Foam Reach Build v1.0

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SKMZ087

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Hello Everyone. First I’d like to give a little background on this build. I have actually been planning to complete a suit of Halo armor every year since 2010. Unfortunately for varying reasons each year things would get in the way and I would lose my focus and fail. This year I decided enough was enough and I kicked my butt into gear. My goal is to finish this suit in time for Halloween as I have family coming out from England specifically to visit and go trick or treating and I know the kids would love to be escorted around by a Spartan. This build is already pretty far along as I have been meaning to post for some time now, but with a new baby at home, a busy few months at work, and the clock ticking I always had something else that needed doing. But hey, better late than never right?

On to the build!

First completed piece for this was the gloves.

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Up next we have the forearms. These two I actually built a couple of years ago and luckily they survived long enough for me to pull them out, give them a little more detailing and get them Plastidipped and ready for paint.

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The next pieces I worked on were the shoulders. I built a few different shoulder pieces before settling on the FJ Para version.

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The Biceps were a bit trickier to put together but overall I’m pretty pleased with how they’ve turned out. This picture shows them basecoated and waiting for their final paint coats and weathering.

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With the arm pieces all built I moved on to the leg armor, starting with the thighs. I had some difficulty scaling these correctly and ended up partially building 2 other sizes before finding the sweet spot.

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Moving on down the leg, we have a single shin and knee. I was pleasantly surprised to get the scaling on this one right on the first try. I still need to build the second set of these, but the piece went together very easily so I shouldn’t have any problems getting that done in the next few days.

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For now I am skipping boot armor until I have the rest of the suit built and painted. If I finish the rest on time I will get a pair of proper boots built up, but I figure nobody will be paying attention to my feet so that can wait until last.
With the extremities completed it was time to move onto the main body. The torso is a little daunting so I wanted to save that until had more practice under my belt, so the next piece I worked on was the codpiece. With my past history of scaling failures and looking at the pep model for this I decided to take some inspiration from BMP Props’ Foam Reach build and made this into an elastic belt. This lets me adjust the fit nicely, and is super comfortable to wear. I thought I had taken some in progress shots of this but all I could find was the finished piece.

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That brings me pretty much where I am currently at. Coming soon will be the helmet and chest piece.
 

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As requested this is the end goal:
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Over the last few days I have been working away on finishing the chest piece and helmet.

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Overall I'm pretty happy with how this piece turned out, especially scale wise as I think I nailed it the first time for a change.

With the chest out of the way I turned my attention to the helmet. In the future I plan on building my own JFO helmet, but for our anniversary this year, my wife was kind enough to get me a cast of IconProps Noble 6 Helmet and vacuuformed visor. This is a really nice mold and required very little filling and sanding so it didn't take long to get down to painting. I had planned to do a step by step series for how I painted this, but after a while I got into the groove and forgot to take pictures :(

After priming and silver basecoat I used toothpaste as a masking medium. Its nice, cheap, and minty fresh!
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Then it got another coat of the grey primer.
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Remasked with toothpaste and ready for the main color coat. For this second masking I cover a little larger area so the chips show multiple layers of flaking paint.
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This is where I forgot to take photos, but what followed was several coats of Krylon Burgundy Spray paint followed by a few coats of clear gloss to protect the paint job. I then masked off the helmet and used my airbrush to paint in the dark grey, followed by the white and yellow details. Once this was all completed I used some brown and black oil washes to darken the recesses, and finished up with silver drybrushing on the edges. A few more gloss coats for protection, and a final matte coat to bring down the shine and voila!
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I am really pleased with how this helmet turned out, hopefully the rest of the suit turns out half as good...

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Thanks for the kind words. Yes the white on the chest is 2mm craft foam. I like to use adhesive backed craft foam for detailing along with a few dabs of superglue to keep it down. Unfortunately I didn't take many pics during construction, however I am starting on the second shin now so I will take some more in progress shots of that.
 
Wow. The attention to detail this build makes me drool in amazement every time I lay my eyes upon it. Your work is so clean. It's absolutely beautiful! I'm really looking forward to see more! :D
 
Finally made some time to get the final shin piece put together.

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Now its time to get everything plastidipped and painted up... I'm hoping to spend most of the weekend finishing up as many pieces as possible. I've also been teaching myself basic electronics and soldering so i can get the chest and thighs lit. Here is one of my test pieces. Ive been trying to find a method of diffusing the LEDs the way I want them and after a few trials I think I've found a decent solution.

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It's not quite this bright in real life, but I think it will work pretty well. For anyone who is interested, this was done with plastic from a blue-ray case, sanded on both sides with 400 and 800 grit sandpaper and then superglued to some blue tissue paper. I wanted to be sure that the light areas look good unlit as well as lit.

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I was having the hardest time trying to figure out these damn shins...thank you for taking that bag of snakes & laying them out straight
 
I was having the hardest time trying to figure out these damn shins...thank you for taking that bag of snakes & laying them out straight

Yeah the shins were probably my least favorite after the biceps. Some pretty tricky angles and small parts to figure out. Overall pretty happy with how they turned out though.


Tonight's update:

Had a pretty productive weekend. So far I've finished painting all of the arm and leg pieces. I will need to take some pictures of the leg armor in the morning when there is better light, so for now a teaser:

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Ya, I'm not looking forward to the biceps either...your armor is looking amazing! Every time I see epic armor like yours I kick myself for losing my motivation, because now I won't have a kit for he launch tomorrow night. Looking forward to seeing you kit finished!
 
Only a few days left and this suit is almost at the point I would consider it Halloween ready. Currently all parts other than the chest are completely finished. Tomorrow the chest will be finished for sure and I'll finally be able to take a rest :)

Here are some pics of the completed legs (unfortunately the knee pieces I made do not fit quite right so for now I will be going knee-less until I can build some better replacements.):

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