Spacemeat's Halo 5 Athlon / Air Assault Foam Build

[Spacemeat]

Video Log #9 Fingers and Dip



So, back from SDCC!

It was a pretty bad slog trying to get the Athlon "wearable". I was building up until we had to leave for SDCC, and I was still building in the hotel room. In fact, didn't get any sleep the night before the panel...



Yes, that's a sewing machine. I built the entire harness in the hotel room. But, that's for another update...

So here's some of the better shots of the "wearable" armor:



You may notice I've been saying "wearable" instead of "complete", that's because I'm not exactly 100% happy with the armor as it is, and I'll cover that in a future update. But for now, we can say this build isn't done, and the next target now is PAX, so there's still more on the horizon. But for now, the next few posts are going to me clearing up the video backlog I shot before the con, so there's about 3 to 4 more updates before we can get to the SDCC post-mortem. I'm going to be editing and uploading the videos for the rest of the week, so expect a couple of updates in rapid succession. Then I can get started on the road to PAX and hopefully "complete".

In anycase, here's video log #8 - "Fingers and Dip"

This one focuses on constructing the tiny little finger plates on the gloves and laying down the first layer of plastidip.

So here's the tiny little pieces for the fingers, relatively straightforward. The tips are the only thing that needs any construction, the rest are just flat craft foam that I've glued to the gloves:



After this, all I need to do is coat it in Plastidip and paint. Then gluing to the gloves is a pretty simple matter.

Plastidip is also pretty straightforward as well. Though one thing I've learned to speed up the process is to spray the first layer of plastidip rather than brush. I've noticed that the dip needs to soak into the foam before the succeeding layers can go on smoothly. So since it doesn't matter too much about the texture and smoothness of the first layer, I opted to grab a spay and save time.

Here's the pre-dip pieces, just wanted to show off the excellent spackle and sanding job my girlfriend did:



And some post-dip shots:

 

[LoneLegionary]

Great job as always!

 

[Spacemeat]

Video Log #9 Hard Headed

As I said, I've got a bit of a backlog to get through, so the updates are going to up fast!

Here's video log #9: Hard Headed:

This log focuses on me hardening the inside of the helmet with fiberglass to resist the outward force from the visor when it's installed.

But first, I thought I'd share some WIP from the Air Assault helmet when I was building it. I realized I didn't put much up at the time because I was so short on time:



So, the first thing I did was put in XTC3D on the inside of the helmet. The reason I put this in was because I wanted some basic layer to keep the helmet from deforming when I added in the cheese cloth and fiberglass resin. The XTC3D was just what I had handy and I wanted some material that wouldn't melt/distort from the heat



Next, as you can see in the video, I lined the inside of the helmet with a few strategically placed pieces of cheesecloth. The reason I chose cheesecloth was because it's 1) cheaper than fiberglass mat, 2) gets hard enough for my purposes, 3) Makes less of a mess than fiberglass mat.

After brushing on the resin, I left the helmet to harden. I also put some bracing in the form of sticks to keep the helmet opening wide and tape in the visor area to pull it together. This was to keep the helmet from deforming while the resin set allow me to end up with a decent shape for the helmet


With the helmet in it's more or less final shape, I was able to spackle the edges and gaps, and stick in the visor for a test fit to make sure it was strong enough to hold its shape.



I STRONGLY encourage you to keep your visor in the plastic it comes in when trying this and only take the visor out of the plastic when you're ready to install. The fiberglass/cheesecloth tends to harden with sharp points for any lose thread and that can easily scratch the visor when sticking it in. After this was done, I made sure to sand all the edges of the mat with a dremel tool to make sure I wouldn't scratch the visor (or my face!)

I also added a new piece to the bottom of the chin that I didn't do in the initial build. I wanted to leave room to put my head in and out, but after I was done I noticed that since the Halo 4/5 Air Assault is longer than the Reach version, it leaves a lot of room for my chin to stick out so I decided I needed to fill that gap, and added the piece that I'd set aside earlier



And finally, here's the helmet with the first layer of plastidip:



That should wrap up this update. The next one should be my (failed) attempt at dyeing the undersuit darker

 

[Spacemeat]

Video Log #10 A Time to Dye

Hey everyone! So it's been a bit since I've updated here, I made a few more videos in rapid succession and neglected to post updated on this thread. So, here's the next few videos in the series!

This one focuses on my first (FAILED) attempt to dye the suit darker. Not much to say here except I have no idea what I'm doing
I heated water and poured into a bucket. When that didn't work, I put it in a pot and tried to simmer it. It got darker, but not by much.

This video is all about painting, well at least me talking about painting as my girlfriend was handling all that during the crunch to SDCC

This video is all about assembling the helmet and mounting the visor, since a lot of people wonder how it's done.



I admit that I didn't document this all very well picture wise, as I was in a rush towards SDCC and I felt the video would be enough. In anycase, I took a little break after SDCC and now I've gotten to work with reworking the armor and improving it for PAX. Got more videos in the can and I'll be editing/posting them up within the next two weeks!

 

[pipninja]

Love how this build came along, but just one question, where did you get finger plate files?

 

[Spacemeat]

Love how this build came along, but just one question, where did you get finger plate files?

The fingers are from here: http://www.405th.com/file-archive.php?do=download&downloadid=817

I simplified the unfold for foam pieces

 

[pipninja]

Spacemeat Thanks! I am currently working on my own foam halo 4 build for the midnight release of halo 5 and this is going to come in handy lol

 

[pipninja]

Spacemeat, I just checked out the file but i am not entirely sure how you did the finger tips? everything else seems strait forward

 

[Spacemeat]

Spacemeat, I just checked out the file but i am not entirely sure how you did the finger tips? everything else seems strait forward

Here's my version of the file

 

[pipninja]

Here's my version of the file

thank you, I almost had it lol, Cant wait to see the update for pax good luck btw sorry for the constant bother

 

[Spacemeat]

thank you, I almost had it lol, Cant wait to see the update for pax good luck btw sorry for the constant bother

Always glad to help!

 

[Spacemeat]

Hey everyone, sorry for the long delays between updates. Work has been keeping me quite busy lately along with preparations for the Halo 5 launch. So at this point, my video updates are seriously delayed. I've got at least 4 to 5 more updates in the can that still need to be edited, along with more planned work to do that I'll still be filming.

In anycase, I'm going to try to get caught up over the next few weeks, and once all the Halo 5 launch stuff has died down, I think I'll be able to sit back and process all the logs.

So first up is Log #13: SDCC Post-Mortem. In this video I go over the events of Comic-Con, talk about the mad rush to get the thing "wearable" and then go over some details about the harness and shortcomings that emerged from that con that I need to fix on the road to the next big event: PAX!

Next is Log #14: Dye Hard 2 - Dye Harder. With my attempts to get the undersuit any darker failing, I bring in reinforcements in the form of Asthmattic and Meltykat who show me the many errors of my ways

 

[Frozensnot]

Great video logs! A wealth of information! The harness seems like a smart way to mount the armor for Halo 4/5.

In the dye video, was there a reason they used liquid dye vs. powder dye? I'm still somewhat new to the dye world. Was it because your undersuit has some materials that are easier to dye with liquid dye?

 

[Spacemeat]

Great video logs! A wealth of information! The harness seems like a smart way to mount the armor for Halo 4/5.

In the dye video, was there a reason they used liquid dye vs. powder dye? I'm still somewhat new to the dye world. Was it because your undersuit has some materials that are easier to dye with liquid dye?

I'm still somewhat inexperienced in the world of dye. We used the liquid mostly because it's less messy, just pour into the vat and heat. As to my undersuit, it was a spandex/nylon blend and as you can see in the last video, I'd basically dyed it so many times, the suit was already too saturated with dye to get any darker.

 

[Guard1an]

I still think in the time you had you did a pretty freaking great job, besides the hand template you simplified, great link btw, are there any other files available for this pretty sweet armor ??

Thanks,
-Mike