Oh the joys of being a packrat! Finally storing so much useless stuff came in useful because I was able to dig up enough bits and pieces to finish everything up...now to write a little bit here, then go sleep...no wait. Write a little bit here, go clean up the mess I made downstairs, actually pack for the trip itself, double check I didn't forget anything, grab gas, pick up the carpool (hope to god she actually plans to contribute for gas...), and hit the road by 6am. Oh joy, 4 hours to go. Thank god for whoever invented energy drinks.
Anyways, pictures! And some details on the little bits and pieces I have.
I wanted to find a plunger to hold up, but I didn't want to figure out the logistics of taking a picture of myself while using both hands to hold a cleaning device and give a thumbs up...so I went with some scrubbing bubbles. Because crazy as I am, and stupid as I am, I do not want to put a plunger on top of my sink.
Anyways, first the helmet! It kicked off this thread, and thanks to the updated forums, a status update on it will forever be the footnote to my thread title. The pep job wasn't the greatest. I think I may switch to super glue for the next attempt because sometimes when I put too much hot glue on, the bulges shift around the position of the paper, which seems fine initially but screws me over about 100+ little tabs in. There's some slight warpage which you can notice if you spend time staring at the helmet (which I do), but hopefully if you're busy staring at my flashy racing stripe you won't. Remember, red makes you go faster.
There's a lot of imperfections in the bondo. At first I thought maybe I wasn't mixing it right and getting a lot of air bubbles because of that. Actually the answer was much simpler. For all you new people....INVEST IN A PLASTIC SPREADER. The shoulders and chest piece, which I'll get to later, benefited greatly from the plastic spreader's smooth benevolence. It really cut down the amount of work. So out of necessity, everything has a nice worn "battle damage" look.
Painting...as I said before, take your time. If you go fast, like me, you'll screw up, again like me, and waste time trying to fix it which is often harder and more time consuming.
The visor...it looks okay, but it is hanging on by a thread made up of much melted glue. I'm definitely going to have to pack an emergency repair kit with me. The theory of making it was simple enough, like I believe Pooper did, I simply scored a piece of plastic and did plastic pepakura, only I used a resized version of the visor from Rundown's game ODST helmet instead of the WETA one. Unfortunately after being under so much stress the plastic decided, to heck with you, I'm not just bending I'm going to go ahead and snap. So if you look closely you can see black-painted glue on the seams holding it together. It also does not like to stay attached to the inside of the helmet...again, it's barely hanging in there, and again...I hope the flahsy racing stripe keeps people from noticing.
The chest piece...I like this actually. I think it came out very well for a quick pep to finish time. I pepped it while at a dinner (yeah, I got some weird looks, but I only knew a few people there and I still got my share of free food). I tried playing around with the mud technique, which was nice. Then one night I figured I could finish the whole suit before Anime Expo...and I started bondoing and sanding in the middle of the night. That's around the time my sleep schedule went kaput.
It's got a couple of imperfections, and the edges are definitely janky.
But oh, do I love the paint job.
Another issue is a light warpage. The sides bow more forward than they should. I had the right idea initially...I glued in cardboard supports to keep them pulled back, but I removed them too early after putting in fiberglass and when I came back the next day it was hardened in the state it was. Again, like the helmet, the awesome flashy paint will distract the unattentive.
I wanted to put the really faded and hard to see UNSC eagle and random chinese symbol (I would have used my surname) on the wings, but the complexity of the eagle led me to say "Nuts to this, maybe when I can do stickers/water transfer" and stay happy with some writing and a good 'ol Superintendent face. I didn't go with the red because I didn't want him to disappear, and I didn't go with green because I didn't want to look like a friggin Christmas tree
The little metal pieces on top of the chest piece are actually two folded up belts. I think there might be a few other marines out here...so those are my old marine MCMAP belts. I was annoyed because I couldn't find anything to make metal pieces of. I was about to go cut up some popsicle sticks and paint them metal, but then as I was doing another rat-search of my mountain of stuff, I came across these two puppies. I didn't want to destroy them, so I just duct taped them up and stuck them on the inside of the chest piece. They make a great little raised base to stick some industrial strength velcro on. There's some gaffer's tape stuck through them to imitate like they're holding up the chest piece, but they really just lead to nowhere, like when my GPS tells me to go to Watsonville. It's all a lie.
The middle stomach piece was pepped, then instead of pepping the little circle in the middle, I found an empty tube of some junk someone used in the shower, liberate the cap, and put it into the service of the UNSC. It fits pretty well I'd say. Resined, fiberglassed, then painted right on the pep. No bondo on this one.
Side equipment plates. In case you can't tell..no, I didn't make them. I just spray painted two 2x40mm HE grenade puches. Packrat story time! I literally got a garbage bag full of these. My unit was disbanding and the supply guys were tossing out old gear they didn't need. I stopped one of them and said I would take it to the dumpster for them, with a giant cheese eating grin on my face. And he said, as long as no one saw me take it to the "dumpster" it was fine. So I threw it in the garbage pit that is my car (which reminds me I should probably clean it out...) and now if I need pouches of any color for a suit, I just spray paint these useless suckers.
All of this stuff is attached to a replica bulletproof vest modeled after the stuff you see the SEAL team in the Black Hawk Down movie using, or the one I'm wearing in my Half-Life Opposing Force costume, which is what I bought it for. I picked it because I didn't want to paint an interceptor vest and it has a huge thing of velcro on the front. So I attached a few more to key places and everything now magically sticks! I hope I never have to walk through a field of burrs anytime soon though.
Other webbing: I'm wearing a russian RD-54 paratrooper harness which I spray painted black (they're normally only available in a brown canvas or a nylon flora pattern, I have the latter). This was bought for an impression of the Metal Gear Solid 2 gurlukovich/spetsnaz mercenaries. I originally picked it for this outfit for a few reasons:
1) I thought I could maybe use the chest-strap it has as an attachment point. Now it just gets in the way, but oh well.
2) Extra pouches on the waist! They're black, but it adds more visual clutter to distract from stuff I don't have. I can't paint them grey because I still need to use this for my Metal Gear cosplay.
3) Backpack: Distract form my otherwise empty back area.
4) The only other black web gear I had was stolen a couple years ago out of the trunk of my friend's car and I'm cheap.
Attached to the shoulder are two pads that are meant to go on the slings of SAW machine guns. I happened to dig up two of them (again, packrat)...and I like the slightly bulkier look it gives.
Undersuit: Black flightsuit (imitation, not nomex or anything fancy) a friend used for working on cars and airsoft.
Belt buckle: It's a piece of cardboard with another piece of cardboard on top of it to cover up the belt itself. I figured it pretty much looked like a fancy belt buckle...so that's what I went with. I cut out two pieces of cardboard, bent one of them so it created a small gap for the belt, hot glued on some tagboard to remove the cardboard texture, and cut out two tiny holes for the belt to slip through. The belt itself is a $30 military rigger's belt which I bought by accident because I didn't look at the price and thought it was just another belt. I did use it to almost reach the top of half dome...now I'm rambling. Anyways, it looks fancy, not like a regular belt, and it fits perfect. Dolled the front up to look metallic, and left the back alone...because the darn thing's pressed up against my stomach anyways.
Grenades: They don't look game accurate at all. I just grabbed cylindrical things and played with them. The end result was a Safeway-Refresh water bottle with the top cut off and the caps of empty Rustoleum black-primer caps glued on the top. I put a little red square inaccurately on it. Oh well. Again, visual distractions. I'm also amused how it says to "squeeze and pull" on the top of them. I started to sand the tops flat by instinct then realized it was kind of fitting for a grenade.
Codpiece: Two pieces of cardboard glued together, and the little canvas bag that comes with M249 SAW ammo cut up, glued around it, and spray painted. It looked really sad just dangling there though, so I dug through everything I could to find some D-ring like material I could snag without having to cut anything up, and I finally found an old SAW sling that was already chopped up. Off go the little sliding thingies, on goes some gaffers tape, and then I curse at myself later for not measuring twice and cutting once. I have to cut twice a lot in case you can't tell.
Legs: Baseball catcher's pads, $35 from Big5. Sanded down, painted to look worn. The right leg has two single-40mm HE grenade pouches on them. Unfortunately not nearly the size of the pouches the Rookie and other ODSTs sport, but didn't want to waste more 2x pouches. Like I said, I'm cheap. If I had the time, I would have used some bondo to make the shape of the leg guards more square. The spherical shape conflicts with the boxyness of everything else. Oh well.
Boots: Okay, nobody cares about boots, but I just want to say Oakley boots are awesomely comfortable. A million times better than old GI issue jungle boots.
Shoulders. Being too lazy to pep anything, I took some measurements of the simpler Halo3/WETA ODST shoulders, cut out some cardboard, glued it together, reinforced with some fiberglass, and bondoed some simple flat surfaces. The two pieces are attached by gaffer's tape (which I can already tell I have to reinforce). There's some velcro on the shoulders of the flightsuit, and that's what's holding the plates in place. I'm going to have to reinforce the velcro on the flightsuit because it really doesn't like staying there.
I ran in to some issues with the speed at which I was painting. There was too much paint so whenever I tried to paint the white blood-type patch it would start to crack. I ended up sanding down that area, prime, sand, prime, sand, and finally it stayed a nice white. Drew the stuff on with a gel pen.
Forearms: Wilson-brand adult shin guards which must either be mislabeled or the good people at Wilson must live in a land of midgets. Fits perfect on my forearm though. I got some 2mm fun foam from Wal Mart and used some velcro so it all fits nice and tight. I would have liked something thicker and with something on top of the foam, but didn't want to waste too much time shopping. I tried to add a light urban camo pattern to the arms, but without something over it, the foam really doesn't like keeping colors. Everything just kind of fades away. Darn shame, and too lazy to deal with it right now. It looks better than a bare arm and I'm just happy for that. Oh yeah, and for the camo pattern I used old leftover pieces of pep-paper.
Rifle: Good 'ol plasma blaster. Easiest route to go. It's painted painfully bright white to comply with weapon-prop guidelines for the convention. Figured it was pointless to make a nice looking prop weapon if I had to paint it a hideous color. In the future I'll keep a SPANKR or Spartan Laser around to circumvent replica gun rules hopefully.
Things I didn't make:
Butt plate: I wanted to make this since it's pretty unique looking...I even started. But in the end I just didn't have the time to make a new piece.
Hip plates: These would be nice, but if I can throw enough visual clutter on my waste, they shouldn't be too missed.
Thigh plates: Now these I would like, since they're camouflaged. Right now that area looks very bland, but the rest of the suit I think looks good enough to not suffer. One idea I had was to wear camo pants and a black underarmor top. Unfortunately the only grey-ish camo I have is urban, which has too much bright-white for my taste. If only I had some ACU pants.
Hm...perhaps I should have gotten some fun foam, shaped it, camo painted it, and velcroed it to the suit? Oh well. I may just strap some pouches to the legs to add some visual clutter. Maybe velcro a shotgun pouch with some shells showing.
ToDo list for any free time I have tomorrow:
Reinforce Various areas
Fix velcro on shoulders
Align codpiece brackets
Improve "O+" in shoulder
Paint "ODST" tag for back like in WETA uniform
"Every Breath You Take" is a creepy song. Yay for Pandora radio. And now the original "My Prerogative" is playing.
Anyways, that's my stuff. I'll try and take more detailed pictures of it before I destroy it at the convention. And yes, I'm sneaking a picture of my dog in also. She kept trying to hang around me while I worked, which is very sweet, but until they make doggie respirators, is also a big no-no.
Oh joy, this is going to be fun to wear in LA...4th of July weekend. I must hate myself. Can't be worse than real body armor in Iraq right? But I wasn't stupid enough to wear all black there.
Also, I never put in nice vents in the helmet...yay.
Armor,
Armor,
Lamesauce MA5 clone,
OBEY MY DOG,
Ghetto grenades and....
KEEP IT CLEAN
