforcing the inside with a thin, flexible material. Some people cut open women's nylons or body suits, some use the lightest weight spandex (or other stretch fabric) they can find, or if the suit isn't going to flex much just a thin slippery fabric like a very light acetate.

You can spray paint the foam, if you don't mind the surface cracking and flaking off almost immediately. The easiest painting techniques are those used for painting rubber
masks & such, but I've developed others.

Pros:
* Quick (once you get the hang of it.)
* Good for background suits, skins covered by partial costumes.
* No oven needed or triple beam balance, etc
* Temperature of surroundings has little impact, although a warm area speeds the drying of the latex. Ever try making cold foam outside in October in the Midwest? Not fun!
* Easy to do wrinkled/textured skin.

Cons:
* Forget prosthetics or detailed work.
* This open cell foam - there is no skin on it, so you'll have to make one.
* Seams can be hard to hide, though they are less visible once you get good at it.
* Nowhere near as flexible and stretchy as casting your own foam with most of the formulas available.
* Forget smooth surfaces.
* Deeper texture on the skin can be burned into it with a soldering iron, but this releases toxic fumes that you shouldn't risk breathing. Even outside you would need to use professional breathing protection.
* It has sculptural limitations that sculpting in clay, making a mold, and casting foam pieces do not have.

I have used these techniques for a number of props and costumes that had to be done very quickly, on a tiny budget, and am building a costume for my wife's current play this way. I've collected a ton of procedures, techniques, hybrid approaches that give you more options for reasonable expenditures, tips, do's and don'ts, to the point that I've considered publishing this as a seperate book from a general low budget make up FX & costuming book I've been chipping away at for a while. Does anyone think there would be enough of a market/interest in a book on low budget foam?

------------------
Jeff F - Magic and FX
Amazing the Masses