Sarlume's Gruntpocolypse: A double grunt build

sarlume · Oct 6, 2013

Hello everyone!

Okie doke...after my Spartan build began to take shape, I had a couple kids give me the idea to take up more of my free time (and sleep time, and food time...) by building my son and my nephew grunts to go with her. Hopefully by 'Halo'ween night.

I started by stealing some newsprint from my mother to begin drawing out templates. (Okay, she said I could use some...)

Began at the chest piece

Then the methane tank

Started to notice that the tank was angled too high when I put them together, but that's easy to fix. First chest piece/methane tank built, details still need to be added.

Alright, I'm looking to make these pretty much at the same time to keep my head straight about how to make the second like I did the first. They will both be Grunt Minors. One will be kamikaze with two plasma grenades, the other will hold a plasma pistol. It would have been a fuel rod cannon, but that's really pushing it. -_-;

Here are my weapons...
Plasma Pistol, made from EVA and craft foam. Kinda messy, but not terrible for my first weapon. It's recognizable. The middle bit is glow in the dark paint, and I will be inserting a glow bracelet at the front for the big night. ^^

What I'll be using for the grenades (I hope)

They are submersible lights for flower vases, but they are about half the size too small. I thought I could try putting them into a styrofoam ball, but then I'd have issues with decorating it properly. I don't know. Water balloons? Heh...

My other option is this guy, spray painted with some clear glow in the dark.

I have two of these; they are wooden furniture feet that I hand painted on a lazy night.

Alrighty...
The head is intimidating me, so on to the torso. Grunts are shaped oddly. I wanted to make some kind of torso to anchor the armor to, so I started sketching out the rib area and went from there. After adding in the ribs, the fun part of adding an organic texture began. I haven't tried to carve the EVA foam and I'm admittedly scared to try, so I tried using hot glue as a texturizer. Smeared some with the nozzle, some I ran a bit of card stock over to try and take out any evenness.

Here is grunt #1 so far. Hoping I fixed the angle of the tank to the chest. I still have parts to add to it, so it looks sharper than it will in the end.

Grunt #2 isn't far behind. Armor is made, torso is textured and ready to be added to the armor. I'm attaching the torso to the front of the armor so that it "hinges" over his head and can be buckled comfortably. I also intend to try and make it feasible to incorporate the methane tank into a sort of 'candy reservoir', so they won't have to deal with bags on those arms. I tend to think grunts love candy and cookies...I don't know why.

I will get a pic of my son wearing his tomorrow and update with it tomorrow, but it's rather late so I should get a little sleep now. ^^; See ya later!

Evilmailman · Oct 6, 2013

I can't wait to see what this looks like finished. Keep up the good work!

edwardjlw · Oct 6, 2013

Nice to see some more pictures of this costume after hearing all about it! And you're building TWO? Wow, have fun finishing these before Halloween

in all seriousness though it looks great so far and the hot glue skin technique works really nicely. Can't wait to see more!

sarlume · Oct 6, 2013

Evilmailman said:
I can't wait to see what this looks like finished. Keep up the good work!

Thanks! ^_^

edwardjlw said:
Nice to see some more pictures of this costume after hearing all about it! And you're building TWO? Wow, have fun finishing these before Halloween in all seriousness though it looks great so far and the hot glue skin technique works really nicely. Can't wait to see more!

Heh heh...^^; Not sure I will, but I can try. I'm glad the hot glue worked; used up a whole package to get them to this point. lol

As promised...

A couple photos of my son wearing the costume so far.

And here's my nephew in his:

I can see now that the angle of my nephew's suit is too high still, so I'll have to tweak that...

Pay no attention to how bad the mask looks; it is a work in progress. Found a goblin mask that has potential and I'm modifying it to make the little guy. Here is where it sits now...

I have the second coming in the next few days, so I'll hopefully have some pretty decent progress done by then.

Until next time! ^^

Apothacary · Oct 6, 2013

OMG this is awesome, absolutely genius work. Love the texture idea with the hot glue!

Keep it up!

BHF Dark Phoenx · Oct 6, 2013

this whole build is awesome hun keep it up, btw i would love to see a post about the process you took to make your plasmas

CLOTHAR · Oct 6, 2013

Great project! I like how you did the hot glue skin texture. Keep at it.

Chainsaw ninja · Oct 6, 2013

Smart idea with the masks I can't wait to see that done as well as the armor. I admire you for being able to to all this, and I think your a great mother for doing this!

Bonepunk · Oct 7, 2013

Loks very good.

Halex · Oct 7, 2013

This is awesome, I love it!

sarlume · Oct 25, 2013

Apothacary said:
OMG this is awesome, absolutely genius work. Love the texture idea with the hot glue!

Keep it up!

Thanks! The glue turned out to look quite awesome once I added paint, but boy did it use a lot of sticks!

BHF Dark Phoenx said:
this whole build is awesome hun keep it up, btw i would love to see a post about the process you took to make your plasmas

Cool! The pistol, or the grenade? I'll post a bit of info into both just in case. ^^ Sadly, I didn't think to take pics as I was making the pistol. sad face.

CLOTHAR said:
Great project! I like how you did the hot glue skin texture. Keep at it.

Thanks!

Chainsaw ninja said:
Smart idea with the masks I can't wait to see that done as well as the armor. I admire you for being able to to all this, and I think your a great mother for doing this!

Aww, thank you! I've been putting sleep off to be sure they have these things done by Halloween. I hate to rush, but they are already so excited.

-Bonepunk- said:
Loks very good.

Halex said:
This is awesome, I love it!

Thanks, guys!

Update!

Being in a rush stinks. The costumes are going well, but details take so loooong! Still, we have taken it out a couple times and so far, so good. On with the progress shots!

The boots for my evil little alien before adding texture...they are interesting in that they cause him to walk just like a grunt! Awesome.

Adding details to the tank. Due to timing constraints, the more detailed...er...details will be added a little later.

Plasti-dipped with the paint-able black plasti-dip, then the fun part! I used basic royal gold acrylic paint as the orange because he liked the way it looked without the orange added better (it was shinier...). The skin is a muddy mix of brown and blue, with just a tiiiny bit of silver.

Please pay no attention to the crazy mess in my work room; it is the first order of business after Halloween. ^^;

I didn't like the color of the mask, so I dabbed brown paint onto it for a more 'grunty' skin tone. The mask being latex, I found that the foam needed to be adhered with a more suitable adhesive, so I used rubber cement. Unable to hold the pieces long enough for it to set, I used hot glue also. Risky, but it worked.

Arms were the last to be made, and it was on the night before we were going to go to the costume contest at the zoo. Didn't sleep that night, but it was worth it to see that kid have so much fun getting recognized by every other person that walked by. Plus, he ended up getting second in the costume contest. We lost to a giant camera made from cardboard. It was really well made though, and I knew first place was gone as soon as I saw it. ^^;

I will be attending to the poor underclothes, his exposed hair, and possibly make better arms (they called him a 'Halo Mutant Crab' in the contest), following that, I will be adding details. The second grunt needs his arms and legs first, though. Six more days? I've got this!

So, a couple details about the plasma stuff. The pistol was made with EVA and craft foam on a whim. You know, cause I had the time...^^; I started the whole thing by tracing down the shape directly from the screen after finding a suitable reference photo. Details, details, details...I was a bit sore in the shoulders afterward.
Cleaned it up a little and added little things I couldn't make out with the paper over it, then I had a reference template.

I cut out two of them from the EVA foam, glued em together, then began trimming and added details with the craft foam. Thank goodness I had some 5mm because it would have been much tougher without it. I painted it using acrylics, adding a little metallic paint to all of the paint to keep it from being flat.

The glowing grenades that are too small (but will likely be used anyway) were found in the flower craft section at my local Wal-mart.

They have more than one color setting, so they need to be cycled to the right color every time they get shut off, but they have a solid blue setting, and a blue setting with a speck of green. How cool is that? Plus they're submersible...I could put them in water balloons and they'd even explode on impact! Really though, they'll probably be put inside of foam balls instead. Halloween night is usually cold. No water, thanks.

The wooden one was a decorative leg for a couch. I painted it with acrylics (again), using metallic paint on all of it, glow in the dark for the glowing details. The spray gives it a cloudy, dusty appearance without much light, so I may be re-painting it.