Now, to talk about resin.
As a material without fibre glass sheets, it is a useful material for paper builds. On foam however it is not. Mature members know well that resin adds weight to the armour, an over sight my Dad refused to listen to. So I painted the helmet in about 4 layers. Oh and here is a fun fact, if you want detail to show you will be sanding for days because the more layers the thicker the surface and the more it fills in spaces. Lets look at the lower part of the helmet for this. You will notice in the game, right at the base of the visor in the front is what looks like steps down to the rest of the helmet. When you use resin, what ever you carved and glued together will not have the precise angles you once had before. The resin will fill that space in with subsequent layers and in turn loose the detail.
So note for beginners:
NEVER USE RESIN ON FOAM.
Experienced members will disagree with me here only because they have experimented and know how to use it properly. I didn't have the time and so I won't be doing back to it.
As you can see in this pic the surface is not at all smooth. Which means you and sand paper will become quite acquainted by the end of the day. This was part of the process I hated the most and it is only because Plastidip is so bloody hard to find in Australia. I don't understand why its not available in hardware stores. Its one of the 'bread and butter' materials used by foam builders and yet we Australians do not have direct access to it. I could buy it online but that is a nightmare of its own, shipping here is...Ugh...lets not get into that discussion. Quite welcome for suggestions by my fellow Australian member to suggest alternatives to Plastidip for sealing, but for now I will be returning to PVA for the full armour.
As I was say sanding. That was not something I had the time for which is why I didn't want to use resin in the first place. RTXAU was about 2 weeks away by this point and I was not in the mood for rigorous sanding for a week straight.
With a week to go I still hadn't painted the helmet and by this point I had decided to paint it in the colours of my favourite Red vs Blue character.
Yep, I think Church is the best (couldn't help but make that joke).
During this time I was also freaking out about the visor, how could I get a gold or orange coloured visor? Again I was back to asking Danielle for inspiration. I did find something from what she told me useful. I looked into a silver spray paint used for making glass a mirror but I didn't use it (this product was used on the Better Homes and Gardens tv show). Was not sure if it would still allow for me to see out. From what I saw it was not likely that I would be able to see through the visor at all. So that is why I avoided it for my visor. I did find a video I had once stubbled upon for how to make custom visors. I watched but was most interested in the segment where the guy in the vid started to talk about tinting the visor and then faintly airbrushing chrome paint on the inside of his visor. In truth it was a very smart idea and certainly worth attempting if you have access to a vacuform (either handmade or professional).
Here is the link if you'd like to learn a thing or two from him:
was almost tempted to try what he said but I didn't have the time, was down to the last week so time was far escaping me. With such limited time I had to make do with whatever I could find at my local hardware store (Bunnings) and that resulted in a platinum coloured window tinting film.
For the weekend it worked perfectly. Nothing could be seen through from the outside but I had perfect vision from the inside (if it weren't for the fact that my helmet was like an empty water melon skin floating around my head. I'm not joking it was huge and wasn't conforming to my movements). To alleviate an issue everyone will point out in the photo, the visor wrinkled after the con. I have not fixed it because I don't need to. I wont be using that helmet again so it can stay in that state. If your going to use a window tinting film you should continue to smooth out the water needed to apply it for at least 20 minutes to an hour. That should stop most wrinkles from appearing.
Thats it for this update. Peace out and build what your dream
For scaling your armor there are two methods that I use, both of which work perfectly. #1 use Robogenesis' files for Master Chief. All you have to do with his files is enter your height in the scale. The other method is to take a measuring tape and measure yourself. Then go to edit mode on the 2d menu and measure the height of the piece. Hope this helps
