One of the first Hot Toys Iron Man Mark VII suit variants back in 2013 was the Midas suit, the Mark XXI. Hot Toys has just released the third iteration - this time around with diecast elements and a rich golden paint application that is really striking.
This year we moved into a new home and I had the opportunity to extend the apartment by a hobby room in the basement. This lead to the project idea that has been realized some weeks ago: the Dark Star theater, basically and integrated experience for watching movies and enjoying the collection.
Projector: Sony VPL-VW570ES (VW695ES) 4K projector
Speaker: 7.2 system with
Sonance R1 reference line for front & side surround (in wall)
Piega AP 1.2 for back surround,
2 x Paradigm Defiance V12 subwoofer
Receiver: Marantz SR-7013 9.2
Screen: Screen Innovation Zero Edge Pro Slate 1.2, 133" , Cinemascope 21:9
Lighting
RGB led bars around the side and front covers, fully integrated and addressable with C4
Starceiling: Infinity star ceiling panels 6 x 1m2 , MiniLED800 light source DMX adressable of Starscape UK
DALI Spots for collection and room integrated with C4
Home automation with Control 4 EA5 Controller, Neeo remote, Wall panel
Cabinets: Custom Moducases DF 60 with 70cm height, DF150 and DF130 with 70cm height, half shelves with acrylic glass, custom top board
Room heating: Carpet floor on top of concrete helps, to heat up room i have a black Infrared heating panel
Some interesting side notes:
project duration was affected by corona, but here some timeframes:
Planning & Concept: 1.5 months of me doing sketches and having them refined with the home theater builder
Preparation of construction (prepping woods & materials): 2 weeks
interior room work to transform the conrete room into a home theater: 6 days
Waiting time for components: 2 months in some areas due to the pandemic
Programming C4 and integration of lighting & devices: 2 days
Setting up cabinets: 14 hours with a 30mins break
Enjoying the room: Forever. 😊
Atmos: We thought about this but with this room height we're unsure if it would pay off - maybe an extra later on
Room prep during basement construction: cable trenches / channels were integrated in the construction phase into the concrete to route cables from central Network access all around the room - allowing to hide any cables and have direct access where required. On all room corners power outlets were added to have short distances to enable lighting and to be flexible.
Budget: you can compare it to a premium BMW / Audi car, since i'm highly unskilled i could not do carpenter work by myself and had to get professional services in which is def. not cheap here in Switzerland. So I rather focused my time in actually getting money in on my real job to get this financed.
Control4: We integrated 2 lighting circuits - DMX & DALI with special drivers that are fully integrated now into the EA5 controller, pretty cool and also my C4 specialist learned quite a bit on this
StarCeiling: don't underestimate the RGB effect on stars...it might look cheesy on photos, but in reality with all the other ambient lights it's amazing to have red & purple stars. 😊
To end the post I'd like to some images of the progress coming from an empty basement concrete:
After 3 years Hot Toys finally released the Hulkbuster accessories set. Including the amazing Jackhammer arm that we all were looking forward for and a rather unimpressive Veronica capsule. The items are fine, but feel overpriced kind of - since in the end you just have the feeling to receive some huge chunks of plastic , even though nicely presented in the cool box. Overall kind of a mixed bag.
The main problem I had was the replacement procedure, in specific the removal of the original Hulkbuster arm - it took me over 1.5 hours inflicting also collateral damage on some parts, luckily nothing I could not fix with some glue. For some reason one of the notches that you need to lift with a special tool got totally stuck and I had to get in with a screwdriver to loosen it up and then pulling with a lot of force at the shoulder joint. Luckily the new arm can be easily setup and taken off.
Another challenge I observed with switching out the lower arm - e.g. changing from the jackhammer fist to the interlocking lower arm. Here out of the box the slot in the ratchet joint for a connecting cylinder was misaligned - you need to re-align first by rotating the ratchet with the cylinder. Find out about this my video review in detail (info: in process to render - checkout later today).
📦 Buy your Hulkbuster accessories set at Sideshow:
