Awesome, thanks for all the links, Trooper!! I'm still trying to catch up with all the madness.
As for anyone else who had been following the thread (all 3 of you), you probably noticed a huge jump from "Work in Progress" to "Ready to Wear". Well, that's because I quit my job and pretty much work on my armor 20 hours a day for the last week I had left before PAX. I also owe a LOT of help to 2 people: My buddy EarthLore (aka Will [whom isn't a member here... yet. That's his Gamertag]) and my nextdoor neighbor, a salty old handyman and former Hollywood prop maker. Without their assistance with the strapping, padding, and painting, there's no way I would have finished on time.
So, I pretty much finished everything on Tuesday the 1st, since Earth and I were leaving for Seattle Wednesday afternoon. Got in one quick test fit that night with likable results. After the test fit, added a bit more padding to support the chest and calves (which didn't help any). Looking back on it now, I'm extremely surprised everything stayed together. I certainly owe it to DogWizard's
Armor Strapping Thread. Luckily, I had a harness and tach belt left over from a Naked Snake costume I did a while back. Tell you what, though... It is IMPOSSIBLE to find web strapping during Burning Man. I'll make sure to stock up before hand next time.
The entire armor set survived the 20+ hour Greyhound bus trip with only the barrel of my crappy stand-in AR falling off (which was just glued back on) and a useless chunk of my left shoulder breaking... which wound up increasing my mobilty. Heheh... ^^; Went to the con geared up for the first 2 days. First day, right out of the gate, I dropped and cracked my helmet from the jawline straight up to the visor. I'm mostly just glad it stayed in one piece and didn't shatter, and that the visor stayed put, but I was very down on myself for letting such a dumb mistake happen. A roommate picked up and broke my AR
again so I stuck some velcro to keep it attached. Later on, Trooper would come to the rescue with an emergency hot glue gun repair. Thanks again!!
Before heading out on the second day, the epoxy holding both plungers and my armor toes decided to give way, so those were left behind. That didn't stop me from having another great day with Trooper, his sis, and Fearless Son.
As Trooper pointed out, I somehow made the Bungie twitter, as well as
Hawty McBloggy,
Kotaku, and was interviewed by Halo Waypoint alongside Trooper and his sis. After all was said and done, I wound up donating my cracked helmet to
Child's Play. Trooper has some more info on the charity auction that's going on over
in his Child's Play thread.
As for me, time to get cracking on making this thing better. Everything was so rushed and ghetto rigged, that I feel I can do a LOT better job. Get a better helm, actually make a decent weapon, get to cracking on an undersuit, etc... so be looking forward to more out of me!
