Halo: Reach Helmets, San Diego Comic Con 2012, "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well"

In Halo: Reach, armor parts can be swapped in and out, mix and matched, and I had some free time on my hands. I looked through the dozens of potential helmets and decided which were my favorites: Commando (the one seen in previous pictures, Mark V (A), EOD, and Haunted. With this selection, I was picking a little from different eras of Halo. Mark V (A) is based on the original Master Chief helmet, EOD has been modified and carried over from Halo 3, and Haunted debuted in Halo: Reach.



Haunted was definitely going to be the most challenging piece I would have made up to this point. The visor couldn't be easily made with a motorcycle visor, I would need to vacuu-form one to match the bubble shape of this helmet. Then there's the problem that although I have a skull, it's also covered in flesh, so I'd have to find a way to replicate the skull-in-a-helmet effect.

Did I lose my skin for the sake of a costume? Keep reading to find out! (Spoiler alert, I didn't)

Halo: Reach Spartan Updated, Halloween 2011, Chest, Knives, and Lights

Around the September following Comic Con, I felt prepped for the upcoming Halloween. And then V4 of the torso was released. Welp. Considering the one I already had may have been ever so slightly too small to math the rest of me and lacking small details here and there, it was already time for an update.

Here you can see some of the differences between the two chest pieces, notably the detail on the ribs and the ridges between where the armor would snap together.





To read on the rest of the modifications I made, you'll have to keep reading.

Halo: Reach Spartan, San Diego Comic Con 2011, The First Big Con

It was decided, my family and I would be going to Comic Con. My ODST from the year before wouldn't cut it; the armor itself wasn't accurate to the character, the colors were off, if was hastily strapped together, and quite literally rough around the edges. With Halo: Reach having just come out, everyone within the Halo costuming community was hopping aboard the Spartan III train. At the time I was unsure whether to go for a main character or a character of my own.


I started off with the biceps and with a number of different models floating around, I did my best to pick the most accurate and start from there, the chest piece was released about a week before I started making it and at that point was the modeler's V3. It proved to be the most difficult piece I had put together yet with the most detail I'd seen and more complex curves than anything before but I plowed through it and finished with a very nice looking chest piece.





To see more paper turned armor, read on.

Transformable Transformer, Halloween 2007, The One That Started it All

At the time, my Halloween costumes were usually store bought and relatively simple, although my first five Halloween costumes were homemade by my mother. When I thought of what I had been the year before, an army man consisting of camo patterned long sleeves and cargo pants, I wanted to be something better but nothing on the shelves were worth buying. Transformers had just come out the Summer before, and that's when it clicked for me. I didn't need to buy costumes, I was completely capable of making it (with the help of my dad). I didn't have the time nor any idea how to make it more complex, so I went with a simple shell design to keep it all together (even now I'm trying to think of how I could make it better).



Putting this together is simpler than it looks, to see how I did it, keep reading.