Huh, yes, there is a smooth version. At least it wasn't out when I started.... That would be really disheartening.
It's now officially too cold to work in my garage, have to suspend operations here and move to my dad's shop for any messy work.
Luckily, I got the shoulders far enough along to do some illustration board overlay detailing.
The outer rim is 3/8" wide strips, the inner ring is 3/16" wide strips. They're just glued on with CA glue (superglue). A little spot putty and primer and this should look pretty good.
*Edit*
If anyone wants them, Here's the ODST reference pictures that Doom posted in the molded armor reference section. I've cleaned up the backgrounds and adjusted the contrast to be more visible and printable.
I don't have any more pictures of it yet. I've been waiting to start a thread for it until I was ready to concentrate on it as my primary project. I had to build the helm as soon as you released it, though, since I like the Halo 1 mk5 so much.
In other news, I got to town today, and got most of the off-the-shelf parts for my costume. Boots, gloves, balaclava, and elbow pads. Also, I got fabric and snaps to make the pouches and kidney/hip pads for the belt. All that I still need to obtain is the visor and BDUs
The boots are Wellco Eurolite, 50USD at Dunham's Sports. Same place for the elbow pads, which are actually rollerblading kneepads for a litle kid. The Balaclava is a Seirus Thermax Headliner from Scheel's Sports. The gloves also came from Scheel's, the only brand tag is Legacy Leathers Deer Path. They came out of a bargain bin and cost all of $0.01 yeah, one cent for nice leather and spandex gloves.
I used a cutting wheel in my dremel to cut out the inset areas, and made some wood depth spacers.
I glued the spacers on with tiny little drops of hotglue. (Really little drops, you don't want them to tear up the bondo.) And, a bit of bondo-glass to hold the pieces in place.
Doesn't look too bad.
Just need to get the other side and the two sloped indents cut out and glued in place, then it's just a little bondo work and some overlay details.
Finally done with the nerve-wracking cutting-into portion of detailing the torso.
And now, better close-ups of how the inset spacers go on, and how the sloped indents work.
Followed by more bondo-glass putty.
All the cutting and reattaching done for the torso.
And yet more terrifying cutting into of nearly finished pieces.
Now I need to get about two more of these cutters, this one is pretty worn out after cutting through bondo, resined paper, and hard bondo-glass.
*EDIT*
Here's yesterday's progress, not a lot to show in pictures, it was mostly small stuff that doesn't stand out, like cleaning up edges and filling low spots. I did get a bunch of the detailing done on the chest, and I finished dremeling the grooves into the helm.
I don't know if you have anwered this already, but are you going to make all of the cheek details and other details on the helmet that are actually indented into the helmet?
I sorta went over that in the original post, but I've changed what I was going to do since then. I'm going with the dremel'd grooves around the back of the head, the ears, and the cheeks, and I'm cutting out and insetting the sides of the dome.
I was playing blacksmith most of today helping my dad build a sculpture, so all I got done on the armor was cutting out the one side of the helm and a little cleanup on the grooving.
It's nice to be able to pay shop rent by playing in a metal shop.
*EDIT*
Since the indents were cut out of the dome, I had to cut a short section out of them so they'd fit.
More spacers and hotglue
The side indents fixed in place with bondo-glass.
First coat of filler primer to show the spots that still need work.
Damn, dude... I'm just loving the detail work you've done on both the helmet and chest armour! I've employed some of the same technique on my Mk VI helmet; cutting out and recessing those areas (primarily the top vents, top nose piece and the smalle recessed squares on the rear "band" of the helmet). It definately adds a nice depth/three-dimensionality to the details.