Day 10

Hello everyone. I have been busy studying, so I have not had time to update this in a bit. But as of 10 days in I have pretty much the front chest piece done, and I am about 1/4th of the way with the back.

I began to work on detailing the back pieces and I think it is turning out pretty good. I had a few slips with the dremel, which caused me to make things a bit wider than I hoped for. My dremel for some reason has around 6 settings I believe, and there are two I mainly use but I wish there was one right inbetween them. It's almost like say setting 3 is to slow, and then 4 is way to fast, so if I happen to slip it just creates a huge line. But anyways. Here are some pictures!

I also got in my EL wire for my omni tool I plan to make. If you havent heard of the stuff it is pretty cool! Bendable neon lights pretty much. I can think of tons of stuff to use it for, but I am hopefully going to make a plexiglass omnitool and line it with the stuff. I also want to make it so it goes over my right guantlet. So need to get that done first!

Thanks for reading and I will try to update soon!

The amazing EL wire. (pretty cheap too!)

Before I decided to cut out the spine pieces for added detail.

After: As you can see the top one is raised and it's showing the smooth side.

Day 9

Ok so while I was measuring out the neck guard I had made I realize it needed to be 3 inches longer. So instead of making a whole new one I just added To it. I also cut out the other neck guard piece. So now I have two, in order to give it the double look like the ME3 armor has. I drew the design on back so you could see. Also I started to design the template for the mid section on the back. I need to design the weapon holders though. Still working on them.

Showing both pieces back to back. Notice how with this way I get the texture on both sides.

Top view.

Shows the two pieces I had to add on.

Detail work

 Template of the bottom half. (I had to fix it a bit when I cut it out)

Back to the armor!

Well I went out of town last Thursday and just got back today so I haven't had much time to work on armor. But should be back in business soon! I'll update you when I get the neck guard cut out. I have one piece, but will need to name the other one just a bit bigger to compromise for the heat wrapping.

Day 8

Well ran into a problem. I had an xacto blade in my soldering iron, and well the screw part got so hot it melted off and so the screw is stuck in there. Will have to figure out a way to get it out lol

Day 7

Ok not much today. Had to do a lot of design work on the back pieces. But I got one working. Here are some drawings and the stencil. Haven't got the other pieces drawn out yet, but soon!

Here are some templates I started to play with.

Side view

Back. The 5th spine piece will probably be covered by other pieces.

Day 6

Hey everyone. I tried to publish this yesterday, but it was late last night and it wasn't working. I was too tired to fix it too. But...

So I got a new hot glue gun for like $12, dual heat settings too. My other one was dead. And so I got to gluing everything together.

I wanted a more 3D look like the actual in game armor, so I took some of the border pieces, which happened to be a good size, and put it around the edges. But while doing that it made it a bit flimsy so I took some scraps glued together and reinforced it. I also did this with the middle piece as well. Then I added the abs on :)

Here are some scraps I used to strengthen with.

Placement of the scraps in the gap.

Little strengthening for the middle piece.

Testing where the abbs should be placed.

Now I just need the belt, cod and back to go with it!

Day 5

Yes you might be wondering if you actually add up the days and realize that it has been longer than 5 days... Well I'm going by whenever I work on it that's a day. But so far with 5 days, I pretty much have the front chest piece done. I need to get the belt working in order to visualize fully but here are some pics of progress.

You might be able to notice on close up but my dremel slipped and I accidentally made a slice across the neck guard on the right side. And also the vacuum cleaner piece is somewhat a visual reference of where the belt goes.

Close up

Day 4

Hi all!

Sorry it's been so long since I have updated. Been busy and so haven't had time to work on armor much. But I did have time to glue the neck to cheat on the 1st set. And I also cut out the second foam chest with the neck guard attached.

I plan on making two sets eventually. One for my friend and one for me so we can go to some contests and own . Pics soon.

Update: here is a pic of the 1st one with neck piece glued on. Not too bad...

Day 3

Cut Out the abs and cod piece. Need to use dremel tool to do some detailing before I begin to heat form it.

May look a bit funny where cod piece and abs connect, but I haven't got the belt piece drawn out yet.

Update: I got out the heat gun and toyed around with it to get the feel for how it's going to work. As well as how the dremel works on the foam. And so now, I have started to work on detailing the pieces I have cut out. The dremel tool works great at cutting lines and sanding down the textured side to get a smooth look.

I am however foreseeing some difficulties attaching the neck guard to the chest plate once it's heat formed. Might have to redo the chest with the neck guard attached, but I kinda wanted a more separated feel so I'll just have to think of something. But it's looking good so far.

Update: Yes confirmed that will have I redo the chest piece and include the neck guard in it. Other wise I will not look as uniform and sleek as mass effect armor does. But might make another chest guard for kicks out of it. No need for it to go to waste.

Day 2

Ok so here is the stencils I have. Added some detail and put it in sharpie. Will be cutting out soon

Update: I have cut out some foam pieces. And here are couple of the pictures. I'm sure my cuts to be a little bit cleaner if I had a sharper blade, but the heating of the dull blade that I have on seems to work just fine.

Ok so I'm on my phone blogging and I can't really write about pictures, or at least in the way that I want, but I wanted to add some info to them. (edit: went back and put description below pics)

Side by side foam and stencil.

Just got done stenciling the abs and cod piece, might have to make the cod bigger for curving.

First set cut out and laid on top of each other to get a feel for what it will be

You have to be careful with the soldering iron, because if it touches the armor while cutting you end up with burn marks like these.

Here is my stencils before I cut them all out.

What a lovely day outside for some building!

Heated Xacto Knife

Hey everyone! Just modded my soldering iron to use an xacto blade to help cut the foam. The heated blade makes it much easier.

I had looked at Plasmana's tutorial on how to mod one, and it some what worked for me. You can find his work here

Hot Knife Soldering Iron

But I had a small xacto knife that worked perfectly! I was thinking, " I need something like what is on the knife itself to hold it in for me, then I thought, why not use it!" I had a big knife, but that the thread on the screw was to big to work with my soldering iron. But the small one worked great! So now I have a heated exacto knife! I got mine at hobby lobby awhile back, their brand for pretty cheap. A few dollars at most. So thought I would share!

Day 1

Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to show y'all my new build that I am going to be working on. Granted I haven't actually started, still in the process of developing some patterns and getting reference shots to go on. But my foam pieces just got in today. They were a little bit thinner than I wanted, due to the fact that the pic on eBay showed 1/2 inch while it's actually less, but figured I'd work with it.
Also ordered some EL wire to add some lighting effects to armor, as well as use in an omni tool that I will hope to make out of some plexiglas shaped with heat gun. (which by the way, has anyone tried this? Or even know if it will work?)


But anyways, I built a halo set with pep and figured I'd try some foam out. Part inspired by Indy moguls video awhile back on how to make sic fy armor as well as EvilFXs mass effect 2 build (his stuff is amazing!)

I will be taking lots of pics and hopefully will have some progress up soon. Will be making a run to home depot for a few supplies later today. But for now I'm just hoping to get a good build started that everyone can enjoy!

-Update: so pretty much that was from a post I put up today a the forums over at www.405th.com. Some really amazing folks out there who love to make some cool props and are very helpful and have great tutorials for getting started. But I have a few pics of some preliminary drawings and a few I my stencils I have begun working on the chest piece.

After doing some self measuring I also reaffirmed myself in the fact that I need to diet an exercise more...but that's beside the point. But the drawings are hard to see as thy are in pencil and I will post
better ones in sharpie.

These are being drawn by hand on a poster board with ghost likes that really help with symmetry.
In one picture I used a piece of printer paper and overplayed once side, traced it, cut it out, and flipped it over for the other side. This was a good technique for me, because I don't have a light table to half the poster board and draw straight on it.

Hopefully I can get all the stenciling done tomorrow and start cutting out foam pieces. :)