Commander Bells
New Member
Greetings to the 405th. My tag is Bells. My name is Will. Either is acceptable. I'm having a little bit of a debate with myself whether or not to tackle creating armor with foam or pepakura. I love the idea of foam armor and have seen it done really well. Foam also does not require the user of fiber glass (which I loathe).
My conundrum is this: With Pepakura I can get a lot more detail into my pieces, but I have to deal with fiber glass. Foam is easier to finish (I believe?) but it does not allow me to have nearly as much detail as I would get from the Pepakura cardstock.
I don't have a picture of my first helmet attempt with pep card stock, but it was a mess like I thought it would. . . Ended up just throwing it out. Gotta get on hand practice right, I can't expect to be Picasso of pep on the first try.
Here are some pictures of my pep work.
My pep work I feel has become very clean and crisp, but I am almost afraid to take it any further and try with more resin and bondo in the fear of ruining the pieces and tight budget. I have personally seen the growth from my first piece to these.
Now some of my testing with foam:
This was my very first attempt at a thigh piece. I blindly threw some plastidip onto it and made even more of a mess.
My second attempt was cleaner, but it still completely ugly. I still personally can see a huge improvement between the two.
This is my 3rd piece. It's much sharper, so I plastidip(ped) it.
(Only had a picture post plastidip) This has 2-3 layers of plastidip, sanded then primer sanded and pre layer 2 on primer.
I chose a color, and yes it's blue.
At a distance I don't think it would be too bad. However this piece doesn't have a lot of detail. Another problem. . .
I kept getting these little bumps no matter how hard I tried to get rid of them or sand them down they just wouldn't go away. The cracks are because the foam wasn't pressed together well enough when gluing. I think I can cover those up with post modifications and brush painting.
I use the pep files for the foam. Is that wrong? What are some advantages to using foam over pep? I would much rather use foam than the pep, but how can I keep the detailing?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks and glad to be here!
My conundrum is this: With Pepakura I can get a lot more detail into my pieces, but I have to deal with fiber glass. Foam is easier to finish (I believe?) but it does not allow me to have nearly as much detail as I would get from the Pepakura cardstock.
I don't have a picture of my first helmet attempt with pep card stock, but it was a mess like I thought it would. . . Ended up just throwing it out. Gotta get on hand practice right, I can't expect to be Picasso of pep on the first try.
Here are some pictures of my pep work.
My pep work I feel has become very clean and crisp, but I am almost afraid to take it any further and try with more resin and bondo in the fear of ruining the pieces and tight budget. I have personally seen the growth from my first piece to these.
Now some of my testing with foam:
This was my very first attempt at a thigh piece. I blindly threw some plastidip onto it and made even more of a mess.
My second attempt was cleaner, but it still completely ugly. I still personally can see a huge improvement between the two.
This is my 3rd piece. It's much sharper, so I plastidip(ped) it.
(Only had a picture post plastidip) This has 2-3 layers of plastidip, sanded then primer sanded and pre layer 2 on primer.
I chose a color, and yes it's blue.
At a distance I don't think it would be too bad. However this piece doesn't have a lot of detail. Another problem. . .
I kept getting these little bumps no matter how hard I tried to get rid of them or sand them down they just wouldn't go away. The cracks are because the foam wasn't pressed together well enough when gluing. I think I can cover those up with post modifications and brush painting.
I use the pep files for the foam. Is that wrong? What are some advantages to using foam over pep? I would much rather use foam than the pep, but how can I keep the detailing?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks and glad to be here!