My Destiny Hunter Build (with Undersuit)

[TWanderer]

Hey everyone! Before I get started with the info, I want to give a little back story for myself, since I'm a noob and all!

My name is Taran Johnson and I have always loved the Halo games Bungie has developed. For years I have wanted to make my own suit of spartan armor and in the process of looking up other people's projects and how these suits of armor are made, I stumbled upon this amazing community. I feel bad because I have browsed this forum many a time looking at all of the elite showcases as well as many other projects people in the 405th have been working on, but I never actually took the step at becoming a member myself. I think part of it was because how can I become a member of a prop building community if I'm not building anything? I really wanted to start my own project, but I just didn't have the time or money.

BUT!!! Guess what!?!? Now I do!

After the trailers and footage came out for Bungie's new big game, Destiny, I had to set aside my dreams for a spartan suit and start working on a Hunter get-up. It is such a cool concept! I decided to use EVA foam for my armor and because there isn't any super definitive databases of things like pepakura files, I decided I was going to do the entire thing freehand using only reference pictures for help.

Like I said earlier, I feel bad because I didn't become part of this community sooner and share the adventure I've been on from the beginning. I finally registered though, and I am ready to share ideas with fellow builders, sewers, and more.

Welcome to my adventure to become legend. I am venturing into territory I have never been in before and I still have lots to learn, but I hope you all can enjoy it as much as I have.

 

[TWanderer]

So where do I start... everything is a work in progress still... Well, I suppose I'll start with the undersuit! So, I'm no master of sewing and because the Hunter requires so much fabric, I knew I was going to have to enlist the help of my wonderful mom. So, I set off to work making patterns and doing all of the creative work and cutting out the fabric pieces. I am having my mom help by sewing everything together to make a good looking final piece. The base layer of the suit is a light cotton jacket and a pair of utility pants. As far as all of the panels go, I am using cotton canvas to try and replicate the heavy duty fabrics the guardians would be wearing in the Wild.



Here are all of the pieces for the jacket cut out and sort-of laid out how they are all going to go once they are sewed onto the jacket.



Here is the front of the jacket. I still have to finish the arms, shoulders, and abdominal/lower back pieces.



This is the back so far. Still sad to think that most of the stuff I'm doing on the undersuit are going to be covered up anyway... Oh well! I have to go the extra mile, even if no one will see it!

The pants are about 90% done. There are just a few touch of spots to do with sewing and then for both the pants and the jacket I am putting in some decorative rivets/studs to go the extra mile. Here are the front and back views of the pants:





So that's what it looks like so far. I really think it is coming together well and it looks really good in person with the different layers and textures of the material. I'll have to start using my good camera to take pictures instead of using my phone, haha.

I promise I'll only give you one more picture and then I'll stop. This post is already pretty long I feel like. Anyways, I feel like if I'm showing the whole base layer of the suit, I might as well show these awesome boots I found!



Well, until later then. Next time I'll show off what I have of my armor so far. It's looking sweet! stay tuned!

 

[Khol]

Undersuit looking very nice!
So following this

--Khol--

In progress:
Inferno armor ME3
N7 helmet cardboard

 

[TWanderer]

I've got some really cool stuff that I'm gonna post soon! I won't disappoint, I promise! Glad you like it so far!

 

[Frozensnot]

Your making some good progress, keep us posted. After my current build, I'm definitely doing a Destiny build.

See you starside.

 

[TWanderer]

**Update time**

So I live in Seaside, Oregon. What happens like clockwork the day after labor day? The storms start a comin'! When you're working on a project that requires a lot of painting and curing and so on, having nothing but rain and wind all of the time is a pain in the butt. So when a sunny day comes along, it's full steam ahead in a mad dash to get as much done as possible while the mother nature held back her reins. So a day or so ago was one of those days and I was able to get my armor plasti dipped. But then the rain and wind are back, so right now I can't do any more work until it lets up again.

So that means it's time to show what I have! With only photos to use as reference, I did my best to get game-accurate armor, but at the same time with Bungie's not-so-formal blessing, saying "become legend" and "be the character you want to be", I didn't hesitate in throwing in my own little twists here and there.

So, up first is the shoulder plate. There are some brief glimpses of a shoulder guard that looks similar to this, but like I said, I took a little creative liberty and I think it looks pretty good:


This shoulder plate is for my left shoulder.

Now the trickiest part of this suit, besides the helmet was probably going to be the chest plate. I found out very quickly as I started building all of this that you have to really make it look good. With spartan armor, there is a lot of different pieces to look at so if there are flaws or details that are lacking, they are less noticeable when you put the whole thing together. With the Hunter you only have a few armor pieces and they stick out like a sore thumb from the fabric of the outfit. My early design looked like this:


I kept the design nice and simple, but the more I looked at it, the more it seemed to taunt me with it's simplicity. Sure I kit bashed a little and put in some valves and other stuff that frankly I don't know what it all does, but there needed to be more. So I looked back at my reference pics and decided to base my design off of this:


Annnndddd.... after plasti dipping, I ended up with this:


I'm pretty pleased and still gawking at the fact that this is my first armor project ever. Yeah, I did what every kid like me did when I was little and cut up cardboard into cheesy swords, shields, and armor, but other than that, I don't have a lot of experience with fabrication. I still get that feeling of a kid on christmas eve when I look at my armor. I'm so excited that it's turning out as well as it is.

Anyways... side tangent to the side, I decided that as hard as I worked on this baby, I don't want it coming off or breaking anytime soon while I wear it, so I bought 2" buckles to fasten the sides of the armor:


When these things are clipped, the armor hugs my body like a custom fit glove and it's not going anywhere! Muahahaha >

The little canister things on the sides of the chest plate I made out of a handful of mini m&m canisters. They aren't super flashy, but they sure do the trick:


The helmet the hunter wears has a respirator and a hose, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly where that hose would go. The hardest thing about the hunter's armor is that you can't see anything under that darn (not really) cape. Some concept art and screenshots show the oxygen tank mounted on their chest, but I had two problems with this. 1) I already have the front side of the armor done and it looks awesome. 2) Why on earth would you want to put your air supply on your chest where it would be in direct line of fire from your enemy? haha...

So, I searched and searched some more and after watching Destiny's Law of the Jungle Trailer is super slow-mo on 1080pi (awesome trailer btw), I saw the hunter's oxygen tank mounted on the back of his armor when his cape flipped up for a second. Yes!!! This will work! And so I slapped together a pvc pipe of some kind, a random modded medicine canister lid, and some foam, and created this:


For the hose I got some black nylon rope. It still gives the look of a braided metal hose, but it's wayyyy lighter and wayyyy more flexible

Well it's getting late and this post is getting long, so I'll just have to save my helmet until next time I sit down to write. I hope I'm not too boring or anything! Let me know and please let me know what you think on my project so far! I'd love hear from you all. Thanks again Khol for the compliment! Your armor looks so good already!

 

[Motion26]

Looking good! I was considering doing a titan build haha

 

[TWanderer]

@Motion26 That would be really cool! I haven't seen anyone anywhere take on a titan build yet. One or two warlocks and a bunch of hunters is all I've seen.

 

[BHF Dark Phoenx]

really good job so far man. keep it up i cant wait to see it finished

 

[TWanderer]

Wow the weather is bad today... sustained winds up to 60mph with gusts supposed to be getting up to 80mph. Well, it looks like I'm not painting anymore today! Maybe I'll keep working on Red Death. That gun is super awesome. For those that haven't seen it, this is red death:


But for now, I shall keep that side project under wraps. For now I will talk about what I didn't get to last night - my helmet. I am sort of basing my design off of the helmet on this guy, but again, I've been adding in my own little twists to make it unique to me.


The helmet has been tough. Doing everything without patterns is a pain and doing measurements on your own body accurately is close to impossible it seems. But, I fought through it and I have been making it work. Here is an early picture of the helmet. I had to do a lot of test fitting to make sure it was going together correctly.


I felt that the visor was going to be one of the most important pieces of the helmet so I focused the building process around it and built outwards from there. For the visor, I found a replacement lens for a pair of snow goggles that someone was selling on ebay for like 99 cents. What a deal! It just came as the lens, so I had to find a way to build a frame for it that could be integrated into the helmet. Also I'm still going back and forth on whether or not the lens is reflective enough... at a distance it reflects light well, but up close and personal you can totally see my eyes and such through the lens. Any suggestions??? I saw some stuff in a spray can on amazon that gives a mirrored finish to transparent glass-style pieces, but I don't know... The vent piece on the respirator I made using some scraps from a screen door repair kit.

I worked on it some more and added the filter and fitting for the air hose. I also changed the little crest piece on the forehead. I wasn't liking how small and low profile the little triangle was, so I took it off and beefed it up a little. For the filter I found an interesting looking pvc pipe fitting and put some more scrap screen stuff and other pieces of foam to make it look like a neat sci-fi looking air filter. I used a pvc plug to create the fitting for the air hose. The plug is only pressure fit, that way it can be easily plugged in and removed. Eventually the hose will be permanently mounted inside it so having a "quick release" option will allow me to be able to quickly take off the helmet and carry it around without getting tangled up with the hose. But anyways, enough rambling... here are the pics:



I'm really liking how the proportions turned out. I don't think it makes me look like I have a giant head, and when I add the chest plate, everything seems to be in scale with one another:


Once I got the helmet plasti dipped, I felt like the whole concept was really starting to come together.



Other than the paint scheme, I have been going back and forth on whether or not I want to add the range finder that is mounted on the visor. I feel like it would be more accurate to the helmet in the game, but at the same time without the actual technology of a range finder, it's just going to be a big chunk of foam that cuts off a large chunk of my vision I feel like... What do you guys think???

 

[U513]

This is looking great! loving the M&M canisters

 

[mkshane81]

Top notch work there, all from scratch!! I'm really liking this.

-Matt

 

[Darth Collison]

That's looking pretty dope so far! Lol nice Anakin Boots

 

[drack]

Looking great

 

[reiseman]

Really cool build. And I have to agree, excellent job on the sizing. It all looks correct together. M&M cannisters... I need to start saving odd things to use for detail. Genius... Subbd.

 

[TWanderer]

Hey everyone! Thanks for all of the great comments.

@reiseman, I make sure to save all sorts of odds and ends to make details with. I have a cap to a highlighter and a cut up washer foot-peg that make up the little valve on the chest plate. The little little tri-point thingy on the chest plate is actually a forward/reverse knob thing that broke off of a socket wrench that I used to have. Then I have those little caps that you put over screws to give a finished look to stuff and more. I have a whole stash of neat little gadgets and I always save scraps of everything I cut/use. You never know what might make the perfect little addition!

@drack, thanks for the kind words!

@Dark Collison, haha yeah, I'm caught. The Anakin boots are perfect though!

@mkshane81, thanks for the ecouragement! Glad you stumbled upon my thread! More to come soon! I've been busy!

@U513, I love the m&m canisters too! I can't believe I thought of it! I spent forever trying to figure out what I would use!

Well, everyone, thanks again! It's nice to know that people are enjoying my work so far. I am having a blast building my first high-quality costume. I wish I had more to share right now, but the weather isn't being nice right now... >.> I have to wait for it to get nice again before I can resume painting my armor. Next time I post, I might show you my Red Death that I've been working on. Maybe if this weather doesn't get better right away, I'll start working on my cape. The fabric has been sitting on my bench for a while now. Idk... What do you guys think I should work on? What do you want to see next?

Until next time... TWanderer out!