Halo: Reach, Kat armor WIP - AvAngelAvA

[LongShot X]

Thanks guys I'm glad its looking good to some well trained eyes! The main reason there was such a break is because I got a new job and have been working a lot of hours, and I suppose I just lost a bit of motivation. I don't have any cons to get ready for and the lack of a deadline has had me putting other projects before this build. BUT I'm back now! I'm getting excited about the warmer weather and can't wait to finish up some of the pep stuff so I can spend time in my garage with all the doors open doing resin (although I may take that back once it gets all hot and sticky outside and I'm wearing a respirator lol)

I just spent some time looking at HaloGoddess' Kat build with foam (found here: http://www.405th.com/showthread.php/31534-Halo-Reach-Kat-Foam-Armor) and am a little frustrated seeing how well foam has been working out for other members of the 405th.. I feel like I'm too far in to my pep build of the chest piece to start over but should I consider trying that method out with the other pieces? It seems pretty easy and fast to use. I also read from her and another member posting that the torso piece I'm using is turning out too deep, that it seems narrowed for a female frame but then is basically the same as the male version. Should I just continue through and deal with any needed modifications later? I'm thinking it won't be as noticeable with me because I'm pretty tall at 5'10".

Thanks again everyone!
Ava

Greetings!

"Motivation?" Well I think your doing very good with your pepping. In fact after looking at the pics of your progress. I have to say that your spot on with it. I can see that your using the red and blue pens to help with the valleys and mountains. This in turn helps to keep the folds perfectly straight and crisp.

I'm also glad to see that your continuing with the fiberglass method rather than the foam method. Beleive me! The fiberglass method does indeed come out better than the foam. Yes the foam is faster etc, etc, etc... But the fiberglass does "look" better and holds its shape better. Having said all that you also can consider going fiberglass on some pieces and foam on others. A hybrid build.

I'm also seeing great organizational skills. I can tell by the way that your taking the pics and laying out the pieces. This tells me that your willing to spend that extra time keeping things as close to perfect as possible. Extra Kudo's for this!

Keep all of this up and you'll make a very AWESOME Spartan!

As for the torso being "Too deep," you'll need to try it on and see how it fits before determining if you'll need to modify it.

Cheers!

 

[AvAngelAvA]

Speed Bump #1

Well, I had expected coming into this that I'd have a few issues and here I have met my first one. I'm not sure if anyone has completely built the L3X BLU3R1V3R file: Reach Female Torso but I do believe I may have found an error? Note where the top and bottom halves of the ab plate meet:

See the two different fold patterns? I've looked at reference pictures and my Kat figures and, forgive me if I'm wrong, its seems that they are meant to be symmetrical. Not sure if this is only an issue with the female version or not.

I had hoped that the difference would just be something a bit of bondo could fix up later so I continued with it. However, now that I've glued it it has turned out to make the bottom of the plate very crooked.

Luckily I should be able to "undo" the glue with my exact-o knife (I've had to do it a few times before already >.>) but I was just wondering if anyone else has had an issue with this? And any suggestions on how to make it work as is? I thought to just glue it where its wanting to go naturally and where the bottom looks straightest. Even tho that means the numbers aren't matched up...

Side note: I know in my last post I promised to post new photos of myself wearing the completed front half of the chest piece to show scaling but we had a monster snow storm last night and the giant tree in our front yard got so weighed down with snow that it uprooted itself and nearly fell on our house. That plus a number of other bad luck things that happened to me that day made me apprehensive to touch my pep... lol didn't want it getting catastrophically damaged somehow..
====================

Greetings!

"Motivation?" Well I think your doing very good with your pepping. In fact after looking at the pics of your progress. I have to say that your spot on with it. I can see that your using the red and blue pens to help with the valleys and mountains. This in turn helps to keep the folds perfectly straight and crisp.

I'm also glad to see that your continuing with the fiberglass method rather than the foam method. Beleive me! The fiberglass method does indeed come out better than the foam. Yes the foam is faster etc, etc, etc... But the fiberglass does "look" better and holds its shape better. Having said all that you also can consider going fiberglass on some pieces and foam on others. A hybrid build.

I'm also seeing great organizational skills. I can tell by the way that your taking the pics and laying out the pieces. This tells me that your willing to spend that extra time keeping things as close to perfect as possible. Extra Kudo's for this!

Keep all of this up and you'll make a very AWESOME Spartan!

As for the torso being "Too deep," you'll need to try it on and see how it fits before determining if you'll need to modify it.

Cheers!

Thanks so much LongShot-X! I appreciate the kind words.. I'm glad the pep work looks good to you, because I'm sure I've spent more time than probably necessary on it lol yes, I've been using the pens, they work quite well. Theres a funny story that goes with that too...

My Dad was watching me the other day and had an idea. He's a bit of a handyman and had some plaster-trowel majiggers in his shop that would be perfect for folding the straight lines. He went ahead and decided to "help" me by folding some of the cut out pieces himself (without my knowledge) XD I came home and everything I had cut out to that point was folded, my dad smiling proudly at his handiwork. To be honest I was a little nervous to see up close how clean they were but for the most part he did a good job with them. It is definitely a faster method, but I still prefer using the pens first because his way ended up with some "squished" looking paper on the inside of the folds. But that's why some of the lines don't have pen.

I'm glad you're an advocate of the fiberglass method, because I was starting to have some regrets about working with it haha I've spent so much time reading and learning about it though I'd hate to not use it once. Thank you for the kudos on my organization too haha I really like being able to visualize while I work and having the pieces laid out like that really helps. I'm excited to continue on with the back of it.

========
Finally, an extra note to all reading this thread. I've noticed the majority of WIP thread have a lot of progress going on between updates and as a learner it can be frustrating missing out on those parts of the process SO for the benefit of anyone reading this thread and trying to learn from it, I'm going to be posting updates more often and in smaller increments than most threads do. Hope nobody minds...

 

[ACDCrockr209]

Any new updates?

 

[AvAngelAvA]

Update time! Although its not a fun one I just felt like I needed to write on here to tell you guys about the sad news and explain why I haven't posted in awhile. Well, I had all the sheets with the back half of the chest piece printed out sitting safely (or so I thought) on my desk when I went to sleep one night and I woke up to, well, not so perfect paper... Apparently one of my cats decided she wanted to explore my desk that night and then felt that the stack of paper would be a great place to rid herself of a furball...

and you know, it wouldn't have been so bad if 1. I hadn't rearranged the original file quite a bit to print as few pages as possible then lost the whole thing when our power went out (I haven't bought the key needed to save the project). I now need to find all the pieces that were ruined so I can reprint them and only them. Secondly, I must've been pretty scatterbrained when figuring out the scale factor because I can't find where I wrote it down anywhere D: SO I pretty much have no choice now but to trial and error until I get the new pieces to perfectly fit the ones already printed. Unless there's some magic trick I don't know about lol

Lessons learned: keep my materials in a bin impenetrable by felines or any other potentially damaging things.
Write down the scale factor, then write it down again, then write it down a third time. Then keep them all in separate but equally memorable locations. Because its really embarrassing to make such a simple mistake that pretty much brought my entire project to a screeching halt.

I am now going through the process of finding the "damaged" pieces in the file and will then print them out again and again as much as I need to to get the size down to the millimeter. Just gotta get it done and move on at this point lol

Thanks to everyone who reads this thread, too. Ik there's not much to it at this point but I WILL finish this suit so uhhh.... stay tuned!

 

[Hyperballistik]

This has happened to me, well not from a furball but overturned drink, after that I always print my scale on the actual parts with the text button, hope you find all those missing parts, gotta love the mishaps

 

[ventrue]

I now need to find all the pieces that were ruined so I can reprint them and only them. Secondly, I must've been pretty scatterbrained when figuring out the scale factor because I can't find where I wrote it down anywhere D:

You could also just reprint everything on the back sides of the sheets you have already printed.

By the way: Data loss during blackouts can be avoided if you use hibernation mode instead of normal standby or letting the computer run. During hibernation, your current session will be saved to your hard drive and the computer will turn off.

 

[HaloGoddess]

That really sucks. I kind of know how ya feel. I got 3 cats, one of which is a stray that we decided to bring in and keep. She likes to get into EVERYTHING and we have a cat tower that my other 2 don't really use anymore and I have been storing my Kat foam build on it. Well she decided to jump on it and use it to get higher so thanks to her, my foam chestplate ended up with some custom battle damage! XD They are some pretty good holes, but not hard to fill and cover up.

Since I am currently done working on my build for the time being, I am able to save stuff in pepakura so if you want, you can give me the measurements of the pieces, to be on the safe side XD, and I can e-mail them back to you. This way, should you ever encounter another hairball issue or worse, you can easily reopen the file and it will be the size you need it at AND the pieces will still be placed in the same spot making it easier to figure out what pieces you need to reprint if you need to.