Flyerfye's Sean Bradley ODST kit build

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Flyerfye

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Hey there 405th, I've had a loooong hiatus, and a lot of you probably hadn't even joined the forums when I made my last post, but I've loved looking through all the AMAZING work you people have been putting out while I've been gone. But I'm back, even if just for a little bit, to do a... progress thread. Not so exciting, I know.

A bit about this build: I bought a full vacuum formed ODST kit from Mr. Sean Bradley almost two years ago, but due to a job, several moves, tiny apartments with nowhere to work, family obligations, and the unpredictable weather of the pacific northwest, I haven't been able to finish it. Until now! Summer's ending, I'm currenly jobless, and I'm in a race against time and weather to get this all done before a local anime convention (Aki-Con, October 7-9) here in Seattle. So it's time for me to get to it! (It's not going to take me the whole time, but I want to get this done, dang it!) This thread is mainly here so you guys can keep me accountable and help me get this stuff done!

NOTE: I didn't make the originals for these parts! Sean Bradley is responsible for the excellent sculpting and shape of these parts, I'm just putting them together and painting them up. So really, there's not much here you couldn't learn more about by checking out his ODST build. I don't know if he's still making these ODST kits (although I would find it highly likely that he is NOT). I also don't recommend bugging him about it (unless he says otherwise).

The helmet cast (which I also got from Sean Bradley) was finished last summer (so long ago!), and has been sitting on my shelf ever since.
helmetfinish01.jpg


Still looks good! Let's move on.

The rest of the armor has been sitting around in various states of disrepair for a while, and the past week has been spent reinforcing it, sanding out issues, and putting pieces together. Unfortunately, I almost completely forgot to take pictures, so.. oops. Here are a few though.

The armor in it's beginning state, nearly two years ago. Sheesh.
seanbrad-rawarmor.jpg


Assembly. Do you know the secret to assembly? It is clamps. All clamps, all the time.
theclamps.JPG


Here are the forearm pieces and the chest piece all trimmed up with a coat of primer drying.
primer01.JPG

Major respect to Sean Bradley, these pieces start looking amazing once you get the primer on and you can really see all the detail. Almost a shame they're going back to dark grey. You can see (sort of) that I added a plate of sheet styrene on top of the seam. My vacuum formed forearm pieces ended up warping in the heat of the sun (because I left them outside for a week last summer, oops) so they didn't line up. 5 minutes with a box cutter and some screws fixed that right up, and it doesn't look half bad either.

Do you know the secret to spray painting? It's one of these.
sprayattachment.JPG

Prevents grief, makes application easier, and keeps all the junk off your hands. I thought it was gimmicky at first, but it's really a nice thing to have around. And only a few dollars, too.

Now we're getting somewhere! This is nearly the entire suit, all primed and just about ready for some paint. It looks like a lot when you get it all in one place. Sheesh.
parts2.JPG


So I've got everything primed, and next it's time to start painting! I have... 2 small cans of the color I'm using, but I'll probably need more. And after that, it's strapping and undersuit. The undersuit should be more interesting, as I'm hoping to build some foam stuff for it. Tomorrow's Labor day so I'll probably end up being busy, but I should be back to work on this on Tuesday!
 
You're set up/Lay out works nicely. Its well organized and looks like it will be very informative. I look forward to seeing how you do you're strapping, Till then tanks for posting this build.
 
Thanks Thorn, hopefully I'll have something interesting for you all pretty soon.

Anyway, nothing impressive today, just a lot of spray paint and paint fumes (I was wearing a respirator the whole time, but it still got to me a little). I got about 2/3rds of the armor painted up with my nice metallic gunmetal color, but ran out of paint at exactly this point.

2cans.jpg


This is all the hard armor except for the helmet. Apparently the correct number of cans of that paint is 3, and not the 2 I bought. So, since I can't find that paint locally for some reason, I get to wait for shipping. I guess that's okay though, there's still a lot I can work on with these. I threw a few coats of gloss clear onto the pieces I had so far, as last time I had problems with this paint chipping, and although I'm pretty sure the bond is better this time, it doesn't hurt to be sure and throw a few coats on there before proceeding with the details and weathering. And now, off I go to the craft store to pick up some black and mud colors for the weathering, and hopefully a nice dark grey for the camouflage patterns on the forearms and thighs.
 
I decided to condense my work into fewer posts, less work for me than trying to post every day. So this'll be a big one!

The armor was looking way too shiny and new, so I started off by putting a matte clearcoat on it to cut the shine, and then I dirtied up the pieces with a bit of thinned down acrylic paint. And then, drybrushed on some nice silver to the edges.

finishin.jpg

Did the first weathering test on a shin. Came out niiiice.

armordone.jpg

And then... I did the rest of the armor. Nothing to see here, move along.

ghettorack.jpg

Hobby vice + broom handle dowel = the best drying rack I could put together in 2 minutes.

oranges.jpg

Orange peel is the bane of my existence. I think my can of primer got old and did something funky, the paint only started having problems when I got to my second can of primer. No idea how long it's been in my garage now. Oh well, I'll consider this acceptable, you can only see it when you're really close up.

templates.jpg

I cut out some really quick templates for camo patterns on the thighs and forearms. I'll switch them up, use the backs, and combine parts of the positives and negatives to get more patterns with less work.

templated.jpg

Like so. Going really loose and quick with these, as I'm not super concerned with the camo, and it really doesn't have to be perfect.

camo.jpg

And done! These aren't looking bad, now to add some silver to the mounting things on the thighs, and I'll be done!

disaster.jpg

D'oh! My primer DID suck. I pulled the masking tape off from applying the silver, and the clearcoat, paint, and primer came with it. I might just give up and say "battle damage" instead of trying to repaint the whole thing, as there's too much of a height difference between it and the rest. Some sanding, lots more paint, lots more effort... we'll see.

It happened on the other leg too! Then, like an idiot, I tried just spraying the base color over it on one of them to see how it'd go...
makingitworse.jpg

And of course I just made it worse. Maybe I'll just put a pouch over it or something...
 
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