Dr. Strange, classic Marvel comics outfit

Back in the very early 1990s, I made a costume for my husband of one of his favorite Marvel superheroes, Dr. Strange. I used some of the fabric scraps from that project to make a miniature version. I set myself a Christmas deadline, so it was sort of a present for him.


I kitbashed a 1:6 Eye of Agamotto. At the hardware store, I found clear domes (that keep cabinet doors from bumping). I painted the back silver and painted the top gold, leaving the open eye shape unpainted and clear. I had to add gold paint to the gold beads to get them to match.


The same gold-and-black fabric trims the edges of the cape and the back of the collar.

Yes, he should have gloves, but all of my attempts to sew 1:6 gloves were disasters.

This looks excellent to me, and I bet someone more familiar with the classic look would have an even greater appreciation of it (my knowledge of superheroes tends to be quite limited, and based mostly on the recent Marvel and DC films). I love the continuity in using scraps from the full scale costume you did before, and it looks like it worked out very well. And all the inventiveness -- kudos to using plastic clear bumper domes -- I once used those to cover some 2D lights on a Barbie car.

I’m very familiar with Dr. Strange’s original comic costume, and I will echo GF’s sentiments. It’s exceptionally well done and accurate. I’m sure your husband loves it!

Looks great , you done a marvellous job of him .

Ah, wow, this is so awesome! You did an amazing job on the sewing! And the way you figured out the eye design with the clear dome is very clever. Love to see every day objects put to use in 1/6. Hope your husband was pleased, that is a beautiful gift.

That’s pretty cool. And what a nice gift for your husband. Excellent work.

Thanks everybody for your kind words. The hubby loved it, and had fun playing with it and posing it.

Sewing the fabric for that collar (and figuring out how to get it to stand up) was just as difficult in 1:6 as it was for the hubby's costume.

GubernatorFan wrote:This looks excellent to me, and I bet someone more familiar with the classic look would have an even greater appreciation of it (my knowledge of superheros tends to be quite limited, and based mostly on the recent Marvel and DC films). I love the continuity in using scraps from the full scale costume you did before, and it looks like it worked out very well. And all the inventiveness -- kudos to using plastic clear bumper domes -- I once used those to cover some 2D lights on a Barbie car.

Creative use of the clear bumper domes to de-Barbify the car headlights!
I tried to match how we made the costume as much as possible. Back then, we found a glass dome (maybe a magnifier of some sort?) in a hobby store, and painted its bottom silver and its top gold (while leaving an eye-shaped portion unpainted and clear). That created a neat effect that I wanted to duplicate. Problem-solving was always part of the fun of costuming, and now of kitbashing and customizing.  

When the Hot Toys figure came out, the hubby said it (and the movie costume) looked great, but he'd rather have the classic comic book look, since that was what he remembered fondly from reading the comics in the 1980s and from collecting back issues from the 1960s and 70s, and since that was what his costume was based on decades before the movies. I could never find a head sculpt that looked right for those comic books during those decades (1960s-80s), but thankfully he was OK with the movie head sculpt. Thanks to the What If TV series (and the comic books before it), we joke that this is a Variant Strange.  

vikkitx wrote:Creative use of the clear bumper domes to de-Barbify the car headlights!
I tried to match how we made the costume as much as possible. Back then, we found a glass dome (maybe a magnifier of some sort?) in a hobby store, and painted its bottom silver and its top gold (while leaving an eye-shaped portion unpainted and clear). That created a neat effect that I wanted to duplicate. Problem-solving was always part of the fun of costuming, and now of kitbashing and customizing.  

When the Hot Toys figure came out, the hubby said it (and the movie costume) looked great, but he'd rather have the classic comic book look, since that was what he remembered fondly from reading the comics in the 1980s and from collecting back issues from the 1960s and 70s, and since that was what his costume was based on decades before the movies. I could never find a head sculpt that looked right for those comic books during those decades (1960s-80s), but thankfully he was OK with the movie head sculpt. Thanks to the What If TV series (and the comic books before it), we joke that this is a Variant Strange.  

Thanks. Sounds like it was quite the costume, judging by the sixth scale version -- which would have been harder to make, I would think. I'm sure Dr Strange could use a variety of outfits, and why not this "oldie but goodie"? Regarding gloves -- can you get another set of hands, preferably not too large, and line them with fabric (simply gluing it on with some sort of glue that would not show through). If the gloves are long, you can just let the fabric continue beyond the edge of the hand, so it would cover the lower arm.

RE: the gloves -- could also be done in two parts if need be, using glove-hands painted the right colour, and then fabric to create the cuffs. Some people don't like doing them in separate sections, but the fabrc could be glued to the edge of the glove-hands so there wouldn't be a gap.

GubernatorFan wrote:Regarding gloves -- can you get another set of hands, preferably not too large, and line them with fabric (simply gluing it on with some sort of glue that would not show through). If the gloves are long, you can just let the fabric continue beyond the edge of the hand, so it would cover the lower arm.

My original plan and first attempt was kind of similar to this idea. I planned to use some old bendy-finger hands so I could pose the fingers in some of the comics' more famous spell casting gestures, like in the picture below.


I traced around the bendy hands (like making hand turkeys back in school), cut out that shape, put the fabric around the bendy hand and then sewed around each finger. The fingers looked like thick sausages to me, even against the figure as a whole. I might go back and try to sew the fingers again, even tighter and closer. That would have put me past my Christmas deadline, plus I had reached the point in every project where I want to scream and never want to deal with it ever again.   I've been working on other projects to give myself some time and distance so I can come back to this one.

These gloves go up to his elbow or past it, and still need the black blobs up near the elbows from the comics (which I'd planned to hand paint onto the fabric after I got a glove that I liked). I used the fabric I bought for the costume - but I didn't use it then either, because I couldn't get any gloves to look right back then either!  

skywalkersaga wrote:RE: the gloves -- could also be done in two parts if need be, using glove-hands painted the right colour, and then fabric to create the cuffs. Some people don't like doing them in separate sections, but the fabrc could be glued to the edge of the glove-hands so there wouldn't be a gap.

That is Plan B, if I can't get fabric gloves to work. I've seen folks use that technique for Phoenix custom figures - which is another project I plan to work on, using fabric scraps from the costume I made for myself at the same time I made the Dr. Strange costume for my husband.

Plan C is PlastiDip, but I'm worried that it might not take paint well (to match the color of the sash and to add the black blobs), or might interact with the figure's plastic, or might flake or rot or otherwise cause problems. I remember folks experimenting with PlastiDip, but I didn't find any reports of how well it lasted long-term.

Very nice, tho when it comes to Marvel I only know a handful of things. Nevertheless it looks great.