I shall call him... Mini Mjolnir. NEW UPDATES! 9-23-07

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DanBakerOnline

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I just got back from Dragon*Con, and I saw the Nightmare Armor, some other armor, as well as a whole lot of freaks. :) I was there with the R2 Builders Club, and I'm working on my R2 before I begin my own MJOILNIR armor, but my son Levi wants to be the Master Chief for Halloween THIS year. That's great, but he's four, and he's only three feet tall.

So, instead of fuss with all of the resizing, gluing and handwork of Pepakura, I decided to do it the easier way (yeah, right)- hand scupt it. Using him as a real life reference for all the pieces, I'll be going through the process of sculpting each piece in foam, covering it in a thick layer of paper mache (to protect the foam from the resin heat) and fiberglassing them. Once dry, the foam will be ripped out and replaced with a smoother lining. The foam I used for the helmet below is the crunchy scupting foam you find with the floral arrangement stuff at the craft store. Later on I'll be using more HDU. The tools used were a Dremel with the big flap sander attachment on it, and a regular metal file.

To boot, this is actually my first full-size sculpt of anything, much less something wearable, but my drawing has been stuck in a Halo rut for a while now, so even thought this was done in about two hours and completely from memory, I'm pretty pleased with it- so far. haha

As a special treat for everyone who grows tired of watching eternal posts by people who intend to spend years making their suits, this has a deadline- less than two months from now, so you'll actually get to see it finished in this lifetime. Wish me luck! More pics will follow.

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This is going to be a pretty sweet project.

I like the Idea with the paper mache, Ive never heard of that before.

Good luck and if you need any help the community is hear.
 
For your boy, its going to be the best day ever. That looks really cool, and please keep us up to date on this. Hes going to be the coolest kid during trick or treating!
 
The basic scaling factors have been added to the pepakura scaling thread
here's an excerpt for your range (don't forget to go a size or two up, this is from bottom of boots to top of helmet)

Height---cm-------Base Scale Multiplier-----If current scale is 30.342
40-------100-------0.465116279--------------14.11255814
39-------97.5------0.453488372--------------13.75974419
38-------95--------0.441860465--------------13.40693023
37-------92.5------0.430232558--------------13.05411628
36-------90--------0.418604651--------------12.70130233
35-------87.5------0.406976744--------------12.34848837
34-------85--------0.395348837--------------11.99567442
 
I know, but then there's all the cutting and gluing and rounding. I really did decide it would be better/faster/easier on this project to just do a rough sculpt. It won't be entirely accurate, but it'll be close enough to still be really cool.
 
Indeed, 4-5 year olds are not going to really care about that much detail. Looking good so far!
 
Good luck with the costume.

One thing I'd worry about is some of the bits and pieces possibly breaking off, but it would seem you've got everything well in hand.
 
FinAeros said:
Good luck with the costume.

One thing I'd worry about is some of the bits and pieces possibly breaking off, but it would seem you've got everything well in hand.


It's true, right now you could smash it flat with your open hand. Aside from that, my process SHOULD yield pretty good results (I hope). A thick layer of paper mache over the foam will give rigidity and prevent warping. Once the whole thing is fiberglassed, it will be as strong as, well... fiberglass.
 
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great job there, I have complete pep suit almost completed for my 5 year old for halloween, I did not think of that foam, it would have made things a lot easier trying to scale to a 43'' tall kid, I call mine mini chief since I also made a suit for me to follow him around. great suit can't wait to see it finished, I will post mine in pep area when finished.
 
Okay, Here's the next update. I added a bit more foam to bring the sides of the helmet out to their "correct" width, added a few more details, and generally got it to where I was pleased enough to move on to the next step...

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Now that that's done, it's time to do the paper mache. Very fun and extrememly messy, the finished product looks pretty cool. Again, I can't stress how this is really my first full size sculpt of anything; so if this works, it'll open up a whole new realm of fun for me!

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Okay! A little more than a month left til Halloween, and I finally got around to fiberglassing the helmet! To tell the truth, it was a combination of a couple heavy projects at work and plain old fear that I would screw the whole thing up. These pics are the rough fiberglass job, but it will clean up rather nicely. Check it out.

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Now that I am confident that I can do a decent fiberglass job (at least for this project) and have not destroyed the helmet in the process, the rest will come more quickly. Tomorrow night I'll be trimming/ finishing off the fiberglass around the bottom of the helmet, cleaning up the rest of the edges, and digging out the hole for my son's head to fit inside. He's been begging me to let him try it on.

Later! Dan
 
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