Buying Armor?

[Katsu]

To darthchaos and Happy pumpkin. I know it can seem daunting to just get started on this stuff. You will have some victories, and some crushing defeats. But that's life, we can't be perfect from the start. The trick is, you have a whole wealth of forumers here who can and will help you guys get started! There's such a wealth of resources here, not only in existing posts, but also in knowledgeable staff and members. If you have specific questions, at the top of the noob forum are stickies labeled "HELP!! For XXXX" which can be used for asking quick single questions.

If you are looking for a more personal line of help, Carpathia has a mentor program that is also stickied to the top of the noob forum, where you can get matched up with a willing helper who will guide you along the way. Foam is harder to get to look good the first go around, but if you look at Drack and Lil Tyrant's armor in the Creation forum, you can see that you can get some amazing results with it too. Foam isn't for everyone, and neither is pepakura. You have to find the one that works best for you!

I wish you guys both good luck, feel free to ask futher questions here, or sign up for the Mentor Program!

 

[misfitjh]

A Happy Pumpkin....it's better to start on something like the shin and thigh, those parts are really straight forward. Just watch your scaling, have a good reference pic of the character and see how the armor sits on him(or her) and scale yours to sit the same way. So if your doing a Mark VI Masterchief for example, shin has the knee as part of teh shin so your part will go from just above your knee all the way down to your ankle. You can adjust the scale in the pep designer program, but you can't save the changes unless you buy the code, which is no big deal you can spend the $38 or just keep a record of what part you made and what scale you used for future ref. And if you need any help post some pics in your work in progress thread and ask for help or advice the veterans will be more willing to help if they can see what your doing and what the problem is.

 

[Katsu]

Another great place to start is with LD helmets. I know there are smaller, easier projects, but seeing the helmet come together is really fun and awesome. It's a great way to get going on a set as you can see major progress and great rewards come out of it.

There are definitely LD ODST and Halo1/2/3 Chief helmets out there, and the marine helmets, which can make for a good starting point if you want.

 

[A Happy Pumpkin]

Okay, so I think we'll go through with making a low definition helmet. If this fails then so be it. I've said this before, but since everything is so spread out on this site, can someone give me a simple step by step overview of what I do with the helmet if I finish one? Or is there a thread that has this already written out? When trying to explain to my friend the process of making this armor, I really didn't have a good explanation for him.

Something similiar to this:

1) Pepakura folding
2) I think resin or bondo (whatever they're called) comes next.
3) Obviously paint lies somewhere down the road.
Etc...

 

[Assassin3698]

It's a combination of posts and time registered. So... You'll be here a while. I'm not sure why they made it so newb's can't even see the classifieds. It makes sense that they shouldn't be able to sell things (start new threads) but no sense to not be able to buy things.

They did it because word would get around and people would just sign up to buy armor and thats not the purpose of the site. It would in other words tarnish its reputation. I think the classifieds are there for people that have been on here for a while but don't have enought time to build, lets say a helmet, they would buy one from the classifieds so they could go to a con in their armor. Why have a site that helps people out like they have known eachother for a while and just sell stuff to noobs and never hear from them again? Even when I do make Infantryman I probably would only go there to check it out, it kinda takes out all of the fun of building when you can just buy it. That's why I think the noobs aren't allowed. But don't quote me.

 

[Katsu]

The steps generally are as follows:
1) Pep out the helmet in 110lbs cardstock using superglue, PVA (white) glue, or hot glue gun. They do different thing so use whichever you like most. Generally hot glue is harder to work with but can have errors undone. Superglue gives good results but is hard to work with. White glue gives okay results and can't be undone but is easy to work with.
2) Resin the outsides of the helmet (And optionally resin the inside if you want to make sure it's super strong)
3) Rondo the inside of the helmet, tis mixes about 75% or 50% bondo with 25% or 50% resin. More resin means a runnier harder to control but faster moving rondo. Rondo is nice because you mix it, mix in he hardener, pour it and slosh it around inside the helmet and it will automatically coat everything in strong wall. The downside is that rondo can crack if you drop it. If you want added strength, layer fiberglass over the rondo once the rondo layer dries.
4) Smoothly spread bondo over the outside of the helmet to smooth out the polygon look the pepakura pieces make. You mix up bondo with hardener and then use a spreader to smooth it over the pep piece. Then sand it down to give it a nice flat surface. You can optionally carve out details once you have the bondo laid, if you want things like the seam lies and such.
5) Cut out the visor, and either make your own (needs a vacuum forming machine) or buy a motocycle visor off amazon for 8$. Glue or fasten it in and enjoy.

If you want to see someone do this, Cereal's videos show every step of this process in great detail:
http://www.405th.com/showthread.php...-Chief-**-A-Step-By-Step-Tutorial-(My-Way)-**

 

[A Happy Pumpkin]

Well then, that's a mouth full. I suppose watching the videos will help. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of anything you mentioned above.

 

[sandy1973]

Get some eva foam and I will help you with the template.

 

[A Happy Pumpkin]

Get some eva foam and I will help you with the template.

I was considering using foam. Is it cheaper than Pep?

 

[sandy1973]

Yes, it is cheaper and use about half the time compare to pep & resin but if you make mistake with some pieces they will become unusable so that will cost you a bit more. One whole suit will use around 4 packs of foam ( 4 pieces of 2'x2'in each pack)

 

[A Happy Pumpkin]

Alright cool, I'll look into that, thanks.