My First Thread and my First Challenge.

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My name is Logan (Call me Spirit if you want) and I just recently took up prop building for my video effects and classes! I was really excited to get started and I said why stop there? I should use this for work on my cosplays and armor builds with the same effort I put into my props, so before I tackle Halo armor o_o btw some of the armors ive seen from browsing on here are absolutely outrageous, I thought why not tackle a favorite character of mine who wears armor.

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Tom. The head of Toonami and the King of Anime in the US. After much research and finding ive noticed no one and I mean NO ONE has ever pulled off a decent cosplay/suit of armor for him. I felt that this is injustice so I've decided to tackle the project. I'm just not to sure where to start, unlike the halo armor i dont have the paper craft designs for his armor but I have a good Idea how to make this simpler than it needs to be. I have purchases a white spandex suit

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and I intend to use this as the underlying part of the armor as his is obviously not full body armor.

Using the above photo of tom its obvious to me that I need to the tackle the Helmet, Boots, Gauntlets, and Chasie as separate pieces. If someone could give em a good idea where to start or what to do I would much appreciate it. Like I said I'm really new to this but I think i am going to tackle the helmet the way to build the Halo armor Helmet and paper craft it and put a motorcycle helmet visor into the built Helmet. The chasie is where I am really stuck, any help would be very appreciated!
 
i would suggest using foam for this build, it is very expensive and you can make mistakes without wasting more than ten hours beforehand.
 
The satisfaction in completing a project like this, since it will be the first ever, will be so much greater than doing a repeat. Cudos for taking this on!! Using the white body suit for the under-suit is a great idea. For the areas in between, like on the bicep/tricep area and upper leg area, all the parts that will be showing, maybe you could use white foamies, either sewn directly onto, underneath, or even in between another layer of white cloth to give it some definition.

Good news is the helmet already has a natural round shape like most motorcycle helmets, so using one of those as a kind of baseline may work well, but since the helmet literally wraps all the way around and down to the neck it will most definitely have to be made into either two pieces, or with some kind of "slip" that your head can squeeze through and still fit tightly around the neck area. I'll see if I can look further into ideas for that. Personally, I think pep/bondo is best for the helmet, but the rest of the armor could most def. be done in foam. I'll get back to you later if I find something useful.
 
After doing a little more research on the cosplay this is the only one I could find with any images.

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This guy obviously had no experience going into it, and it will be hard to do worse than that when im actually trying but Id like to follow the diagram from the frame in the OP its slimmer and seems to fit the design a lot better than most of the front shots I've seen of Tom's 2 or 3. Although I would like to keep the center piece of the armor to be the Tom 3 center piece rather than the one pictured in the OP such as this

FZxl5N6.jpg


i think it would fit the design better. Now as for making the chasie out of foam, I like the idea but im still new to crafting armor a place to start would def be nice lol. I know I have to try some through trial and error but If I could figure out a starting point, mabye the best type of foam. One of my friends suggested I use Wonderflex if I can deal with the heat treatment, she said if not I am better off going with foam and resin but I still am not sure where to start.
 
The satisfaction in completing a project like this, since it will be the first ever, will be so much greater than doing a repeat. Cudos for taking this on!! Using the white body suit for the under-suit is a great idea. For the areas in between, like on the bicep/tricep area and upper leg area, all the parts that will be showing, maybe you could use white foamies, either sewn directly onto, underneath, or even in between another layer of white cloth to give it some definition.

Good news is the helmet already has a natural round shape like most motorcycle helmets, so using one of those as a kind of baseline may work well, but since the helmet literally wraps all the way around and down to the neck it will most definitely have to be made into either two pieces, or with some kind of "slip" that your head can squeeze through and still fit tightly around the neck area. I'll see if I can look further into ideas for that. Personally, I think pep/bondo is best for the helmet, but the rest of the armor could most def. be done in foam. I'll get back to you later if I find something useful.

As for the part about the helmet I was considering making the back part of it open and having a single piece I could fit to cover the back of my head attached to the rest of the helmet using Velcro to seal it off. This would allow me to take it off and on rather easily but I need a beginning build to set it up lol.
 
Hey Spirit,

have you ever looked into worbla?
Apparently it can be used to create some pretty impressive cosplay.
here is a site link with more info http://www.worbla.com/
There are tons of tuts on youtube for crafting with it
(this is in polish so you may have to use subs)
 
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Nah, I'm aiming more for Tom 3 not Tom 2. I'm likely going to let the suit be the hands and just put tome strap on gauntlets over it. It'll let me be more hands free and allow for cooler pictures xD
 
I thank you for introducing me to this material. I will look into this for future projects however I believe I am going to make this out of foam. Leaves more room for error and things can easily be undone. With such solid colors that I am working with I think it may work best but once I feel more comfortable making this I may try a second time with the Worbla material, its quite facinating.
 
I really would like to thank you for introducing me to this material! I have decided after much research to use this! Better to start with the good stuff, lol. Right now I am working on sketching out what I want the gauntlets to look like while I wait for the spandex suit and the Worbla in the mail. As soon as I have some solid sketched I will post them and keep everyone updated! Thanks again dude!!!
 
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