Emile - Halo Reach foam build for PAX

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Einhander

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Well I'm not great at posting things as I go - I'm a little better at posting things when they're already almost done. Not a great habit but hey -

Anyway, this is my third attempt at a costume. I did Mickey from ODST via fiberglass/bondo, a Hunter from Destiny and now Emile from Reach.

Here goes!

I'm not great with foam yet. I'm impatient, and perhaps too accustomed to pepakura-ing my way to accuracy. That said, I tried to get as accurate as I could based off of the game theater, pepakura-files-turned-foam-templates, and a handy Emile toy I have.

I started off by turning out a lot of foam pieces before I went forward with anything else. I also stuck to my pepakura roots and used that method for the helmet as you can see here

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I went with pretty standard stuff, 3/8" foam from Amazon/Harbor Freight, 6mm and 2mm foam from Joann's Fabric, wood glue for sealing (I like it over PVA), plasti dip for a flexible base and a variety of color spray paints including a few automobile paints and flat enamels.

Here are some of the pieces with wood glue, drying

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After some light sanding, plasti dip treatment is applied to all the parts. Here's a Kukri!

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My favorite part of costuming is the painting. I paint for my job quite a bit so it's liberating to be able to paint what I want for once. Here are a couple of pieces after some paint. I like to use some of the small model enamels for the detail paint. I have a multitude of brushes - most of them very bristle-y and wirey to apply a more natural feel as opposed to slops of caligraphy-esque strokes. I do a few coats of base paint and let it dry overnight before I do detail work typically. I find it's best to wait a day for things to dry if you have the time. I have had the experience of trying to wipe some detail paint across a section and it pulled a section of plasti-dip up. Patience is some kind of virtue!

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Skip forward a few weeks and most of the parts are coming along. A few are still taped up, the chest needs some glue and plasti dip yadiyada and a lot of lights need to get put in. But here's where I was at a few days ago and I'm almost done. I'll be a little more thorough and have some better pictures when it's done!

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Last time I made a post I was a little wordy and over explained a lot of things. This time around I'll keep it simple and if there are any questions or anything like that, I would be more than happy to answer! Lastly, as a bonus, since I plan on wearing Mickey to PAX, it means my roommate who is a similar size gets to wear Mickey. I'm glad these things are capable of fitting more than one person. (nevermind that he put the legs and shoulders on opposite sides, and forgot the balaclava)

edit: I'm not sure why this picture insists on posting rotated... sorry!

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I look forward to posting the final product soon!
 
Well, I wasn't able to finish before PAX, so I'm taking a week off to get my ODST suit fixed up for SacAnime. On the plus side, PAX was a blast and the turnout was great! Here's us at our photoshoot and me sporting my Mickey ODST suit.

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Well, I wasn't able to finish before PAX, so I'm taking a week off to get my ODST suit fixed up for SacAnime. On the plus side, PAX was a blast and the turnout was great! Here's us at our photoshoot and me sporting my Mickey ODST suit.

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I'm going on a limb here and saying thats mostly the pacific regiment? Also shame you couldn't finish before pax, but good thing you had a back up.
 
It's a pretty high contingent of pacific regiment folks indeed! and yeah i'm glad i had a back up suit. at a certain point it was worth it to realize i wasn't going to have a very good suit if i kept rushing things. i came to my senses and decided it was better to take my time!
 
I'm not even sure people are still checking in on this especially since I haven't posted here in months due to laziness! Bullet pointed updated
- I didn't finish Emile in time for PAX
- I tabled it for a few months out of frustration and completed a few other costumes/props instead
- Picked the Emile project back up, pretty happy so far and almost done yet again!

Here's where I basically picked up after PAX. It LOOKS pretty close to done here, but all sorts of little things to do and honestly I needed to redo the chest because of how badly I was rushing trying to get it done for PAX. So I scrapped that chest and started anew

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For those curious, these were the two projects I embarked on after PAX. Starlord for Halloween and a SAW (The SAW molds belong to Shawn Thorsson who is sort of in a master elite class if you don't know. He graciously gave me a rejected cast as a project and I fixed it up, assembled it and painted it)

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Anyway,

I've finished up everything on helmet except wiring the lights and fans and the visor. The shell is all there though

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The chest is getting a redo which means I'm actually taking my time on it this go around. I've reinforced some of the critical areas with styrene templates instead of foam so that it holds up a bit better and stays a little more flat when it's supposed to

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Things left to do include the little stuff - grenades, kneepads, gloves, boots, oh and a Shotgun... hoping to have it all done for Wondercon

I'm heading to Thorsson's shop to get a crash course in vacuuforming to get my visor all done and done. I'm using a method I first heard about on Bill Doran over at Punished Prop's site which includes vacuuforming and then synthetic dyeing the visor to give it its color. Mirrochrome I believe it's called will then be sprayed inside to give it a little shine.

Here's the visor buck so far. I'll be building on the backside today to make it vacuuformable.

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I took a break last week from building to take some silly photos in my old helmet

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That's all for now folks!
 
UPDATE - I just wanted an excuse to yell. Moving on

I've spent a day with a sort of master class prop maker this weekend, Shawn Thorsson, who helped me with the vacforming of Emile's visor. I got some pretty decent pulls through some careful guidance by him.

Here is the visor I cut out of the pep'ed helmet. I added a domed fiberglass shell to the back which I promptly added rondo to the inside of. Then I bondoed the outside to get it a little smoother. That wasn't really necessary but why not. The idea behind the additionally shell is to get an upside down bowl shape out of your vacuuforming buck. If you tried to just form the visor by itself, you'd get all sorts of wrinkles, oddities and probably a cracked piece. The process involves lots of heat, pressure, prying and prodding, etc.

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After that was all set. I epoxyed a 1/2" MDF wood base to the bottom. This is because the vacformer typically leaves a little 'skirt' effect at the bottom and you don't want that skirt lip to happen on the part you're forming (if that makes sense)

Shawn Thorsson suggested I form a piece of styrene over the whole buck first. The reason being that my buck wasn't perfect by any means and that a piece of styrene could certainly help to smooth out those imperfections. Think of it this way, If you have a porous surface and you want it to be nice and smooth, stretching a piece over the surface will help hide those pores. Here's the styrene pull

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You can kind of see the skirt effect I was referring to in that picture. Next up, I formed a piece of PETG plastic over the top. This stuff is pretty flexible from the get go and heats up nicely. I tried using acrylic I had laying around at one point, but it was too thick and didn't mold nicely. Or at all for that matter.

The plastic worked pretty well, but it had some imperfections. Didn't stop me from cutting it out and taping it onto my helmet

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Now, while I was trying more pulls to see if I could get a really good one, Shawn introduced me to some color methods. The method we tried on the reject visor was a fine layer of paint on the inside. It fogs your vision, but not completely. From the outside however, it looks opaque. I didn't get a picture of what the vision is like unfortunately, but here's the helmet, among my other helmets, with an acrylic skull I painted on. You can't see through the acrylic paint unfortunately

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So I have a few clear visors hanging out in my garage currently waiting for some more color methods. I also think I may modify the forming buck to include the details in the visor that Emile has in the game. Or I'll just paint them on. More on that later.

The rest of the suit is going well. I may have mentioned that I'm redoing a few parts because the first time around, I was rushing through the parts and they didn't turn out very well! I'm redoing the suit and there are two things, if anyone is still reading this, that I'd love opinions/help on.

1) My chest piece is decidedly the right size - which also means it's not possible to get inside the thing without some kind of...access cutting.I thought about having one of the lower sections (the piece that is essentially in your arm pit) be buckled in so you could unbuckle and get out of it that way. The problem there is that you probably can't reach the buckles yourself if they're on the inside. I'd love to hear how you guys have done reach chest pieces

2) My operator pep file is kind of...not accurate. Anyone got a more defined one? The corners of mine suffered from me trying to wing it to get it more accurate - it did not bode well.

Special thanks to Thorsson, who I believe goes by Thorssoli on here. Again, the guy is a master at this stuff and I've been really fortunate to throw questions his way.

Bonus, here's the SAW project he gave me. He originally sent me off with a project SAW kit. One that needed some touching up, assembling and a paint job. Here is mine next to his. His is excellent and is a great shop piece. It also, consequently, has seen its fair share of shop dust. Underneath the dust, is another masterpiece of his.

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That's all for now, folks! (edit for formatting!)
 
Hey man, nice build so far. My previous build was a set of Emile armor, you can check out my thread if you want, I tried going as game accurate as possible.

As for the "access cutting" on the chest piece, I actually did what you said your idea for buckling was, I cut at a seam where it would be hidden when buckled and it works pretty well, I actually put buckles on both of the lower "armpit things." And yes it is a bit difficult to unbuckle yourself if you're not super flexible, but it is possible, If I can't unbuckle mine at the time though, I just ask for some quick help, no shame in that.

And as for the operator file, I have game asset files for several of emiles attachments, the operator being one of them and it came out pretty accurate for me. I should have pictures of everything posted in my Emile thread, so check it out and pm me if you have any questions
 
thanks for the response! there are lots of times where i have an idea of how to get something to work but think it might not work unless i hear of someone else having success using it. i'll take a look at doing it that way! thanks for the input, sir
 
how bout them Broncos?

That's enough chit chat. Just a small update - but I'm trying to get better at this whole checking in and updating thing versus dumping 100 photos every few months.

The chest got done being assembled, got many coats of plasti dip, and then got sprayed with the armor color, left for awhile, then I painted up some weathering details

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Next up, lighting, grenades and the other pieces that get attached.

In the mean time, look, a buckle thing! I got some OD strap to match the bag too

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It'ss just styrene, some foam and a buckle. It'll make more sense when it's done


That's all for now!
 
Small update!-

Turns out I'm not great at LED light diffusing. Especially when the LEDs are crummy little 30 degree angle mini ones that barely put out light as it is. I ordered some strips of blue LEDs to use for the larger gaps, and stuck with some of the brighter versions of the crummy little ones for some of the small light fixtures. I'm also current working out how I'll tackle the spine lights.

Anyway, here are some light pictures of the small holes. I know most of them will be covered by grenades in the end, but it's one of those 'I'll know they're there and working' kinds of things. Not to mention, it's not like LEDs take up a whole lot of battery power anyway.

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I finished my little assembly line of grenade prepping, sanding, etc. For the conical grenade tips, I made one out of foam, sanded it till it was...pretty good, and then made a mold so I could just pour 9 more of them instead of sanding down 9. Strangely, the hardest part about all of this was determining what order to lay down the paints on these guys since each grenade type has 3 or 4 different colors

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Next up is attaching the rest of the chest to the chest (The little hexagonal piece as well as the sort of 'V' piece) and then figuring out how I want to secure the straps/grenades to the chest. I have a habit of over-engineering this part. The grenades are PVC and foam and weigh next to nothing, yet I'm stuck figuring out where I want to drill this multitude of self tapping screws to the straps when I could probably get away with something a litttttle more simple. BUT - better safe than sorry I always say.

I noticed my pictures are still rotating however they want to...What's up with that?

Anyway, thanks for stopping by!
 
There is something very humbling about working with some master crafters. After spending numerous weekends at Shawn Thorsson's shop, I've been trying to do things a little better around my own shop area. I love being impressed with other people's work and love being satisfied with my own. So it's been a good balance lately as my Emile suit is turning out pretty well so far to me.

When I made my Mickey ODST costume, I tried making an attachment on the backpack that would hold my gopro. This was mostly for documenting the conventions I went to. Unfortunately, the joint never really came to fruition. This time around, I cut out a piece of the chest section, kept the piece, and added a box behind the whole contraption to house a gopro. It looks like a total creeper porno cam or something, but I promise it's for conventions. I'm not reallllly sure why I added holes to operate the buttons. The thing will be inside a chest piece I can't even get to. I'll probably have to link it to my phone to operate it. I did, however, leave holes for the plug and mic so I can keep a portable battery inside.

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Next up was making sure it all fit. It does. Don't be alarmed, this shirt is a shop shirt that is way too long. I don't have some abnormally long torso.

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I cleaned up my desk area a little bit and even got an organizational box. I highly recommend one

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I painted up the belt grenades and epoxyed the cast grenade tips onto the shells. Weathering is next for these guys

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Next up, the other grenades got a weathering job and some straps. I'll mount them this weekend

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This is how it's going so far

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That's it for now, here's a bonus throwback to doing the 'YMCA' dance with Dani Yuan

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This build is amazing !!!
So much detail !!

thank you! i'd like to think i'm going for 'game accuracy' but truth be told, there are probably all sorts of discrepancies and errors haha. i'm always trying to crowd too many little details i see in game onto my suit..! hopefully it will end up turning out pretty good in the end!
 
Putting out a pretty good piece? Nah......Fantastic piece is more like it! I wish I had such discrepancies in my build.
 
Update! With a collaborative 'here is a lot of my pieces' picture to kick off with. Here's where I'm at minus the belt that was busy drying.

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I'm starting to get nervous about adding so much weight to the chest. I don't want to ruin the integrity of the foam. But the grenades, despites being foam and pvc, add up in weight rather fast!

If it comes to it, I'll find a way to strengthen the foam from the inside perhaps. Anyway, here we go.

I am notorious for overengineering simple things. You would think slapping some straps on the grenades and having them drape over the chest would be good, right? Turns out, when I did this, they all sort of contorted different ways and even spread apart too much. I got frustrated and secured the curve and alignment of the grenades with a heat formed strip of scrap styrene

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I took a break afterwards from staring at a pile of grenades that need to go places and ended up sewing on and actually bolting this pouch to a thigh piece. The straps and buckle actually work and let me use the pouch as a pocket (god knows I won't be able to store things anywhere else). I added strips of styrene on the inside of the pouch in a 'U' shape in order to keep the pouch kind of poofed out so that it didn't look flat and sad.

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The inside is admittedly not very pretty in the chest. I tried tucking and securing some wires to one side in one direction to keep all the messy areas down while I build in the chest. The front looks...okay

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The uh.. back is less than pretty. Everything is just taped to the back while I sort out mounting a battery box. Whoops

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I finally cleaned up the visor vacforming buck and I'm getting ready to install my vacuuformer in my shop. I'm getting a shipment of PETG plastic in shortly so I'll be able to make a better visor. The one I have now isn't horrible by any means, but I already drew on it in sharpie and rushed the skull soooo... you can see the sharpie marks here haha. These are now actually engraved in the vacform buck so that it will be natural

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That's it for now folks, hopefully I'll have most of the pieces finished up by the end of this week and hopefully will be able to start mounting things together.
 
If you'r worried about the integrity of the foam, you could always reinforce it from the inside. If you hot glue strips of cloth over the seams, even whole sections, you'll be able to add more weight w/o compromising integrity.You could cut out the areas that you would need to get in to like the battery pack and your creeper-cam........I mean your GoPro :facepalm
 
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