Reach ODST Foam Armor for "Gift Of The Ancients" Film

Hello everyone!

Since foam is such a great material for amror and prop making, we have chosen to use this technique to make most of the armor sets we need for the movie.

One of the most difficult builds is, with no doubt, the ODST armor.
At first, we didn't even know what version of the ODST we should make.


-The Halo 2 version wasn't what we were looking for,since it's far too different from all the other designs;

-The Halo 3 version is simple, easy to make, and with a nice design, sealed and heavy;

-The Halo3 ODST version looked too much like a "little spartan", plus, it would take an enormous amount of material and time to make one;

-The Halo Reach version is, by my opinion, the best one, since we can re-use the blueprints of the standard marine armor and then add the ODST components later,keeping the levels of detail and the cost of the build balanced.


So, after a week of planning and hard work, we came up with this:





Now I'm planning to build an improved version of this armor , closer to the Halo Reach design.
I'm going to post here all the updates regarding the project(which includes a foam ODST helmet).

Let me know what you think and, if you have, any kind of suggestion and/or question.
Thanks!

Wow, if that is all foam, it really looks great, nice work

Hyperballistik said:

Wow, if that is all foam, it really looks great, nice work

Click to expand...

Agreed, this really does look great. Nice job!

Thank you guys for the nice comments.

So ,as I said earlier: the ODST armor is made of foam mats, plus some stripes and rivets to hold the structure and give a nice look to it.

But the ODST helmet is just foam and hot glue.







Unfortunately, you can see some of the construction lines on the top sides of the helmet...hopefully,a good paintjob will fix that.

What can't be fixed is the scale of the hemet: since the foam is thick,we had to make our head enter smoothly.
This ended up with a helmet larger than we expected.



Maybe the next helmet will be made with the pep/resin/bondo technique, but the armor will still be made with foam.

Ok guys, today we cut all the pieces of foam, and here you can see the torso components.


Now it's time for sculpting with the dremel.

Honestly this looks good enough to be in the elite section.

Capestranus said:

But the ODST helmet is just foam and hot glue.

Unfortunately, you can see some of the construction lines on the top sides of the helmet...hopefully,a good paintjob will fix that.

What can't be fixed is the scale of the hemet: since the foam is thick,we had to make our head enter smoothly.
This ended up with a helmet larger than we expected.

Maybe the next helmet will be made with the pep/resin/bondo technique, but the armor will still be made with foam.

Click to expand...

I'm working on a foam armor project at the moment, and was trying to determine what I should do for the helmet.

I've tried my hand at pep work, and I have to say, its not my forte, and seeing you make a helmet out of foam makes me want to try it. I know the scale might be a little off, but I'm sure it will still look great, just as yours does.

Do you have any tips or tricks to keep in mind when working with the foam for the helmet?

-To Toacrabman : Thank you! But I'm not completely satisfide with it. Let's see how the next one turns out to be.

-To SilentWings : Well, when I started thinking about a foam helmet, the main problem was the level of details I could give to a foam made object.
Plus, foam brings the pain of all the gaps between the pieces,that you can se in the model above: too much glue in a sigle spot can ruin your work.
First of all,design the pieces so that there are just a few parts to cut: heat gun can do magic things,so remember to think how a flat piece of foam can be shaped in the way you want.

When my scanner works again,I will upload all the sketches and blueprints for the parts of the helmet.

And remember also that a good dremel incision can make the difference between a bad and a good model: you need patience and a fine hand.

Good luck with your project!

Awesome job I'm impressed! That looks really good for being foam!

Hello everyone.

So,Yesterday we went to Lucca Comics (it's like a small ComiCon thing) to promote our film.
It was a good opportunity to test the ODST armor.

We spent the last few days working :

We also went out to buy some cheap uniforms for the costumes,but unfortunately,we couldn't find the time to paint them, so the ODST turned to be more colorful than it should have been.



But I like the camo idea!
What do you think?

Looks cool to me!