**Update**
After working on the suit for 5 months non-stop I was a bit burned out and all my plans were shelved as it was also a super busy year with moving and trips. Within all that I found time to replace my shoes completely. The shoes themselves were really uncomfortable, but I still wanted the height boost. So I found some simple platform goth combat boots that had a 3 in boost.
Next I moved forward with my plans to replace the armor pieces with titlewave's and I stared with the shoe covers and hand plates because they were poorly attached and I had lost a piece of shoe at the con.
So printed and finished those before I had to move apartments and wouldn't have a closed balcony to paint on.
Old covers
New covers
Lastly, I finally got around to dirt weathering. I didn't really like how light the blue became in sunlight, so one goal was to kinda mute it a little along with general grime thigh and hands for example. I used liquitex Mars black and a medium brown
During this, I also added more scarring to the shoulder gash to give a more burned look
I also wanted to add some covenant blood and read that Elite's have a blue-purple blood. So I got liquitex phthalocyanine blue (Pictured above with the gloves). To apply it I laid out 3 pieces of armor roughly how I imagined they'd be positioned when worn and alternated thick and slightly watered down flicks and splats with the brush and let it run in areas. I tried to avoid it being too runny because in my head I imagined their blood would be thicker. Idk just a personal thought. And it came out like this.
After this I added a plasma scar to the chest as well. After getting the shoes strapped up at 5am Thursday morning of the con, I was ready to go.
One trick that has been working for me, is the high temp hot glue geared towards cosplay by surebonder. After I had straps falling off left and right last con I started securing all my straps with it to prevent them from gradually peeling off. After this recent dragon con, nothing that was secured with it fell of. And I was not being gentle. I was sitting, dancing, lightsaber dueling, and then fell over once, and it all held. I'll try to remember to get some pictures of how I'm using it, but here are some pictures of the armor at the con.
