Tell Me Boys And Girls... How Will You Leave?

We go feet first, sir!

Hey guys. I'm kinda new here, just been sneaking my way in after being a lurker for a while. This is my first thread. I'm making it more to keep myself motivated than anything else, because I want to keep going when I see pix of what I have done. But I hope you guys enjoy the pix that I do put up. Comments are surely welcome. I will warn in advance that progress on this is definitely going to be very slow due to some personal stuff that's been goin on and it's about to be summer time, which means hangin at the beach with friends. Anyways, progress will come as it does. Pix!







And with the helmet and foam flak vest on...







My vacuform table is coming along nicely. Since I'm trying to get my cousin into this stuff too, I'm planning on making the body plates into molds and vacuforming all the pieces. This will also allow for interchangable parts for when they break. I HATE making individual pieces. I also plan to remake my flak vest. The shoulders feel like they should, but for soft armor it shouldn't be as stiff as it is in my opinion. I can barely cross my arms and when I do it bends the foam pretty bad, and that's without the chest plate on. That's bad in my book. Also, I'm trying to go for the live action look, and looking through my screenies they have foam like shoulders and padded fabric bodies, which is what I was thinking of doing anyways, so that's my next step.

As a final note (I know, too much typing and a lot of similar pix) I owe a lot of thanks to Hugh. His files are fantastic and I will be using them for this build. The helmet and vest are both from his files, and I have the chest assets printed and ready to go now.

Awesome, another ODST! Your helmet looks great. I've seen a lot of people go with the foam chest core, and apparently they're comfy (I made it out of pep, so I wouldn't know) It's good you found Hugh's files too, his are defiantly the best.

Good luck, can't wait to see more.

Small necro update. Not much progress, but I started bondo'ing the helmet, pepped the chest and one shoulder and have the other shoulder about halfway done. Progress has been slow because like I said, I've been busy, but I'm back for about a week now so hopefully I can finish the other shoulder and the rest of the chest components before I leave again.





I have one question for anybody who's done/is working on an ODST. How have you been attaching your shoulders to make them sit right? I made Hugh's shoulder base out of foam and it doesn't sit right on my arm (it severely limits my motion and slides down my arm) and doesn't seem to fit under the actual shoulder correctly. It's scaled the same as the shoulders. Even if I strapped the shoulder base to my chest core, it still wouldn't solve the mobility issue or help it fit under the actual shoulder any better. So what I'm thinking about is cutting the shoulder in two pieces, hinging them together, connecting the shoulder to the chest core with elastic, and strapping the bottom half to the undersuit so that it stays positioned correctly no matter how I move, while still following my arm instead of just sitting there and not following my motion if I raise my arm, hold a gun, etc. What do you guys think?

wow really clean work trooper
but the best way is the foam method I think.

Nice ODST Helmet!
Will watch silently...

Excellent progress! keep it coming.

Looks good, nice clean pep work. You're helmet looks really good so far

As for your shoulder. My standard ODST shoulder is hinged at the middle, but I used Kirrou's file, so I don't know how Hugh's sits on the shoulder. My shoulder is attached with nylon webbing (and a clip to remove it) between the top of the shoulder and the chest core, and it has an elastic band around the arm to keep it attached to my arm.

Looking good, keep it up!

Here are a couple of images of my core using hugh's shoulder piece. If you look close enough you
can see that I attached them with webbing and quick clips. Works really nice and does not interfer with
movement....





Hope maybe that helps....

Cujo!

Oh wow that looks really good dude. You did an excellent job on the paint, and I like the star in the back. Makes it special . But yeah that's what I was thinking of doing, except without the shoulder core. I have troubles with the shoulder core other than attachment. Thanks for putting those pix up tho.

Great start to that! I can't wait to see more!

Dude, be careful where you post. There hasn't been a reply here in 4 months. Unless you're the OP, reviving an old thread is frowned on.

Necro post level > 9000!!! :devil

I can't believe it's been more than 3 years since I posted last. Unbelievable. Shame on me. Well anyways, I can explain! I've been a busy bee, just not in the armor department. I've been going to school, working at Starbucks, getting my own business off the ground, aaaaand, I took this...





Aaaand made it into this...





And cuz I just love this picture so much



Everything done at home. Bodywork, paint, engine rebuild, interior, etc. It's not perfect, this and that, blablabla. The point of this is just to say, I've been busy. I've still been lurking and dying to get back to working on armor. Since my business is doing pretty well now and I got to quit Starbucks, I have more free time. SOO!!!! That means more time for armor and other projects! Without further ado, the past two days I spent some time getting the dome of the ODST helmet reworked. "But wait!" you say. "Pix or it didn't happen!" True enough... Here ya go opcorn


This is before I did much. Just stripped the old bondo spots (cuz lord knows my bondo skills were atrocious when I began 3 years ago), primed it, filed down some sharp curves, and slapped some new bondo on. Last night I got to about here.



As you can see, I was unhappy with the paper grooves and decided to fill in the grooves with bondo and create them myself so they could be a little more rounded. I simply filled them in, and took a need file to em once they had dried. Here's the difference between a paper groove and one made with bondo on the first pass.



MUCH much cleaner as you can tell. I found out the hard way tho that bondo has to be completely dry before you create the grooves or some of the bondo on the sides will peel off. Only one redo needed tho :cool

Today I hate about another hour or two to throw around, so I got a little more work done. Here's where I ended on the bondoing



Then a quick coat of primer to see where I was at......



PRIMER! Y U DO DIS!!! It's such a love hate relationship. :facepalm All the deep sandpaper gouges are intentional, don't throw up or anything. I was just working on the large center piece that goes to the back of the head and the grooves surrounding it, but you can see that there's still some leftover stuff in there that needs to be cleaned/smoothed out. When my sister lets me use her camera again I'll take some better pictures but I get lazy with an iPhone.

Anyways. That's where I'm at. Since I now have this time and the desire I should be around a lot more often. This is still gonna be a slow process, I'm still extremely busy with 3 other car projects for myself going at the same time, but it will be done. If this helmet sits on my shelf for one more year unfinished I'm gonna take it to the woods with a bunch of C4 in it and send it to the sky people and mole people all at once :wacko