My Noob Tale

[Kissker]

After many hours/days (wait.. what time is it?) of reading all over this site, PMing some Vets and getting Pep files, advice, and told constantly "Do not try HD pep files for your first pep." I have chosen to avoid this advice, for a variety of reasons to be explained later. I appreciate the words of wisdom, I in no way am deaf on your words, however, I am driven, I know how I work, and I have confidence I can do it right.





Will it turn out well? Who knows! This'll be fun for everyone either way.



In this thread I have started (duh, your reading it?) I am going to show lots of pictures of my Step-by-step creation, into Complete Godly suit status, or Epic PHAILURE for all to understand EXACTLY why you shouldn't do what I did. Either way I hope this little "tutorial" is fun for everyone, Veteran, Noob, or passer-by to come read it.



I have chosen, very last minute, to make a suit for Halloween. "But Kissker, you only have like 20 Odd days left, how in the world will you get everything together?" honestly... I dunno. Luck tends to be like this for me, so we'll see what happens as it happens. Pep might take a long time.. but hey.. I got time.

Sleep 8 hours/Work 8 hours/Play for 8 hours (play includes driving places, eating, showering, doing chores, and of course, video games and props/pepping)

= 24 hours for a day.



Step One - Gathering the Pep Files (Done, I think... did I miss a shin?)



Step Two - Gathering Supplies (Cardstock, Rubber Cement, Etc) To Pep with. (in progress)



I have decided to go to Office Max and find 110lb Card Stock type material to use.

My Choice



If it is in stock, and at the Office Max store I am close to, I will buy it. I already pre-pepped/sized a bit and figure 220 sheets should get me a full suit and a gun, however I plan to buy 2 packs, just in case. Hopefully I won't have to explain to the Office Max dudes (or maybe a pretty girl?) what it's for... they may not know pepping.





Step 3 - Quadruple checking sizing .....Then Printing. (to come soon)





So literally nothing done yet, except research and planning, but even then I consider them only 80% done. Currently almost 7AM my time, Office Max isn't open yet, Just got off work and don't work again til Thur night, so I got a day to fiddle, minus sleep.



keep posted for updates, they should happen quite often as things go on (pretty much live) until I start Cutting the pep and pepping it together.







This post contains "pep" 12 times.

 

[Jeff Torres]

at least you've got a plan, Good Luck on your peping!

 

[McCaboose]

Hey I have a ton of good starter MRK VI med def file if you need them. and dude we have like 40 days .

but power to you! good luck, if you need a certain piece really quick let me know!

 

[GiR3892]

planning never hurts better safe then sorry yeh i us to have alot of time to this but then i decided money was more important so my stuff is coming along very slowly all i have to say is welcome to the site hope to see stuff soon

 

[Kissker]

well my first ever costume/prop building was with Boba Fett a few years back, I had ordered a very cheap Don Post wanna-be (so even more horrible) Latex Mask/helm of fett.. and decided... it would be amazing to make it look good.



So I looked up what I could do.



Bought fiberglass, bondo, dremel, sandpaper, a dictionary to get new cuss words, and started.



This was a nightmare, I had to boil the latex, then slam an bowling ball roughly the size of my head into it to streatch it out and make it "round" on the top, the mask was horrifically deformed when it had arrived in the mail.



Then.. the work began.. and in 2 days it was done. Yup, 2 days (without painting) Dremel'ed the visor out, a dent for the dent instead of paint, remolded the entire bucket, fiberglassed it, bondo'd a bit of the outside, sanded it more, took apart the RF and other details, and primed the sucker.



A couple more days (had to wait for the mustard to dry-) I had the thing painted. It turned out fantastic. I then waited for my visor-tent to arrive in the mail (it had been ordered about when I ordered the helmet.. but still hadn't arrived)



Sadly Halloween became "tomarrow" and my visor was still in the mail - backordered. SO I did a rush job. went out and bought a punch bowl, used cardboard paint and the like, and made a "pretty good" bowl helm to use for halloween. It worked well for the night use, but inside I just took it off and let the suit do the talking. 12 hours to build a cardboard/bowl helmet. Lol. an all-nighter followed by sleep and then the parties.



It was still brimming with paint and glue fumes when I wore it, so things got a bit fuzzy and dizzy that night.. but hey, I had my fiance so I didn't mind. lol.





Wow I rambled... point being... if I could turn a Don Post nightmare into something I am proud of (and the 501st commented on it later when I went to Ep3 in the suit, they liked how well done it was and if I wanted to contenue to do that work I could join them, I declined at the time.. but now I am into it more then ever) so it was decently good even to others (I was on the news at the premier and lots of pictures were taken lol) then I know I can do a good Halo refernce suit.



I can try to dig up some images... or take some new, although the visor cracked and I am awaiting a new-new replacement.(so it's visorless, yet again.)



found a horrible quality pic, but should give you an idea.



http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s264/kissker/Cosplay work/39417.jpg

 

[Kissker]

Hey look! this thread is already helping people! yay us!





Yea.. let's see if we can't get some links here for Ideal files anyway.. Iama go run up to the store and stuff and get ready to find my paper.

 

[mattmann1]

First-if your set on doing pepakura buy extra paper.

Second-what hardening metod are you yousing? If it is not resin (I can't use it) you may want to go card board. I just finished (need to paint) making a card board mark6 chest and back that looked good



P.S. good luck

 

[AngelVirusX]

From what I've read around the site, you've got a pretty solid plan there. I'm working on the low def right now and doubt I'll have time for anything higher detail before Halo-ween. And don't worry there's still plenty of days left before then. Look forward to seeing your progress.



There's medium def files out there? Are they on the Wiki? I wouldn't mind getting my hands on those, in case my low def parts don't come out as well as I would want them to.

 

[GiR3892]

well my first ever costume/prop building was with Boba Fett a few years back, I had ordered a very cheap Don Post wanna-be (so even more horrible) Latex Mask/helm of fett.. and decided... it would be amazing to make it look good.



So I looked up what I could do.



Bought fiberglass, bondo, dremel, sandpaper, a dictionary to get new cuss words, and started.



This was a nightmare, I had to boil the latex, then slam an bowling ball roughly the size of my head into it to streatch it out and make it "round" on the top, the mask was horrifically deformed when it had arrived in the mail.



Then.. the work began.. and in 2 days it was done. Yup, 2 days (without painting) Dremel'ed the visor out, a dent for the dent instead of paint, remolded the entire bucket, fiberglassed it, bondo'd a bit of the outside, sanded it more, took apart the RF and other details, and primed the sucker.



A couple more days (had to wait for the mustard to dry-) I had the thing painted. It turned out fantastic. I then waited for my visor-tent to arrive in the mail (it had been ordered about when I ordered the helmet.. but still hadn't arrived)



Sadly Halloween became "tomarrow" and my visor was still in the mail - backordered. SO I did a rush job. went out and bought a punch bowl, used cardboard paint and the like, and made a "pretty good" bowl helm to use for halloween. It worked well for the night use, but inside I just took it off and let the suit do the talking. 12 hours to build a cardboard/bowl helmet. Lol. an all-nighter followed by sleep and then the parties.



It was still brimming with paint and glue fumes when I wore it, so things got a bit fuzzy and dizzy that night.. but hey, I had my fiance so I didn't mind. lol.





Wow I rambled... point being... if I could turn a Don Post nightmare into something I am proud of (and the 501st commented on it later when I went to Ep3 in the suit, they liked how well done it was and if I wanted to contenue to do that work I could join them, I declined at the time.. but now I am into it more then ever) so it was decently good even to others (I was on the news at the premier and lots of pictures were taken lol) then I know I can do a good Halo refernce suit.



I can try to dig up some images... or take some new, although the visor cracked and I am awaiting a new-new replacement.(so it's visorless, yet again.)



found a horrible quality pic, but should give you an idea.



http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s264/kissker/Cosplay work/39417.jpg

wow that a pretty kool looking fett helmet nice work there

 

[Kissker]

I plan to use a combo of methods to harden, including, resin, glassin, mudjacking (oh wait.. that's something else..) Mudding rather, Hot sealing and possibly, maybe, some crazy fangled thing called "tape your mistakes and glass over them".









Oh and did I mention at work I had some crazyier ideas of "opening" the helmet (visor up, mouth gapes to each side) to put it on/take it off? Plus some CRAZY ideas on making a realistic looking Plasma Nade (I won't spoil it yet, still working out details, we'll just say it involves dry ice, water, glowsticks, and a gyroscope) and you know them shoulder mounted - nothings? (on the shoulder there are 2 slots, one on each, that don't appear to do anything at all...) well.. i figured I'd give them a purpose... more on that after the torso gets worked on though, can't spoil all the fun now , can I?



Oh and 2 words for my rifle that may excite you --magnetic holster--



Office max Opens in about 15minutes - by the time I get there I can magically open the door by standing on that black mat thingy.



The journy begins!



--time elapse of approx 1 hour and 27 minutes--



Alright back from Office Max, got me some 110 lb paper (although, 67 pound feels just about as stiff and has the same toughness so it would work I think, and was about $1 cheaper) Decided to flip a coin to buy rubber cement or not - the answer was yes- but when I went to it and held it a big voice said "NOOOOO, go to wal-mart!" so.. I opted not to buy it there, total costs will come later (explained in a moment)



Then I drove about 2 blocks to Wally world, where I got the sameish tub of Rubber Cement, same brand, same Oz, for over $1 cheaper. Yay inner voice!... I also remember something about a toilet plunger (one used in Stormtrooper armor as well) so I wandered and found they had 1, only 1, in stock, for some $4 so I got it too, and a hershey bar.. and left.



Yay me. Got paper (only 250 sheets for now though, might try 67 on some stuff) rubber cement, a plunger "Master Plunger", pardon, apparently it is my master, and demands to have it's named said properly...



and now Mr.Sandman caught up and I need to at least lay down... so I'll be back in about 8 hours.

 

[Flyerfye]

Exciting plans! My 2 cents of advice: If you're getting close to 'Halo'ween and not making the progress you want, postpone your debut date instead of rushing and trying to cram everything in last minute (Unless you're mighty like MightyMints). As for the "don't do HD on your first pep", I did an HD pep helmet file for my first pep, and I did fiiine. It's just general advice, there are exceptions to the rule.



Yes please magnetic holster. I'm staying away from them, because I'd have to keep them 2 feet away from any electronics, and that's pretty much physically impossible at my place.



Don't rush those pep files! It can be catastrophic if you do.



Good luck!

 

[Dan]

Hey I have a method for you that will save LOTS of time.... Skip the fiberglass and use Smooth-Cast 300 instead. You will use fiberglass resin for the outside of the pep piece, and then when that's hardened, you mix and pour the plastice inside and rotate it around (roto-cast) to make sure you cover then entire piece. It's much faster and it makes a MUCH cleaner result. Jedistumpy was the first one I'd seen who did this, so I tried looking for others and, at the time, I couldn't find any. Trust me it's much much better. Any questions just ask.

 

[mattmann1]

Sounds like you know what your doing which noobs like me don't but Flyerfye don't be to worried about electronics unless you are using really strong ones because I left an Ipod on a pile of magnets for like a month and it works fine.

 

[Kissker]

Alright been sleeping for a little while... started tossin in the end with spasm and junk.. I think I am too excited. Lol.





4:11PM here.. means I slept all of... what.. 6.5 hours or so...







Went through all my pep files, making sure they all loaded - had some errors so redownloaded versions, all seems good now. Now... to scale... hmm... guess I need a picture of a human in MK VI armor... Google here I come.





Oh and magnets- it depends on the Magnets, how close, and what type of enclosure they are close to. I plan to do a mild RF shield around all but the "end" to be used, and the type I plan to use are little craft magnets found at Hobby Lobby and WalMart - 16 should suffice for 1 gun and the back of the torso (so it looks like a spare weapon in game, angled right, so I don't have to carry the bloody sucker all day long) Since the magnets each hold like 1lb I might be able to get away with 2 for the tip, 2 for the handle, and 4 in the torso (8) to hold it, but I don't know if it'll be "jump proof" while moving around, so I planned double.



Then again depending on the gun and shape of torso I may have to put 4 in the middle of each, I don't want it "too obvious" that there are mags in me.

 

[Flyerfye]

Sounds like you know what your doing which noobs like me don't but Flyerfye don't be to worried about electronics unless you are using really strong ones because I left an Ipod on a pile of magnets for like a month and it works fine.

I was generally speaking of the neodynium variety, which can and will do very bad things to hard drives and credit cards with proximity and improper usage. Personally, I LIKE my data. But now we're getting off topic.



Small fridge magnets are a lot safer, they just take up quite a bit of space on your armor. Hope that works well for you!

 

[Kissker]

Wow.. it is now 2Am... I passed out somewhere in my finding a suitable Mark 6 picture to print and scale off of and now... guess work took more out of me then I had expected.





Alright... I finally found a decent picture to use as a scale for my suit.. now... just to get a idea of how big to make it, (how much bigger rather) I needa find the under armor I am going to use....don't want to make the pep file to small for the under armor to fit under.. lol





Alright got some food in me and stuff and printed off Blue Realm in his Mk6 suit (thank you Blue Realm for a wonderful picture that screams "SCALE ME!")



Now to find my ruler... I guess I should organize my materials before diving into this... but.. eh oh well, with only about 4 hours before I have to "sleep" to get ready for my next work day, I think I will put off the cleaning and organizing until I have a couple days off in a row.





Gonna post pone updates until I have some Pep to show with pictures, so stay tuned.



***Edit***

Takin about 15mins to cut and fold each piece of paper, I plan to kinda do em all on a test cod first, then start gluing to check sizing. No pics yet, about 1 hour til I gotta sleep so I won't pass out during work...



**Second Edit**

Ok managed to stay up a bit later then expected but got all but 2 parts of the cod cut out and pre-folded. Yay me. must lay down now, see ya when I wake up, maybe with pictures too! Ooh shiny!







**Third Edit**

I awoke moments ago severly dehydrated and excited.. my alarm was set for about 4 hours from now, so much for 8 hours sleep. Scored the final pieces using my Hi-Tech Scoring Device (pictures to come) and began to cut the final 2 parts out of the Cod.



The cod was not resized, it's H and W MM were close to my own, so I figured "bigger I can deal with, extra padding,etc, let's see how big Da' Chief is."

Yup, that's my Right boot, everyday use.

Yes, that's a Pacific Handy Cutter from my work, a bent bobby pin to score with, and cheap-o Craft Bond Rubber Cement

***Edit the Fourth or so**



Woo more progress. Coming along pretty nicely, some goof ups with the thin paper (used regular print paper for the prototype) but nothing big the bondo and resin won't cure.

Lil movie

 

[Kissker]

Bump and Update





ZOMG ok so I got it all together.. but 1 part is missing.. a small part... front detail, so I have to go run that off again ><



Sadly the scale prop is about 4inches too small in the waistline, so my choices are - remake it scaling bigger... or cut it and add sizers in a few locations to make up the shrunk size...





Probably resize and re-do... but for now I need to go pick up some pop and stuff... be back a little later.







Oh and.. I HOPE to have it pepped by ..um.. lesee... what... the 15th?





Gotta head to work sometime soon so Iama print off the left forearm and handplate and mark/score them during breaks, see ya in the AM, hopefully with more pictures.





***Edit the Fifth or something like that.

Oo... noob mistake number 1.. Unhiding the hidden lines. this has made my hand armor template completely unreadable, although I am not sure re-printing will help much.. very small indeed.



Currently working on an over-lined shin piece but I worked last night, haven't slept yet, need to mow the yard and return a package to UPS and other stuff, so I don't know how much time I will have today to work on it... Grr. Now that I have a project to fill my extra time, my extra time has gone missing!

 

[Kissker]

Update with pictures!





the 405th went down... chaos insued.... but it's back up! yay! During that time I constructed the left bracer HD (failed, must redo) the belt/crotch (failed - too small) and the thigh HD(failed - don't think I saved the size change, came out waaay too big.)



but I did complete the right Shin in HD and it turned out amazingly well, the shins will be the ONLY ones I put in HD, because I have a plan to put the detail later.



Here's some pictures of the Shin -

I am open for critisizm here on this, it's my first real peppy piece and I know there are some small errors, and I didn't do the circles (I plan a different way with those.)

 

[Kissker]

No comments? No suggestions? NO flamage? Hmm... not even a "Yay you go man, finish the fight!" ? Kinda.... sad.



On the up side I slept for 18hours and that means I got plenty of time to work on some stuff tonight and tomarrow. My first boot came out too small so I printed it out a little wider so the fiberglass and stuff would fit.



I don't plan to use my boots or any shoes inside the boot - instead I am going to buy some Gel insoles (so My spartan will be Gellin, insert commercial here) and using some thin rubber to make custom soles to my boots, epoxied on to the underside of the fiberglassing. I spent 20 minutes in game getting a good enough movie shot to look at the boot and draw out the pattern so I could match it (this way my boot prints in real life would match Halo3's ) Not that complecated really like 17 pieces per boot.





So I'll have my 1 piece suit on - maybe some socks if room permits, on top of Gel insoles/fiberglass/pepakura/fiberglass/bondo/epoxy and rubber. This might be comfy.... might not be. I plan to use Craft Foam to line parts where my feet my rub so they don't rub on Fiberglass.



I will have pictures lately today (it's nearly 2AM) of my second boot attempt, possibly my Left Forearm. I planned out my next week of what to do, in hopes to get busy and keep on task.







Oh yea back to day 1, I managed to make the guy at Office Max find the paper I wanted by simply saying "it's for a form of origami" and he even let me touch test 67 and 110lb papers, of which I couldn't tell much, I think they would both work well enough, and the 67 was $1 cheaper... but oh well.



Of course he pretty much made me sign a verbal agreement to show off what I did after it was done, so I'll have to walk up there in suit some day and show em.

 

[sid485]

Rockin', keep up the momemtum. I just joined up and I'm in complete awe of the art of pepakura... two days ago I had no idea that such a thing existed. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.