Feelin' Glayish?

Okay.. I’ll try to suggest something for you but keep in mind I’m not a cosplay help blog. I only know what I can do.

This depends on how buff you wanna look, because there will always be a degree of ‘fakeness’ to a costume piece. I mean, it’s obvious anyway when someone is wearing fake muscles, the trick is to incorporate it into your costume so it flows and works as a whole.

In the case of a shirtless cosplay utilizing a musclesuit the main focus will end up being the fact that you ARE wearing a shirt! If you’re comfortable with that fact then you can continue on and make one.

To make a shirtless manchest, I would make the base leotard and carve my muscles the same way. The only difference is that you need flesh tone fabric as your second layer over top. Every muscle suit using the method I do should have a second layer anyway since it’s the article of clothing going on top, or in this case, the ‘skin.’ 

So find yourself a workable skin colour fabric in STRETCH. Next you’ll need an airbrush and a friend (or a body dummy). 

If you have a friend doing this, then you should be wearing your musclesuit + fleshtone shirt overtop. (If you have a dummy and you’re airbrushing, then just put both garments onto the dummy). You want to airbrush the muscle definition on with a darker fleshtone colour. HOnestly, I get help from my twin sis to airbrush all my muscles anyway, whether flesh tone or not. My Thor arms are airbrushed for added definition and weathering. My Frieza arms and legs are too (and his is supposed to be naked flesh). So yeah, the key is airbrushing. Thinking about how one would use make up to give themselves abs or more cleavage. Same deal except this is permanent and not on your actual skin. 

We’ve done this before and gotten some pretty good results! 

(Our friend Anatra in battle torn Buu saga Vegeta. It’s a full neck to toe muscle suit airbrushed and then the ripped up blue spandex went on top.)

I’d like to point out that there are three main trouble spots on having a manchest suit, in that the neck line and wrists will be obvious. If your character doesn’t have wristbands/gloves or a collar to cover these areas, depending on what type of fabric you get to simulate skin, it could be very obvious. Perhaps liquid latexing the edges to yourself could work. However, as pictured above, nothing was done to the neckline of the suit because it was shaded at the collar so that it blended into the shadow most of the time.

good luck and go have fun with your musclyness

can I be handsome too… YwY

Let me help, my dear Mr. Spock

 

(and hopefully some other people by answering this public????)

This is how my sister & I do it, but I’m sure there’s other methods if you googled or something I dunno.

NUMBER 1.

You need a stretchy base. Sew your own leotard or shirt or whatever, or buy one. Doesn’t matter. Just has to be very stretchy. 4-way stretch. If you manage to find that in breathable fabric? EXCELLENT. Because of all the extra padding and layers, you will sweat. A lot. Once you’ve got your base then you can move on to unleashing the pythons that always lived beneath your skin.

TWO! This is a pic I drew of the muscles I usually put into a suit. Note that the circle and oval shapes drawn are pretty much the actual shapes I carve out. Sometimes, like for Captain Kirk, I just need a muscle shirt because my upper body only needs padding. Sometimes, like for THOR GOD OF THUNDAAHHHRGH you need legs and torso! 

You can use this method to pad other areas not indicated, BUTTTT I already have a huge ass so I don’t really bother with that.

(Note that for the Kirk shirt I still extended it into a leotard that had a crotch like a swimsuit because stretch fabric RIDES UP like crazy and since your muscles have to be tight tight and stay in the right place, you don’t want any hems wandering.)

Ok, I mean, obviously these are very simplified groupings compared to reality…

But most of this stuff will be getting covered by clothing anyway (or a flesh toned layer with airbrushed detail)

So basically, the “muscles” are made out of filterfoam. I don’t have a pic of it actually… It’s kinda like polyfill except hardened into a block of fiber layers. Anyway, it BREATHES unlike regular upholstery foam, which is very helpful. And doesn’t yellow over time. But it’s more expensive than upholstery foam so yeah, pick whichever. DON”T use loose polyfill because (from experience) it just balls up and your muscles look like tumors instead. =\

So here’s a pic of some of my muscles all carved up. I used a scissors and snipped away insanely and for long hours to get the shapes I wanted. It hurt. I gotta find a better tool for working with this stuff. Anyway…

You should know the approx. scale of the muscles you want. Like, how buff do you wanna be? There’s only so big you can go before it starts to look bad. 

Carrying on…

THREE ===> After you’ve carved all your muscles, you have to attach them to the suit. I cut out stretch fabric and hand sew it to each piece of foam so that it’s capped off and smoother (since there’s no way you can carve this stuff to be super smooth). Then I throw on my base suit, and hold the muscles to myself to see where they go. Mark it off by drawing around the entire muscle with chalk or whatever so when you take the suit off you know how much to stretch the fabric.

Now hand sew all those muscles onto your base suit following your guidelines. You MUST hand sew it. This allows for stretch. Technically you could probably stretch stitch on patches of fabric to your suit before and then cut a hole in the base suit below the patch and stuff your muscle in after… but I honestly don’t get perfect fits that way so yah. 

You should be done now, but try it on with clothing on top to make sure you’ve got the shape you want. If you don’t, take muscles off and move em or add more!

REMEMBER!!! If you’re making your actual cosplay at the same time, or buying it, or anything. MAKE SURE IT’LL FIT UR NEW BOD. This was the crappiest part of the costume making process for me, because I needed to always put on my new muscles in order to pattern and fit. Your measurements totally change depending on what padding you do so you gotta be careful you don’t bust out of your costume like the animal you are

EASY AS 1, 2, 3…

Tame and caged without my muscles

CAPTAIN HUSKY

RAW AND UNLEASHEDDD THUNDER

I think that’s it, I don’t know what else I could say.

Hope that helped Jelly!!!!! <3333