Mjolnir Mark VI HD Armor WIP by ViZiONEER

This is my very first post on the forum here. Did a lot of research and theory studying before I felt being ready to start and finish such a project. Thanks to this great community the time I spent on this process was very helpful and inspiring.

One of the greatest builds that motivates me is definitely the build done by LongShot-X. And I hope to have mine ready for the release of Halo 4. We will see.

I do this WIP-thread to show off progress and to get feedback containing constructive critics and help to push me into the right direction when I'm lost at some stages.
And I'll also try to provide as much information as possible on how I do and what I do.

I hope to have enough skill to turn my vision into reality!


General info about me:
I am a 29 year old husband with twins at the age of seven.
Being employed as a Store Manager for a 40-hour-week I hope to find enough spare time to push this project onwards.
Height: 174 cm
Weight: 65 kg

I hope to add some useful content to this awesome community and salute you!

Until then, good luck with all your ongoing projects!

ViZiONEER

What I have done so far:
Pepped one armor for the hand, I guess it is too big a litte, we'll see in the furure. This one can be rebuild fast and easy.

What I am doing right now/next:
Pepping the Helmet

Looks good for a start, your folds are very crisp. This should turn out to be a good build.

Good luck

ViZiONEER!

Welcome to the 405th community. Your in the right place for learning and posting your build.

Your off to and excellent start with documenting your build.

Looking forward to seeing more.

Cheers!

looking great! yeah, the hand is a little too big, i did the same thing myself! haha, my only advice for pepping, measure and size the chest by width! and the boots by your shoe size! other than that, welcome to the community and keep up the good work!

Pep work so far looks crisp! What kind of glue is that? I used rubber cement which is quick, but it doesnt hold super well, so I'm always looking for a good alternative. Can't wait to see more!

somedude328 said:

Pep work so far looks crisp! What kind of glue is that? I used rubber cement which is quick, but it doesnt hold super well, so I'm always looking for a good alternative. Can't wait to see more!

Click to expand...

i use scotch brand scrap booking glue. it permanently bonds paper, and rubs off of anything else really easy! it does take about ten seconds to start holding in place, hope this helps!

Hello and welcome to the 405th, as to you're first build you're off to a great start. You're build page layout is clean and well set up. I look forward to seeing more.

somedude328 said:

What kind of glue is that? I used rubber cement which is quick, but it doesnt hold super well, so I'm always looking for a good alternative. Can't wait to see more!

Click to expand...

Here is the product information at the manufacturers homepage -> http://bit.ly/JW6SEf
It is an ordinary glue, the same my boys use at school. They have dozens of other adhesive products at UHU, guess they even have better ones than this one for the purpose of glueing our pep-files. But I feel comfortable with it.

@Darthoblivious: Scaling the pep files is one thing i feel a bit of afraid of. Thanks for your advice!

Thanks everyone for your kind words. I keep on building this one as exact as possible.
Update with pictures to follow soon!

CeeYa!

Had a really busy time since my last post, but unfortunately no update on the armor.
I turned a old and shabby bench into a like brand new one.
Here the bench before...


And after...


For sure, I had to buy some new wooden planks. Well, I've increased my lvl of sanding by 2 after that. Had to do this from 09:30 am, to 07:00 pm... phew. But it paid off.

Now continuing on the armor. Stay tuned.

Little update.

Time for an update. Still pepping the helmet.

These little parts are really tiny, it is hard to draw the fold lines and to get them accurate on the folding stage.


The smallest parts of the helmet, thanks to god my hands are sized like the ones of a woman, also small. :$ It was still hard to glue them. But at least i ended up with a result I am satisfied with.


This front part of the helmet has very small folds and surfaces, I wonder if anyone else had troubles glueing it together in a clean way.


Due to the small distance of the folding lines this spot lacks detail. Hope to fix this at the bondo stage with the dremel.


I am trying to build the helmet out of two pieces. One starting at the bottom, the other on the brim of the helmet. Built it from front to back. Hope to get the finished parts together in a clean way.


I've also added the paper visor from flyingsquirrel's pep-file of the HD-helmet. I think it might add to stability and prevent it from warping. I'll also add the supports before resin and fiberglassing the helmet. Size seems to be perfect, tried the two single parts on my head.


A bit off-topic: I changed the image host from imageshack to photobucket, way better since they don't have a limitation on total files. I also changed from my Nokia Lumia 800 to my old Sony DSC-W50 pocket cam, has great macro-mode-capabilities.

Hope to get the helmet together within the next few days.

Stay tuned!

Looks amazing. Your work is very neat, all the lines are crisp and the folds are great. And you're obviously a perfectionist, worrying over what seems to be a minute detail, which you shouldn't because it looks great. Can't wait to see the whole thing finished.

Thanks a lot SquishyShoes. When I craft something I always try to get out the best result my skills enable me to creat. Patience paired with perfection and progress then usually ends up in something I can be satisfied with.

I just read your post where you made it to some science lesson in the end with a half finished suit. Any actual progress on this or a new suit? I loved it until the point your chest warped. I'm very sorry for you.

good work so far

it looks to me like the helmet is to big but that might just be the camra

ViZiONEER said:

Thanks a lot SquishyShoes. When I craft something I always try to get out the best result my skills enable me to creat. Patience paired with perfection and progress then usually ends up in something I can be satisfied with.

I just read your post where you made it to some science lesson in the end with a half finished suit. Any actual progress on this or a new suit? I loved it until the point your chest warped. I'm very sorry for you.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

No that suit is pretty much scrapped. I still have the helmet and a handful of other pieces at home, but for now I'm mostly projectless. Although, that's not to say that I don't have plans or anything

And the chest warping thing, you just gotta take the good with the bad, worse things have happened to people on this site and it was fixed so no need to feel sorry.

Just take your time, enjoy your build and this will turn out to be one hell of a suit.

Whoop whoop! I did it!

I felt a bit confused if it was a good idea to build the helmet out of two main parts. I had to get these two parts together.


Did a little break and had a coffee to get my brain clear. And it worked out well.




I am still really overwhelmed by the quality of my helmet, my first real try on pepakura. Feel like Master Chief Junior already a bit. And the size? It just fits perfect. It really pays off not to hurry and work as accurate as possible. Summing up right from scaling, printing, doing the folds, cutting and glueing the helmet took about 15 - 20 hours to look the way it does right now.


I just have to add the supports and then it is time to resin it. I didn't glue the upper edge of the visor by now as i think some supports also have to be glued in there.

I also have a question on this: The visor doesn't have flaps all around. So won't I have to glue it to the other parts of the helmet to prevent damage? And what about the little holes between the folds? Do they also need to be closed?

The bad news that doesn't annoy me that much at the moment is, that my PC prompted me to instert a boot disk into floppy drive A: ... both HDDs don't show up in the BIOS, so i guess it is the SATA-controller on the mainboard which gave up. At least all my data should be still there.

I am now off to a short weekend vacation with my colleagues. So no updates until next week.

Very nice. As far as the gap at between the visor and face-plate... I have no idea why there's no corresponding locations on the face-plate to glue to the visor too. First, make sure you not forgetting a piece. If not, just glue the visor to the face-plate. As far as having no holes between the folds, it depends on how you want to support the helmet. If you're using fiberglass, it's not a huge issue. If you plan on using rondo or a urethane plastic (My recommendation!), you want to make sure there are no holes in gaps in the helmet after resin-ing. This will prevent the casting material from spilling and dripping everywhere.

Looks good and can't wait to see this thread's progress. Keep up the awesome work!

I plan using fiberglass to support my armor. Thanks for your interest and input Fudz!

Now a little update:

Pepping the helmet is now definitely finished, just waiting for my resin/fiberglass and some other supplies to arrive. I had to learn by hard that it is not good to leave a pep too long without progressing to the resin stage. My son dropped the helmet and it needed some repair. But nothing that couldn't be fixed.


I removed the paper visor and added all the supports. This is a MUST I think, the supports also reshape the whole helmet a little for good, especially the neck part.




Now here the helmet beside the Halo 3 LE helmet.



And here the solution to my little boot-failure-issue. BIOS battery was empty. Credit to LanCity73 for giving me the hint.


I've also spent a lot of research on how to do the perfect double visor.
I came up with some ideas, but I am not sure on which one I'll start an attempt.
The visor should meet the following requirements:

1. Bubble shape
2. Double visor effect
3. Tinted in reflective/mirrored orange

Don't get me wrong, I also love the common used HJC visors, but I hope to get a stage further.

So i searched the web for some retro bubble visors and found them on eBay and Amazon.
Here some of the dealers shipping to worldwide:
runawaychoppers - Germany, selling them under the brand "Biltwell" (http://www.runawaychoppers.com/)
sevensinschoppers - USA, selling them under the brand "Biltwell"
helmet_SML - Taiwan, unbranded
bikershopinc - Taiwan, unbranded (http://www.chern-yueh.com/?sLang=en)

I asked the people at runawaychoppers how thick the visors are, and if they are completely solid, or a bit flexible. They told me that they are about 2 mm thick and can be slightly bend.

Initially I thougt getting two bronze ones would be a good solution, but it is not the color I try to achieve and the second layer would not be transparent enough to see through, also the edges of the second layer would not have the same color.


So I thought about getting two clean ones and a car tinting foil by the company Foliatec in flame orange, unfortunately they only sell complete car kits that are very expensive and there is no mirroring/reflective effect on the foil. But it would have covered the edges I thought. Unfortunately the foil is not intended to cover surfaces which are highly convex like the visor, so it is not possible to apply it without any bubbles and/or folds.


The best solution so far is a silver reflective combined with a clear visor and some tinting spray in orange i guess. The spray is used to tint the housing of backlights or indicators, so I hope that there is enough transparency left after applying it onto the silver one and then on the clear one also.


Has anyone else any advice on this methods? I just found one person who has inserted such a visor, but without a double layer and with no modifications. I really hope someone can nudge me to a good solution.

Until then I am waiting for my supplies to arrive and start another part of the armor.

CeeYa!

Sauberes pepping, gute Arbeit! Mach weiter so

wow, for a first time pep that is one clean looking helmet. good job, good job.

Thanks Sealgair and Cinderblock.

Woohoo, just had a look again at your amazing New Vegas Ranger. It already looks like it came right out of some studio doing costumes for movies. There is only one word for me to discribe it: Perfect!

I've just resized the handplate and printed two of them. My supplies should ship during the week to continue on the helmet, so stay tuned!