BeanwaterFox
Member
Oh thanks for the tip!
Foam Air Assault and Sword Builds for Me and My Girlfriend (Comic-Con 2012/2013)
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shadowyeti032
New Member
Very nice. Air Assault is my favorite helmet!
ItsDarthChaos
Jr Member
Awesome! You two and patty-Wack were the three that stuck out the most at ComicCon. How did you get the swords to GLOW?
captaincaliflour
Active Member
Incredable work, I am so jealous. You have inspired me to put far more effort into my next project 
Thanks also for the description on how you made the sword, that is an idea I had not considered, I want to try it now
Great work!
Also, is it just me or does the air assault helmet look a little...feminine...
Thanks also for the description on how you made the sword, that is an idea I had not considered, I want to try it now
Great work!
Also, is it just me or does the air assault helmet look a little...feminine...
Hey everyone! Glad to see the 405th is back up and running and I thought I'd give a (not-so) little update. Sorry, but it's going to have to span a few posts...
So, Comikaze was this past weekend and I spent a little time improving my armor from comic-con:
First thing's first, repair all the con damage:
The inner arm pieces had to be replaced. During the con, had to hold some pieces together with duct tape, and while it did the job, removal was a bit problematic...
I also removed my symbol so I could paint the whole thing over again. Unforunately, it was held on with super glue which tore a chunk out of the chestplate. Thankfully, I patched it up with spackle and you can't tell the difference anymore!
I coated the all my armor in magnetic primer, I'm hoping at somepoint to magnetically attach a weapon to my back, so hopefully this is a good start. Anyhow, the actual appearance of the primer is pretty neat and looks almost like metal at some point. I was tempted to just keep my armor this way:
But in the end, I went back to my tried and true cobalt blue. I left the magnetic primer as my secondary color though, it looks much better than the dark automotive primer i'd been using before.
I finally took the time to add some details to the air assault helmet that has always been missing. I've been staring at the air assault helmet for years now and it's always bugged me that I never put in this little detail by the visor. Glad to finally put it in:
I also get a new phone after comic-con so I had to make a brand new monsterously huge tactical pad to accomodate the galaxy s III
So, Comikaze was this past weekend and I spent a little time improving my armor from comic-con:
First thing's first, repair all the con damage:
The inner arm pieces had to be replaced. During the con, had to hold some pieces together with duct tape, and while it did the job, removal was a bit problematic...
I also removed my symbol so I could paint the whole thing over again. Unforunately, it was held on with super glue which tore a chunk out of the chestplate. Thankfully, I patched it up with spackle and you can't tell the difference anymore!
I coated the all my armor in magnetic primer, I'm hoping at somepoint to magnetically attach a weapon to my back, so hopefully this is a good start. Anyhow, the actual appearance of the primer is pretty neat and looks almost like metal at some point. I was tempted to just keep my armor this way:
But in the end, I went back to my tried and true cobalt blue. I left the magnetic primer as my secondary color though, it looks much better than the dark automotive primer i'd been using before.
I finally took the time to add some details to the air assault helmet that has always been missing. I've been staring at the air assault helmet for years now and it's always bugged me that I never put in this little detail by the visor. Glad to finally put it in:
I also get a new phone after comic-con so I had to make a brand new monsterously huge tactical pad to accomodate the galaxy s III
The next biggest changes come in the strapping. I definately had some issues with the armor staying together at comic-con and while I didn't solve it completely (crotch plate, I'm looking at you!), overall, the armor faired much better this time around.
As I said in an earlier posts, rare earths are not enough alone to hold my chest plate together. So I added center release buckles to each attachment point. The buckles provide some much needed strength in holding the whole plate together, and the magnets help with alignment and keeping everything form shifting around. I have to say it's the best of both worlds:
I've also changed how my shoulder plates are attached to the main shoulder piece. Instead of a solid piece of foam connecting the two pieces, I've opted for some nylon cord. When glued tightly, it maintains it's position rather well, and the flexibility of the cord allows for more freedom of movement and helps prevent it from just falling off. It isn't totally perfect, one of my shoulder plates came lose at the con, but I think that's mostly because I didn't use enough adhesive. All the black tape you see if gorilla tape, extremely strong because I didn't want to take any chances with pieces falling off. Still isn't perfect, may need more tape or better adhesives...
I also redid the strapping on my tactical case. It used to be a single nylon strap that wrapped around the whole thigh piece like a vertical fanny pack. Problem was the weight the stuff in the tactical case was cause the whole thing to shift to the bottom of my thigh. Instead, I changed it to two nylon straps, one permantly glued to the top of the thigh and the other glued to the bottom, it should keep the case from shifting around and yet still be easy to hide the straps if I remove the case.
I also doubled the thickness of the inner thighs, I could never really make them out on camera, so I'm hoping this will make it more noticeable
And now the trouble piece, I always have trouble with the belt/crotch piece. At comic-con the front piece kept coming off, so I changed it to two buckles connected to a single piece of nylon on the front and facing inwards so i can easily adjust the fit of the bit. I covered the whole thing in gorilla tape just to make sure.
And this time, it held! But at the Comikaze, the back piece came off. I'm attributing it to not enough adhesive because I'm not using enough elastic in the back. I'm considering running one continuous piece of elastic around the whole of the belt and slathering it in hotglue, superglue, and gorilla tape. Hopefully, it won't come lose again...
As I said in an earlier posts, rare earths are not enough alone to hold my chest plate together. So I added center release buckles to each attachment point. The buckles provide some much needed strength in holding the whole plate together, and the magnets help with alignment and keeping everything form shifting around. I have to say it's the best of both worlds:
I've also changed how my shoulder plates are attached to the main shoulder piece. Instead of a solid piece of foam connecting the two pieces, I've opted for some nylon cord. When glued tightly, it maintains it's position rather well, and the flexibility of the cord allows for more freedom of movement and helps prevent it from just falling off. It isn't totally perfect, one of my shoulder plates came lose at the con, but I think that's mostly because I didn't use enough adhesive. All the black tape you see if gorilla tape, extremely strong because I didn't want to take any chances with pieces falling off. Still isn't perfect, may need more tape or better adhesives...
I also redid the strapping on my tactical case. It used to be a single nylon strap that wrapped around the whole thigh piece like a vertical fanny pack. Problem was the weight the stuff in the tactical case was cause the whole thing to shift to the bottom of my thigh. Instead, I changed it to two nylon straps, one permantly glued to the top of the thigh and the other glued to the bottom, it should keep the case from shifting around and yet still be easy to hide the straps if I remove the case.
I also doubled the thickness of the inner thighs, I could never really make them out on camera, so I'm hoping this will make it more noticeable
And now the trouble piece, I always have trouble with the belt/crotch piece. At comic-con the front piece kept coming off, so I changed it to two buckles connected to a single piece of nylon on the front and facing inwards so i can easily adjust the fit of the bit. I covered the whole thing in gorilla tape just to make sure.
And this time, it held! But at the Comikaze, the back piece came off
. I'm attributing it to not enough adhesive because I'm not using enough elastic in the back. I'm considering running one continuous piece of elastic around the whole of the belt and slathering it in hotglue, superglue, and gorilla tape. Hopefully, it won't come lose again...Finally, I added lights to the suit! I used a single strand of battery powered christmas lights and soldered several extensions and connectors to my shoulders and thighs. Why do that instead of individual lights you ask? Well at comic-con, I heard that when people were in panels trying to be discreet, they had a lot of trouble turning off their lights. By having all my lights connected to a single switch in my chest plate, it's easy to quickly turn on and off. I hid the switch and battery pack on the right side of my chest plate on the underside of my right arm. Makes it easy to just reach under and hit the switch. You can see the pack held in place with some elastic:
For the light panels, I took some transparent plastic and sprayed the frosted glass spray that i used for my swords on it. I had to double them up and glue two together at every spot to get it appropriately opaque.
The LEDs I used aren't exactly flood lights, so for some where I had room, I positioned them slighty away from the hole they shine out of and pointed them towards the plastic plate. It allowed for brighter lights to show though
Anyhow, It was nice to have a slightly more duarble costume at comikaze. As usual, I don't have any pictures of my own (still need to figure that one out...) but here's my favorites that I could find around the internet...
Look who I found!
My girlfriend couldn't come along for this one, so I borrowed her sword. My next goal is to finish up my undersuit (that's still a disaster), fix up my ab plate (still not happy with it), and make the same improvements/repaint my girlfriend's suit for Long Beach Comic-con and the Halo 4 launch.
For the light panels, I took some transparent plastic and sprayed the frosted glass spray that i used for my swords on it. I had to double them up and glue two together at every spot to get it appropriately opaque.
The LEDs I used aren't exactly flood lights, so for some where I had room, I positioned them slighty away from the hole they shine out of and pointed them towards the plastic plate. It allowed for brighter lights to show though
Anyhow, It was nice to have a slightly more duarble costume at comikaze. As usual, I don't have any pictures of my own (still need to figure that one out...) but here's my favorites that I could find around the internet...
Look who I found!
My girlfriend couldn't come along for this one, so I borrowed her sword
. My next goal is to finish up my undersuit (that's still a disaster), fix up my ab plate (still not happy with it), and make the same improvements/repaint my girlfriend's suit for Long Beach Comic-con and the Halo 4 launch.I am sooooo jealous, cause I wants energy sword!
Plus with the lights I hope you have resistors to stop the lights from blowing up due to too much power
Quick question have you seen the kat headband attachment pdo anywhere, I need it for my air assault variant
Keep it up
Croc co
Plus with the lights I hope you have resistors to stop the lights from blowing up due to too much power
Quick question have you seen the kat headband attachment pdo anywhere, I need it for my air assault variant
Keep it up
Croc co
GuitarMaster157
Member
Niiiiiiiiiiice. I'd like to try my hand at a foam reach set of armor. Gotta finish my ODST first though...
Just beautiful, just beautiful
Just beautiful, just beautiful
Thanks!
I don't recall ever seeing the pdo for the attachment, but I think I've seen one jury rigged out of a flashlight before.
I picked up the primer at home depot, but i've spotted it at other hardware stores:
http://www.homedepot.com/buy/rust-o...agnetic-latex-primer-223081.html#.UFtlWKTUNo8
That stuff is pretty thick and requires a whole ton of stirring (the metallic bits in the paint settle pretty quickly). As to it's magnetic properties, after a few layers, my lose rare earth magnets do stick to the chest plate. But I'm not sure how much weight they can hold. They don't feel terribly strong and I thinking maybe only a fridge magnet or light pieces will stick well. Even if the magnetic part doesn't work out that well, I really like it's look and color, it makes the armor look actually more metallic. I was sorely tempted to leave my armor just coated in the primer because it had a slight brushed metal look to it
Mstruvmgc
Sr Member
Well righteous, i will go on the hunt for that stuff for sure lol. I must test its strength. Yeah i do agree with you on the color, it looks very spiffy indeed.
keep up the great work man and thanks for the info.
DuffmasterFresh
Jr Member
I can't see the metallic paint thing working out. I used very strong magnets on the back of my armor which I attached a plastic rifle too. It stuck but if I moved too much it would fall right off. If I were you, I would buy strong magnets, cut circles in your armor, and user a VERY strong glue to glue them in there. If you make them flush and paint over it, it might look neat but I could see the paint attaching from attaching the gun. You would also put magnets on the gun so the two would stick together.
I could see your paint thing working out only if the gun was SUPER light, like paper light.
I could see your paint thing working out only if the gun was SUPER light, like paper light.
The paint isn't that strong, so it's a bit of a disappointment. However, it still looks pretty cool, so I'm not too broken up about it, magnetic or not, it's going to be my secondary color from now on. At some point between now and Comic-Con 2013 I plan to vacuform a Halo 4 battle rifle. Hopefully that will be light enough to stick to my back.
Hey everybody! I know it's been away and I've been steadily chugging away at the armor and I figured I'd give a little update:
Firstly, I redid the lights inside the suit. I decided to use a 30 light strand of lights so I could get more illumination from my arms and legs. I realize I don't really take much time to document the lights when I'm concentrating on soldering, but I managed to snap a picture of the total strand before I stuck it into the armor:
It runs from the right side of my chest plate to my shoulder plate (all the cabling to my limbs are detachable using a two pronged connector I picked up at an RC shop), out to the other shoulder plate, down to the spine, then to the front of the chest plate and finally down to my two thighs.
I put it all together again for the Halo 4 launch:
And took the time to finally work on my girlfriend's set for Anime LA:
At this point, I've got three major objectives:
1) Work on the undersuit. I've never made a good neck piece and it's always taken a back seat to all the other parts of the armor. I'll finally get around to it in the coming weeks. I bought a set of neoprene football elbow guards, I think they look awesome for the elbow area, but they're a little tight and for a few days after the con, my elbows were totally sore. I've been working on the harness the holds up the thighs and it's almost there... Just needs to be strengthened a bit more around the back:
I think the spinal plates are finally showing up better as you can see here:
2) "Feminize" my girlfriend's set. Ok, I admit it, our two chest plates are identical. I was lazy and just reused the pattern for her chest. Well as it turns out people keep mistaking her for a little boy so I'll be doing a few things to emphasize her feminine figure more. Such as creating a newer thinner ab plate:
and an actual female chest plate. I'm currently making one for my sister to get the kinks out and then I'll start a second one for my girlfriend. I'll cover the progress on that in the next part of the post.
3) Foam helmets! The resin/fiberglass models are a tad heavy these days and my girlfriend has been having trouble putting on the helmet because I made the opening a little too small and her hair bun just doesn't fit through the opening. So I've decided to make a new helmet with a removable back piece to better accomodate her hair. I figured rather than go the whole resin/fiberglass route again, I'd try my hand at foam helmets.
So, now onto chestplate progress:
I think it's off to a good start:
(I know the center looks a tad wonky, I've straightened it since I took the picture)
[continued in next post]
Firstly, I redid the lights inside the suit. I decided to use a 30 light strand of lights so I could get more illumination from my arms and legs. I realize I don't really take much time to document the lights when I'm concentrating on soldering, but I managed to snap a picture of the total strand before I stuck it into the armor:
It runs from the right side of my chest plate to my shoulder plate (all the cabling to my limbs are detachable using a two pronged connector I picked up at an RC shop), out to the other shoulder plate, down to the spine, then to the front of the chest plate and finally down to my two thighs.
I put it all together again for the Halo 4 launch:
And took the time to finally work on my girlfriend's set for Anime LA:
At this point, I've got three major objectives:
1) Work on the undersuit. I've never made a good neck piece and it's always taken a back seat to all the other parts of the armor. I'll finally get around to it in the coming weeks. I bought a set of neoprene football elbow guards, I think they look awesome for the elbow area, but they're a little tight and for a few days after the con, my elbows were totally sore. I've been working on the harness the holds up the thighs and it's almost there... Just needs to be strengthened a bit more around the back:
I think the spinal plates are finally showing up better as you can see here:
2) "Feminize" my girlfriend's set. Ok, I admit it, our two chest plates are identical. I was lazy and just reused the pattern for her chest. Well as it turns out people keep mistaking her for a little boy so I'll be doing a few things to emphasize her feminine figure more. Such as creating a newer thinner ab plate:
and an actual female chest plate. I'm currently making one for my sister to get the kinks out and then I'll start a second one for my girlfriend. I'll cover the progress on that in the next part of the post.
3) Foam helmets! The resin/fiberglass models are a tad heavy these days and my girlfriend has been having trouble putting on the helmet because I made the opening a little too small and her hair bun just doesn't fit through the opening. So I've decided to make a new helmet with a removable back piece to better accomodate her hair. I figured rather than go the whole resin/fiberglass route again, I'd try my hand at foam helmets.
So, now onto chestplate progress:
I think it's off to a good start:
(I know the center looks a tad wonky, I've straightened it since I took the picture)
[continued in next post]
[sorry, image limits mean double post!]
Thought I'd share a few bits about how I get the foam to fit so well together. I usually just free hand slice the edges at an angle:
Here's a more detailed breakdown of how I did the spinal pieces:
Here they are first cut out from the mat:
So firstly, I start the cut by sticking the hotknife in just under the top of the piece and making a straight cut all the way down
Then I pull the knife back out and turn it sideways and insert it downwards at a roughly 45 degree angle just below the surface again:
I slowly saw my way across the piece, keeping the knife in the downward angle:
And at the other end, I pull out and make a similar vertical cut like I started with. I just pull out the foam and I'm left with this:
At that point, I glue the pieces together and rinse and repeat until the spine piece is done:
TADA!
Thought I'd share a few bits about how I get the foam to fit so well together. I usually just free hand slice the edges at an angle:
Here's a more detailed breakdown of how I did the spinal pieces:
Here they are first cut out from the mat:
So firstly, I start the cut by sticking the hotknife in just under the top of the piece and making a straight cut all the way down
Then I pull the knife back out and turn it sideways and insert it downwards at a roughly 45 degree angle just below the surface again:
I slowly saw my way across the piece, keeping the knife in the downward angle:
And at the other end, I pull out and make a similar vertical cut like I started with. I just pull out the foam and I'm left with this:
At that point, I glue the pieces together and rinse and repeat until the spine piece is done:
TADA!
spencers12
New Member
This is my first time seeing this thread (being fairly new to the site) I have to say both suits look awesome! also the new upgrades look good, keep it up.
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