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.
Following the chest came the pelvis and setting up the finished piece to get a rough idea of the proportions. All seemed good!
The thigh was one of the first pieces I had made for this suit, and as such grew outdated the quickest. The one on the left was modeled a year before the game was released and at the time the only one that existed, the one on the right was released two months after the game came out and one of six different models and to date still the most accurate model. This modeler would prove to be my go to for the rest of the project.
The shins I had to make twice, the first one was slightly too small and a newer version was released a few days after I finished. The kneecap was a real pain to get together, considering it wasn't open on the inside like the rest of the pieces; it was a hollow object rather than a tube.
Like before, I was back remaking parts I had already finished. Newer models for the biceps were made with better reference shots taken by the modeler as opposed by freeze framing a 90 second, dark trailer. Knowing I wouldn't be able to find a better piece than this one I made two and carried on.
Forearms were easy enough, five pages each compared to the thirty pages of the chest.
With the base armor finished, I came to the point where I needed to decide exactly which character to go with. I reasoned that, no one else is ever going to make one look like my character, and I'm sure others will come along and make the main characters even better than I could.
With that in mind, I started working on some of the permutation pieces, namely the shoulders. While this does look big as is, I don't have the torso on to help bulk me up.
Here the shoulder and biceps are next to the chest piece, and you can see how all together the sizes seem much better.
Unfortunately I don't have any in progress shots of the helmet.
With all the pieces laid out in the dining room you can get a feel for just how many pieces there are to this suit.
Thus began the hazardous process of hardening each piece, considering all the pieces at this point are school glue and cardstock. Fiberglass resin is the method of choice for the job. I start by mixing up a batch of resin that I know I can go through before it starts curing in my mixing cup and begin to brush on the resin, just enough to get each piece wet from the resin, then I set them down to dry and repeat for each piece.
The next step can vary depending on each person, in this case I decided to go about 50/50 of the two options. Rather than soak fiberglass cloth in resin and pressing it to the inside of each piece, I used an about 1 part resin 1 part body filler with the cloth. The resin helps make the body filler runny and the body filler makes it a thick mud that's much stronger than the resin alone. There are pros and cons to this method, with a very obvious con being the pieces get heavier a lot faster, but a pro is that it's much quicker than multiple layers of fiberglass and resin. I repeated this with each piece.
The next part was something i didn't really take a lot of time thinking over: strapping. For most pieces, they just had to slip on, but others proved that that simply wouldn't do. The shoulders have bolts in either side through the biceps, the thighs are clipped onto a belt and the biceps themselves clip onto the top of the torso. What I hadn't considered though, is that the pelvis was fine width wise, but much too deep. With SDCC within 48 hours, I resolved to just have it on like suspenders, which worked for the most part but left me sort of floating within it.
Each piece was primed with white paint, which just so happened to be the primary color of the suit, a happy coincidence. Pieces with more than white were taped off and sprayed again with orange and any piece that had black on it, I just used a quick and easy blackwash which worked out well enough. After all the basic paint was put on and dried, each piece was drybrush with some silver and blackwash both to bring out the details and add a little wear and tear. After all, a super soldiers armor can be pristine for only so long.
Inner thighs and around the arm sockets of the torso I used EVA foam to pad it knowing they'd be places of friction. You can see this here (note the matte dark gray):
At this point, I had to try it on, I was so excited and so close to finally being done with it.
With the suit finished, the trunk was jam packed with armor and some just in case items: duct tape, plenty of padding, a change of clothes for when I'm worn out.
And my favorite group shot from the meetup with members of the 405th Halo Costuming Community (who I would later become good friends with):
Notes for Next Time:
- Pace myself. Like the year before, I was up the night before Comic Con putting last minute touches on the suit, and not minor touches either. 4 hours before I left for the con, epoxy was gluing the visor into place in the helmet.
- Consider strapping earlier. Don't assume that strapping will be easy. Assume there will be struggle. Assume that something will go wrong.
- Measure once, turn, measure again. Just because something seems in scale along the x axis doesn't mean it'll look fine along the y axis. Keep in mind that some pieces will need alterations to the finished modeled in order for the piece to fit in and look good in all three dimensions.
- Accept that pieces can become outdated fast. More than once I had to redo a piece because a better one had been developed. Initially I got annoyed that I was wasting my time, but in the end it provided for a much better looking, much more accurate suit.
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