Paul's Build Thread

Contrapaul · Oct 5, 2010

Hi guys! I've been working on armor for Halloween, as I suspect many of you have. I found this site through Instructables, where I was looking for ideas after seeing Volpin Props' N7 armor. I didn't realize how technically simple creating armor would be, and I've been having fun making it. Except for the visor, my helmet is complete, and my thigh armor is about 50% done. Its looking like I'm going to end up using several different methods of creation, at the very least cardboard and pep. Here's a few of the shots I have of my helmet:

Resined, glassed, and primered.

Sanded, filled, and painted. First paint job, done by hand. Ultimately I was not happy with this version.

Re-sanded, re-filled, puttied, cleaned up lines, added some detail. Done with spray paint this time

2 coats of blue, hand painted black details and weathered effect.

As you can see it isn't perfectly smooth, but from 3+ feet away, you can't tell. The only work left to do is fit a visor and detail the edges.

vshore100 · Oct 6, 2010

Your helmet looks great man. Don't worry if it isn't smooth. It looks like battle damage and goes nicely with the weathered look. Good luck with the rest of the suit!

dericrw · Oct 6, 2010

I give it two thumbs up! nice job!

Ehekky · Oct 6, 2010

Looks incredible!

may I ask what you will use for a visor?

Contrapaul · Oct 6, 2010

I'm not entirely sure what I'll use for the visor. I have a clear motorcycle visor that I'd like to use, but I'd need to paint it. I don't have an airbrush, but I may go for Mirrachrome- like Thorrosoli did here: http://www.405th.com/showthread.php/28110-Quick-and-Dirty-Visor-for-an-Ithica-EVA-Helmet

If that doesn't look good, I'll buy a gold one I guess.

This weekend I should make a lot of progress on armor. I'll have access to a ton of really thick cardboard and a lot of free time. I'll keep this updated.

Contrapaul · Oct 10, 2010

Progress 10/10

Progress!

I have a visor arriving Tuesday. Funny thing, searching "motorcycle shield" on ebay gets results twice as cheap as "motorcycle visor". One tool was selling a Yellow Iridium visor, saying it was perfect for Halo. He priced it 5 dollars above other visors just because of the color.

I was all ready to bang out cardboard and pep armor over the weekend, and stumbled onto the new threads about foam armor. I had seen it used over at Volpin Props for Mass Effect, but hadn't put 2 and 2 together. Short story long, 8.97 at Harbor Freight for a 4 pack of mats, and the results have been great so far.

Disclaimer- I am not going for 100% accuracy here. I am building a suit that is recognizably 'Halo', and is closely based on the default armor from Reach.

All pieces done so far. Chest is 45-50% done, arms are 95% done, hands are 100%. Painting later today.

Detail on the forearm and shoulder.

More detail.

The foam has been awesome to work with so far. Much less tedious than pepping has been. It takes longer to bond than cardstock, but duh. I glued the edges, the back, and sometimes a third time on the back, I am very pleased with the strength of the bond. To form more contoured shapes I cut channels out of the back of pieces, lined glue down the channel, and folded together. You have to keep it held at the correct angle, but it will hold the shape.

I need to clean up some of the detail, and add some more as well. Things look good though.

calladar · Oct 10, 2010

i have been watching the foam builds and been totally amazed at the work and results. yours is no different. the only thing i have been trying to wrap my feeble little mind around is the actual smoothing / blending of the joints to get rid of the seam line. either i have missed others when talking about it or i just was not reading hard enough. sooo i am going to ask. how are you going to get rid of the seam lines and smooth out the joints. anxiously waiting to see the finale results. looks really good!

Memnonic · Oct 10, 2010

It's looking great man. Keep up the good work!

I have never tried foam, but looking on your results I should give it a try one day.

Contrapaul · Oct 10, 2010

calladar said:
how are you going to get rid of the seam lines and smooth out the joints. anxiously waiting to see the finale results. looks really good!

I'm not going to smooth out all of them. Rather than take my sweet time to get every detail as smooth as possible, I opted to go with more pieces. For instance, the shoulder pieces are 5 sided, and rounded a bit via internal cutting. If I had wanted an awesomely smooth piece I would have drawn out 1 single piece and worked from that. Hot glue works extremely well holding seams together, on particularly large gaps I will carefully add some and hold together until dry. Adding any sort of filler really wouldn't work with how I'm doing this. I need a little flex in it. I suppose you could resin the foam, then add filler, but I don't want to put in that detail. I'll post more pictures before midnight with progress.

Contrapaul · Oct 11, 2010

Added a lot of detail to the chest piece, painted arm pieces. Watching them dry. Updating soon.

calladar · Oct 11, 2010

ok that is starting to look awesome. ok it was all a long. i want to try the foam way out now. play with that on the next suit.

Contrapaul · Oct 11, 2010

Update pics:

Hands, forearms, and shoulders- painted up to match my helmet scheme.

Drybrushing silver on works extremely well on the foam. It retains enough texture to pull a good bit of paint off, and ends up looking very battle warn, very fast.

I didn't use any fancy paint for this- or the helmet. Walmart flat black primer spray, Krylon Oxford blue satin, and details with "Anita's All Purpose" craft paint.

Custom hands. Didn't see the need for holes.

nirvana katana · Oct 11, 2010

looks good

RoxyRoo · Oct 11, 2010

Wow! This is great. It's so cool to see the results that can be achieved with EVA foam. Nice job. What did you use to cut it? I hear it wears out exacto knives real fast.

Contrapaul · Oct 11, 2010

I have been using flat razor blades, as well as a few thicker Xacto blades. It does wear them down, but I've had success resharpening them.

Contrapaul · Oct 13, 2010

Low quality pic- but visor is installed. Chest piece is also drying with the last coat of blue on. Probably going to drybrush the chest tonight.

Contrapaul · Oct 14, 2010

Progress time! And what says "progress" better than a mirror shot in the unused apartment bathroom? I pulled everything on quickly, only the chestpiece has straps to fasten it appropriately. The shoulder pieces are a little loose and like to spin around, and I haven't finished the helmet padding yet, but that is coming.

As you can see, the visor isn't as reflective or bright as I had hoped. Does anyone know if placing a translucent piece of amber or silver plastic (like say- a plastic plate from party city) would work to brighten it up and reduce out facial visibility?

matth101 · Oct 14, 2010

dude, this build is sick!!!! I bet that foam armor is super comfy to wear huh! Kinda makes me wanna do a Noble 6 build instead of an iron man next. Maybe theres some type of mirror laminate out there that you could put on the outside of the visor, but that would take away from the tint of the visor. Anyways keep it up man! im definitely gonna follow your build!!

JUSTINIAN 117 · Oct 14, 2010

Go to a local car window tinting place, and explane that you need a small piece of window tint for the visor on a helmet. That makes it possible to get whatever color you need, and if you wanted to do a darker tint on the back to keep out the sun you could. That was what I did when I made my Iron Man helmet. They cut off a pretty large piece of silver window tint, and didn't even charge me for it.

matth101 · Oct 14, 2010

are you making the pieces from scratch?

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