Being inspired by you guys in the 405th builds and IndyMogul I've always wanted to build my own suit from Halo, after purchasing a 3D printer some years ago and finding Moesizzlac files for a complete ODST I couldn't quite possibly say no. And so with some push from my brother I started my journey with little experience besides those videos, these build logs, and some tinkering with a foam build back in the day (I aspire to make an Artorias build from Dark Souls.)
This build has been in the works for about 3 years off and on, much improvement and learning as I went l, so bare with me.
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All parts where printed whole on the CR 10 Max, amazing printing the shins in one go, quality of the prints where not the greatest, proved to be challenging but I can't resist doing things the easy way and it taught me a lot. Moesizzlac's files are the bulk but I didn't care for the helmet or shoulders on file (sorry Moe) and found a more mobile looking file for the shoulds by HeliumSpoon and Jeffrey for the helmet.
This is just me soaking it all up, light sanding and used this wood filler to attempt to smooth everything more, bondo works as well but I worried about the process of bondo and wood filler was handy for around the house too.
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Been thinking about using it as mud, dries and kinda looks like it, not sure.
Anyways after sanding my brains out for like 2 weeks and using various grits of sandpaper and sanders I applied filler primer and then proceeded to spend a day in my bathroom tub.
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I made sure to clean it before my wife beat me, and yes I worried about dropping stuff into the litter box, I live dangerously. Of course if the piece wasn't as smooth as I wanted I hit it again with sand paper and then primer filler. That or I was too tired and called it good enough.
I ah, didn't really think about how I was gonna paint everything, and don't worry I have a nice respirator on whenever I sanded or painted and made sure fans and doors where open. Had some twine, and a ladder with some handy boxes around, did what I could with what I got.
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Here is a taste of the madness, random hook on the peg board and a ladder on the other side with weights made a spray booth, cars are further back then it seems to keep over spray away. Helmet is on a 2 liter bottle with a stick inside it attached to a water bottle base, everything gets 3 filler primer coats, 3 silver coats, and uh wasn't sure what I wanted my final coat to be.
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I don't remember who posted the thread, or who made the comment, but I was interested in the color and wanted to give it a try, so the finale coats were 3 passes of this smoke gray. Funny enough it looks a lot like the filler primer and I couldn't tell at first if I was using the right can.
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Before applying the coats of smoke gray all the corners or random high spots were rubbed with Vaseline while everything was silver, after the 3rd pass of the finale cost and letting it dry a little I wiped the Vaseline off for some nice paint chipping and wear.
My lovely wife used her cricut to make me the decals, the barcode on the blood symbol didn't quite take so I improvised and just used it as a stencile. My gamertag for my entire Xbox career and Halo CE online career has been Syon (Syon8225 on Xbox) and used that as my name. Did a little weathering later with black paint and wore the suit for the first time for Halloween last year.
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I couldn't rig the thighs to the suit because I ran out of materials to strap it together, the visor didn't fit but thats a me problem that we shall now dive into, thanks JohnsonArmsProps on Etsy for working with me and making the visor, it's beautiful.
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So Jeffrey's file wanted you to vacume form the visor with his provided buck, I already went ahead and bought the visor and told myself it was a future me problem. Future me arrived and tossed some ideas around, turns out expanding foam solved my issues, spraying it into the crevices and voids, allowing it to dry then carve it even to the curve and lips of the helmet. Velcro holds the visor to the helmet nicely.
Some may also believe the helmet is too big given the most earliest picture of it on me, I worried about space for fans and padding but I think it works, unless my excitement blinds me from the truth.
I also don't have a ODST rucksack and I fear for purchasing one so soon given the cost and my wife frightens me, (she's loving and understanding) so I stumbled upon an interesting backpack from Temu, it seems it would work and despite my impressions of sites like Temu I purchased it. It was very flat, so I wanted to make it not flat and light so again I recycled.
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I might gets some patches and pins later for the outside of the bag, or eventually just buy the ODST rucksack, but this backpack also had 2 straps that go across my body, and a blessing they were. I was able to slide my pieces, (some with alight modifications) into those straps and have them hold nicely. I also later purchased a black airsoft molle vest for more layers and attach my parts too, though I later found out how some in the community looked down on such things, oh well.
So near the end of painting, sanding, sanding, and sanding I heard rumors of an interesting combination to make my smoothing 3d prints easier, so I attempted it. I've heard in the past about people using large amounts of resin to fill in FDM gaps, but again large amounts of resin, and another idea of super glue and baking soda, though super glue drys quick. However I heard about mixing 3D UV Curing resin with 1:2 or so cornstarch.
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This is the resin I used, not as smelly as I thought it would be, I bought some cornstarch and mixed about the 1:2 ratio, added some more to make it thicker like a smoothie and used a painting sponge and small brush to paint it on.
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Using my handy black light flash light to cure the costs in between, used a small brush and tooth picks for small details, didn't mind if it pooled too much in a spot as I painted it with dirt or weathering later. Everything sanded beautifully and smooth so much faster, used barely any resin, this is definitely the way and I wished I started like this, took maybe an hour to finish several pieces. I used a container with a black light led strip to help cure things before sanding as I used about 3 or so layers of the mix.
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I bought the Halo Ma40 nerf gun when I started the process of making everything, I took it completely apart and masked off areas I didn't want plastic or paint on and sanded everything, was hoping to have it still functional to play with at home (working on making an orange tip to place over the Muzzle). Flat black spray paint, used mod podge over the flashlight to make it seem like it has a lense and painted the rivets metallic silver, wanted the gun to also kinda look like the one from ODST so I grabbed a gray paint and started painting away, didn't realize it's pretty close to the same color as the suit. Also went about to adding some mud coloring to everything in the cracks and faces of the armor, doesn't seem very obvious but they are sudden enough to work for now. After having my wife help me strap everything together, test fits, problem solving, I begged her to go with me to take pictures.
The results are amazing despite how goofy I felt moving around and wearing it, thanks for reading and enjoy the pics, thanks to all those years of builds and videos you've guys have posted and I only hope to do better and learn more.
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I wanted to do the Crysis pose.
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This one is by far my favorite along with the next one.
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