Zat German's Halloween Foam ODST Build

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I have a Laser Tag game on the 30th and I wanted to wear a costume for it. I ended up deciding on a Reach-style ODST with a working MA5B tagger.

I have already built one helmet out of 3mm foam after SimFam got the ball rolling with his awesome one:

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This helmet taught me a lot about how to layout pepakura files for foam helmets. I really regret using that 10mm foam as a backing strip because it threw some things out of alignment. I have already modified Hugh's helmet for foam(had to simplify things a little) and have it ready to go, so I will be starting that soon.

I built the shoulder today:

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As you can see, it is a little too big. It is perfect for a Reach shoulder though, as the ODST is a bit bigger on Spartans.

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Starting a new shoulder. I have modified Kirrou's excellent shoulder for foam and pepped it. 5 parts for a shoulder, pretty nice, yeah?.

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I love this, you cut the angles in the back and then....

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...squeeze, it is like magic how it folds together into the shape you want.

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More magic.
 
Wow, great work on the shoulder armor, very impressive. I would say when the paint is added it could look as good if not better the an ODST shoulder made out of fiberglass. Keep up the good work, cannot wait to see more.

Andrew:
 
The "knuckle" of the shoulder armor(the small piece in between the two large plates) is giving me some trouble on this smaller sized build. The parts are just too small to do well out of 1/2" foam like the rest of it, so I modified my pep file:

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Hot off the CraftRobo.

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You can see the parts I tried cutting out. They work but they do not join well together(too hard to take a picture of this to show you). The "knuckle" I am talking about can be seen on my first, larger shoulder on the left-middle of the picture.

3mm foam should take the proper shape to give a good look, but I am going to have to reinforce it with some 1/2" scrap, so it keeps its shape and not deform with weight.
 
Amazing work ! Is there a way you could share these templates from the craftrobo with us? lol Awesome job once again!

Jacob
 
Well, the last pep did not work so well for 3mm foam, but I made a little helmet out of it:

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:D I might just create some kind of full blown costume(non-Halo related) out of this some time in the future, it has given me some inspiration.

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Second try.

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It seemed to work alright. I am still not happy with it. I may try 1/4" foam which is just a touch thicker to see if I can do the same mountain cuts on the back as 1/2"(3mm is too small) and get the sharp edges I want.

I have received permission from Hugh to redistribute edits of his files, so I will be posting them as I get them built. I have the helmet done but I do not want to release the file until I have created it out of foam at least once, just to make sure it is setup nicely for it.

I am also working on some stuff for the Halo Reach ODST that do not have pep files yet(at least, I have been unable to find them, let me know if I am incorrect). These will include: ODST ab plate(not the same as the Trooper's), the chest plate to ab plate connector(see below, a little different than Halo 3's) and the shins, which are shared with Troopers/Marines in Reach.

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Here is the start of the chest to ab plate connector
 
Got something new in from ebay today that I think people should be excited about. I have not seen them mentioned before: they are called Shades and they come from the UK off ebay. You can find them here. I am including a link because they are kind of hard to find with the search. They are pretty inexpensive at £6.94 or about $11 for two.

Here are some pictures with my foam ODST test helmet:

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Dark visor(really reflective, so it still looks hard to see through). Would be good to darken up a visor that is a little too transmissive. I have some gold ones that would work well in combination with this one.

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Silver visor, pretty good. Combine with colored sheets of plastic from Hobby Lobby and you could get orange, yellow, green, brown or grey visors.

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Gold visor, definitely the best looking one of the bunch.

These also come in purple but I did not get any of those.

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The nice thing about these is that they are really thin, so you can put them behind any kind of visor or plastic that you can come up with. You could even just affix them in your helmet as-is but polycarbonate visor would give better it support.

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Also, the connector is coming along in 3D. I switched to Silo because it has better poly editing tools for the way I build.
 
wow that is great work! hopefully the original authors of the files won't mind you posting the modified ones, that sure would help! cant wait to see more :D
 
Progress update: Things are moving more quickly now!

TD2253 made some awesome Trooper templates and I have to give a big shout out to him for how well these come together and how accurate they are.

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Laying out the first set of templates to build. If you take notice of the template in this picture and the foam cut out in the next image, you can see that I made a slight change for the Reach ODST.

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Added some detail in Reach for the ODST armor. It turned out really well. Note that I did as little as possible to get the detail. Most of the upper area is going to get covered up anyway. It also helps with aligning the shoulder straps. I will go on to describe how to get these sharp edges below.

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Use a blade that lets you set the depth and set it to at or a little below how deep you are going to set the Dremel. By cutting them ahead of time, you get straight edges every time instead of relying on the Dremel for the side wall. The width of the channel is about the same width as the bit. I used the 1/8th inch sized cutting bit.

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Use the Dremel 565 Multipurpose Cutting Kit attachment to set the Dremel bit at the same depth or a bit shorter than the blade. Eyeballing it is good enough. You want to favor one side of the channel when cutting. I like favoring the right side myself. Keep track of which side you favored. I used about 3500-4000 RPM.

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When you spin the piece around, favor the same side. This will remove the rest of the material and leave very little clean up on these narrow channels. On bigger stuff, you remove stuff until it is as clean as you want.

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Finished details. Note the rounded out corner in the lower left. That is from removing the Dremel from the channel to rotate while it is running. Turn the Dremel off and let it stop before removing it. Turn the piece and then turn it on again.

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Cuts on the backside of the part let you get the nice angled bends without a seam.

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Finished chest piece. I am not worrying too much about the details since this is getting covered up by the ODST chest plate. I want to try to make this modular so I can switch between Trooper and ODST, so I can detail it later.

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Added the attachments for the side straps that I will be cutting out next.
 
Chest is done, ready for final hot glue securing, details and paint on Saturday.

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I know it looks kind of lopsided in this picture but it is sitting flat on my table and everything works well when it is being worn. I made it a bit re-sizeable so you can adjust the top straps and interior straps for people with bigger or smaller chests. See last picture for internal buckles. The shoulder straps are still a bit long for final fitting and I need to sew a fold back on to the ends. This will happen on detail and paint day. I also forgot to spray paint some of the adjusters silver and now it is too cold to do it. Oh well, black it is.

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TD2253 used channels like on the figures, but I used raised details like they look from the bump maps in the game. I wish I could have used gray foam like on the side here but Hobby Lobby only had one sheet left and it was just enough to do the shoulders. I am not going to have time to paint the side straps so I will probably leave it like this for Sunday/Monday and paint it more later.

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The back. Just needs a couple more details for the straps and some paint. I plan on using some kind of resist(toothpaste or petroleum jelly) and painting the gray detail green. When I remove the resist, the gray will come through for a damage look.

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Internal buckles on the front of the chest. I thought about just having one on the left but it seemed like a good idea to just put two in for better adjustment and make it easier to remove. I plan on wrapping these in gray felt, just to obscure them a bit more from the side.
 
i mostly just have to figure out which pieces i need and the ones i dont from the files. i used hugh's and only printed out the big stuff, but it didnt seem to work out to well, i think i need to simplify it a bit
 
I have permission from everyone now to post modified foam files. So as I get them built, I will be posting them. I do not feel comfortable posting untested templates but I do have Hugh's modified for the gauntlets that seems to be working. So keep an eye out for those. I will be updating the first post to organize files here soon.

The Reach ODST is kind of a mix of the UNSC Trooper with some ODST elements(keep in mind Reach takes place before Halo 3 and Halo 3 ODST which is what Hugh's stuff is based on).

I used TD2253's templates for the chest, groin and thighs(with one I modified and will be posting tonight). I am making my own ab plate file which should be up tonight and I have already posted that connector. I am also working on a Reach ODST chest add-on for the UNSC chest armor but I am having some difficulty with some of the geometry of that. If I finish it in time, I will be posting that too but if I am getting short on time, I will be using Hugh's, even though the Halo 3 ODST chest is not that close to the Reach one.
 
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