Kaya Tetsu's reach WIP

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Kaya Tetsu

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Okay, I meant to have this done by this point in time, but life happened and now I'm rushing to have a presentable suit for Dragon Con in a few short weeks. Oh the pressure, I can barely take it.

I hastily pepped the helmet today.


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I think it may be just a little snug, but I'll fix it after I rondo it. It fits now, but with padding and electronics and such in it I might need a little more room i which case I figured I could cut and expand it and still keep it looking good. I can't afford to be a perfectionist this time around.

I'm going to try and do a minimum of one piece of pep a day for the rest of this week. I cant buy resin till this weekend and I wont have time to start until monday. Then I'll continue pepping every day while working on the resin and detailing of the other pieces. I'm going with rondo as opposed to fiberglass this time around due to time constraints.

The helmet wont fit over my head, even if sized properly so I'm going to make part of it removal.

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The red colored part above is what I was contemplating making a second piece that attached via velcro, magnets or something similar.

I haven't really decided on anything yet, this build is kind of rushed. I started playing around in vanity and I'm thinking I'll go with the AA helm, Recon shoulders, the default chest and gauntlets(wrist), FJ/Para knees and the hard case. So it should look something like this. Nothing is stone till its done though.

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I'm not planning on the time for a weapon. The armor is pushing it. I may incorporate some storage in the chest/back piece when its done though, if nothing else. Gotta have somewhere to put con swag.
 
I am glad to see someone doing an Air Assault helmet. I've made Statyk's model of the helmet several times, finished one without a visor, and I'm working on one now. So, if you ever need help on this helmet, feel free to abuse my knowledge. :)
 
Yeah I zonked out and actually put one of the detail pieces together inside out. lol. Thats the one I marked with the sharpie to remind me to fix it. Once I get the resin and rondo done, I'll fix some of the details with foam or cardboard.
How do you make yours fit on your head? Got an opinion on the method illustrated above (or a better idea)?

I'll be starting the shoulders as soon as I get done on here I'm contemplating some fun things with electronics, IF I have the time/money. I'm good with electronics. Was considering an environment monitoring system. AKA, microphones on the outside of the helmet and headphones inside so I can hear. I'm deaf enough without the helmet. I could hide the mic behind a piece of thin craft foam in the detail highlighted below.

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Just a though. Maybe order this wired intercom for 13.00 (http://www.dxsoul.com/product/wired...seat-intercom-headset-black-2-x-aaa-901222738) and these headphones with volume control inline for 6.00 (http://www.dxsoul.com/product/motor...for-mp3-player-gps-black-3-5mm-plug-901240105). The wired intercom works by feeding the audio from one persons mic into the others headphone, pretty straightforward. You could also build/buy a simple audio amp, but I don't have time to scratch build and the boards run about 17.00 a piece assembled the last time I checked. This is cheaper.

I'm I'm really ambitious I could wire one of these 12 dollar wireless transmitter setups (http://www.dx.com/p/wireless-fm-transmitter-receiver-set-w-mini-clip-microphone-34753) and an amp/speaker (which I may have in the junk box) so people can hear me. I suually hate Chinese electronics, except when I'm taking them apart to make stuff, lol.

All right I need to stop geeking out and get to work if I expect to have this done on time!
 
Yeah, i made waaay too many mistakes on my first build, and holding it together with tape the worst lol.

For the finished one, I ended up cutting off almost the entire jaw piece since it was just a bit too small.
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since you haven't resined or rondo'd your piece yet, it may be possible for the neck area to work. What I've done with this one (my current one) is that i'm fibreglassing the entire helmet EXCEPT the area under the red line. Leave this piece resined WITHOUT fibreglass class cloth/mat behind it. It will allow the area to flex like a really stiff leather but flexible enough to bend over your ears and the side of your head when you put on the helmet.
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Not my first build. Had an ODST, parental units tossed it when I moved out. Not that it fit anymore anyway.

I think its gonna be snug as it is, regardless....I Just sliced is along a seam down the back and out it onb. hard to tell cus I cant see, but I think its gonna be too small once I add padding (and my glasses and the visor and fans. etc.

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I taped up the inside. I'll remove the tape once I've resined the outside a few times (and tape the outside if I need to) before I add rondo. Those detail pieces need some love anyway, so I'm not worried about it. Now to get back to the shoulders. Almost done with the first one. Pics forthcoming.
 
One shoulder base down, one to go. Just finished mirroring it and am about to print it out again.

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Its too small to slide all the way up where it belongs, but its proportionally right, so I will again wait and just tweak what I've got once its reinforce. There's a small piece missing that I will probably fix with foam later. I didn't feel like messing with that tiny piece. Onward!
 
Todays Progress so far:

Mostly finished other shoulder....it looks a little smaller? I think maybe one of them is just bent out of shape. Will look at it later. A few small pieces yet, that I will probably skip and do later with foam. Rushing pep and small details don't get along.
I did the Recon half of one shoulder, need to do the other, won't take long. Then I will start on another piece.

I ordered a Phase Change Cooling Vest on ebay. My friend has a similar one and the cold packs for it stay about 60 degrees for 2-3 hours and recharge in 20 minutes in ice water. Its awesome. I found a child size one on ebay with 6 of the cold packs (the vest uses 4) for 20 bucks. It was a steal. The packs are 9.5 x 5 vs the 12 x 5 packs in my friends vest so I expect them to perform about the same. But if I'm gonna wear armor in Atlanta in August, I want a cooling vest. If your interested in keeping your bucket cool, you can order as similar kind of cool pack that fits in the top of a hard hat for around 20 bucks on amazon, Here. The cool vest that my friend uses, that I highly recommend can be found here.

I also ordered a Condor H Harness (This One) and a belt (This One). The belt will at a minimum hold the space diaper and the h harness will keep it from falling down. I'm contemplating buying the battle belt (Here) as it looks like it would be more comfortable than the belt alone. Any suggestions?

Speaking of the space diaper (cod piece/belt) I'm contemplating attempting it in foam, to make it more comfortable to sit in.

Definitely making progress. If I keep this up then when I get back on Monday I can start the resin and rondo process.
 
Been extrememly busy since I got back from the festival and of course as soon as I got back from camping the heat of August my A/C died.

The belt and harness arrived, and they fit. The cooling vest arrived in great shape. Even though its a kids small, I will be able to modify it to fit me under the costume without completely cannabalizing it, which is good. The cool packs are a little thinner than what I'm used to, but they should stay frozen for a couple hours anyway.

I bought a gallon each of bondo and resin. I also picked up fiberglass cloth, cartridges for my respirator, disposable cups, brushes,etc and some files.

I attempted to make my COD/belt out of foam, but gave up. Right now I just don't have the time mess with it. I'll live. So today I pepped the belt. I was going to resin the pieces that were done today, but it rained. Tomorrow I will resin the helmet, both shoulder and the belt and get to work on other pieces. I didn't get much done while I was gone, so I have a lot of catching up to do. I'll try and knock out at least one more piece of pep tomorrow and do the resin.

I was thinking I would rondo the pieces for simplicity, but I'm worried about strength. Any suggestions?
 
Well, since no one else has mentioned it, I just wanted to make sure that you were aware that the Air Assault helmet you are using is the one from Halo 4, not Halo Reach.

That being said.... I do definitely think that the version in Halo 4 is much better looking.
Since 343 ruined the ODST helmet after leaving it out initially to begin with, I adopted the GEN2 Air Assault helmet as what the ODST helmet should look like in the new generation.
 
EDIT
Read: I am going to go for a half and half look and make it look like the best of both, or at least my favorite parts. We'll just say its a newer version or something. :p

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Yeah. I noticed that, but cant be arsed to build a new one. I highly doubt that if HAlo were real that all armor and such would be perfectly the same. Like on cars, where tlast years model sometimes has next years parts because that's what the manufacturer is tooled up to make. I'm pretty sure spartans could easily tear up some armor and need new parts. :p So yeah...Maybe I'll modify it some to look like a little of both and call it good, but I'm not really worried about it right now. I'm kind of in a rush. lol. Just like I'm stifling the perfectionist in me by saying anything I mess up will just be battle damage.

Put the first coat on the pieces that are done. I'll probably put another coat on tonight and then take pictures.
 
Another coat of resin isnt gonna happen tonight. It started raining. Got the pieces inside. They didn't quite cure. I think I may have put a little less hardener in than I should've. It happens. I'm not too worried about it. Pics will wait till they cure. I may or may not start on another pep piece tonight. I don't feel well.
 
So I stuck the pieces in the basement and they didn't cure. I guess I didn't add enough catalyst to the mix or mix it up well enough. I'm not sure what happened this time around, but I fumigated the basement to the point it was coming in upstairs and I had to go down and turn on the exhaust fans and add one at the other end. I opened the garage door a few inches and put a squirrel cage fan pointing out of it (right next to the pieces) and cleared it out. I'll leave it running tonight and reapply in the morning, if it hasn't cured by then.

Conveniently I'm doing the resin and glass at a friends hosue while my A/C is out at the apartment. I feel like the world is conspiring against this costume, because my car broke down and now this. lol. On top of it all I seem to have caught something, because I have a fever and a killer headache. No more pep tonight. I slept instead, but I started some work on the electronics after I woke up.

I had this set of small speakers I bought from the dollar store (for 1 USD) in my junk box that I'd already stolen the stereo plug from.
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I'm planning on installing a mic in the helmet and hooking to theses speakers that will probably be in the chest plate to make it easier to communicate with the helmet on. These speakers really have a decent quality and volume for what they are and I don't need them to be horribly loud. I decided to open them up and see what was inside.

I needed to know what I was working with (impedance (ohms) and power/draw (watts) of the speakers. Also, I /HATE/ that stupid tiny enameled wire, its a pain in the ass to work with and I almost always end up snapping it at some point. If you really must work with it you can get the coating off with a light, but I decided to pull them apart and see if I could just attach my own leads (easily) and I can. The positive and negative are even already marked on the board. Makes my life easy.The markings on the back are 8 Ohms (Omega) and 0.25 Watts (W), which is a bit lower than expected. That'll be good to know when I start wiring things up. I think I'll need to order a transformer or use a different speaker. We'll see.

Back to sleep.
 
Blarg. Resin didn't cure last night. Its raining. Put some squirrel cage fans out the door and worked in the basement. Added a coat on top. I'll be checking it in an hour or so to see if that fixes it. The shoulders and helmet got a second coat on the outside and so did part of the belt/cod.

I'll start on more pep shortly and I'll try to remember to take pictures next time I go downstairs. Maybe ti will quit raining so I get some real work done.
 
Blarg. So today I went outside and started to rondo the inside of a few pieces. And of course out of nowhere, along comes a thunderstorm. Yay. I managed to get my stuff inside without it getting too wet, i think. But I didn't get much done on that front. I finished pepping the shin/knee. i think it might be a wee bit big, but I guess all the armor is on someone my size, lol. There is about an inch gap between the front and my leg when the back is touching. Just enough room for a little padding I guess. I can always tweak it later. Pictures later tonight. Phone is charging and I want to utilize the break in the weather to get as much done outside as I can.
 
I promised pictures. I finally have some.

Today in the brief period between rain showers I managed to Rondo/Mud the inside of several pieces.

The Helmet.
Outside
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Inside
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Shoulders
Recon
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Base
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I started to rondo the inside of the shoulders with some of the excess
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Belt/Cod
It has a very light layer of resin to use up excess. Need some work before I harden it.
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Knee/Shin
Also has a very light layer of resin on it. Again not quite ready for real resin and rondo.
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Tomorrow I have to take my car to the shop so I probably wont get much done. I plan on bring some printed up pep and some peps to score the folds while I wait. I started on the chest/back piece today a little too. Hopefully I can make some real progress with the pep and work on the belt and shin pieces...or start detailing the helmet.

The rain has been seriously slowing my progress. Hopefully it quits that.

EDIT:
I got bored.
Progress so far:
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I haven't made near as much progress as I would like. Hopefully, tonight before I go to bed I'm going to finish the gauntlet and the moddified top for the helmet. I'm tryiing to build a top from the reach AA helmet and mod the halo 4 one to look like something in between. in reality it mightve been quicker to redo the helmet, but oh well. I'm building just the visor part (above the see through visor, lol) and changine the vents as the side detail. It shouldnt take lon once I pep the top of the ohter helmet.

I bought an assortment of bits for my new dremel to help speed work along. I alreay started marking and cutting on my helmet. There were a few details that would be better done in foam, so I cut them off.

I'll probably make them templates for those details tonight too, if I don't fall asleep. I'm gonna start hitting this costume hard. I'll put some pics up tomorrow.
 
Yesterday I took part of the top off the helmet and am replacing it with the simpler part from the halo reach AA helmet and making a few other modifications. It will look more like an in between helmet, because I screwed up.

Today I plan on detailing the helmet, test fitting the cod pieces on the belt (I fear they may be too big, it was hard to tell with the paper). Generally I'm going to try and get a lot of work done. lol. I'll have a second pair of hands soon I can put to work sanding and such to help me get this done on time.
 
Sorry I haven't been keeping up with pictures, I've been pretty busy. I've got some from earlier this week, but I'm too tired to bother with them so I'll just add a few from today.

I found that my helmet would be too small with padding so I cut it in half and made it slightly bigger. Probably around an inch and a half or so, I used popsicle sticks for supports and tomorrow I'll resin/rondo and detail the helmet. I started on the detail stuff today, hence the bondo on it now. I also removed the bottom sections of the helmet that had warped down to a 90 degree angle and replaced them with Popsicle sticks at the correct angle.

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I would've done more pep but I will be out of town Monday through Wednesday morning. I plan on working on pep in the car. I'll start by scoring all the lines and cutting all the pieces out when I get to the hotel I can use the down time to put them together.

I still need to do the chest, both thighs, one gauntlet, and one shin and both boots. Dang, it sounds like a lot more work when I type it out. I also need to paint and strap/pad everything. I will really have to work my ass off to get it done, But if I have a lot of the pep done when I get back then I can really get started. I'll have to buy some paint for the airbrush. I'm really not gonna have time to make this as nice as I would like, but I want to have it done for the con.
 

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