New to Site and New to the hobby/obsession :P

Hi all,

First off just wanna say this forum is amazing. The knowledge base and the community seems really good from all the Lurk reading I have done so far lol.

Ok as the title says Im new to all of this, but as all my hobbies go it started with an Idea and quickly blossomed from there. I was messing around on Youtube one day saw a Iron Man armour suit and instantly thought WOW that looks amazing. Then searched "How to" my mind was opened to the world of Pep/Prop design.

A lil bit of background about myself, I am a father of no less than 6 ( Yes I said 6 ) children. And while looking at the pep process I thought to myself that It would be insanely fun to go all out on Halloween next year with my boys ( 3 of the 6 ) now me personally I prefer the Iron Man armour and my Second youngest is the same. But the 2 older Boys both love Halo ( They inherited my old 360 Halo collection lol )
So with that in mind, I decided I would be Iron Man, my Youngest War Machine, and the 2 oldest Boys would go nuts in Spartan Armour.

Now for my first of many Questions. I have most weekends free for tinkering ( Im also into Airbrushing and Xbox/PC Case modding )
So for 4 complete suits ( 1 Adult, 3 Children 10yr old, 6yr old, and 3 yr old ) Is the over a year time frame achievable? Im pretty handy as it is and am in no way intimidated by the process involved but from you more experienced guys that are familiar with build times does that sound do-able?

Atm to familiarise myself with pep work Im making a Mk V Halo helm, and a MkVII Iron Man Helm which I will complete regardless to sizing cause they would make awesome additions to Display cabinet lol. And once theyre done I will start the process of choosing set pieces etc for all armour sets.

Once again nice work people, and cheers for having me.

*Updated with first pics


1 Of the ear pieces which I will fill with rondo ( As hollow ) before reattaching to helm before Fibreglassing

I am new like yourself and am working on my first project. If I may make some recommendations from a fellow beginner, I would suggest making the helmets using pep but look in to Eva foam for the rest. I gave foam a try recently after peping a helmet and am now a true believer! it's quick, lite, sturdy, and awsome. It gives great results and although its more expensive then paper it's cheaper than resin. Some people plastic coat it but a few passes with a heat gun and two coats of latex interior paint and your golden.

Welcome to the forum. Generally this noob section is reserved for buildlogs, with questions being posted in the various "HELP!!! For XXXX" stickies at the top. Since it's been posted I'll chime in with my two cents!

EVA foam is a better option for kids. It'll be lighter, safer (resin fumes, fiberglass burrs), and a bit quicker. I think pep gives more consistently better final draft looks, but EVA gives pretty good effort to quality ratios. If you poke around you can find it getting close to paper prices:
http://www.amazon.com/We-Sell-Mats-...e=UTF8&qid=1373090725&sr=8-1&keywords=eva+mat

26 bucks gets you 24 square feet, which will last a long time even if you mess up. If you are on a time/money crunch, you can just glue it up and not even worry about plasti-dip or paint (it just won't last as long or look AS good).

I like fiberglass a bit more for adult pieces, but the weight and effort that goes into it can make it risky for kid suits. If you want to do pep suits for kids, you can find some quick lower quality options for getting around this though, like filling the insides with water based resins and not smoothing them out (If you poke around here, there are some buildlogs where smoothing was skipped and painted they still look decent)

Thanks for your advise, I should of been more specific in my intro lol. As it stands atm while in planning stage I was thinking all 4 builds fibreglass/epoxy helms. My suit fibre glass/epoxy chest piece ( I could be wrong but it gets best results for fine details etc? And being a airbrusher the paint is going to be a big part of build) and the rest in foam. And for all three kids body/limbs foam. Also in regards to build log this thread will be updated once I get time to pep the 2 practice helms and start first proper build. I'm still reading threads like crazy trying to absorb as much info as I can and am currently looking for armour pieces which I really like to build.

Another question with the pepakura build files, once I've peped/glazed/bondo'd am I free to modify as I please without upsetting original file author? As I build I will give recognition to who's files I use etc, but that last stage I was curious about.

Cheers again

Hey mate

quite a task you are taking on!

I think a year should be good enough time if you have most weekends free. Plus through the process you will get so much better and quicker at the work you do.

Single most important piece of advise I would give is take your time scaling everything. You don't want to waste time pepping and getting the scales wrong. Apart from that, have fun and ill be following this post.

Foam is a forgiving material and I would recommend it. I didn't even own a glue gun before I started building my suit and I got the hang of it pretty quickly ...I think.

AussieInk said:

Another question with the pepakura build files, once I've peped/glazed/bondo'd am I free to modify as I please without upsetting original file author? As I build I will give recognition to who's files I use etc, but that last stage I was curious about.
Cheers again

Click to expand...

Honestly, once the file is on your computer, it's up to you to do with as you please (this of course includes modifying it after it's built). The only time you start getting into hot water is when you modify someone's work (usually a file) and start to pass it off as your own work without any sort of permission/acknowledgement to the original creator. If you're modifying the file itself, whether or not you keep it to yourself, it's always a good idea to get permission from the creator. If, however, you're modifying a physical model created from a pep file made by someone else, that's a totally different story. That model is your work, the creator of the pep file didn't put it together for you, so it's up to you to determine how to finish it. There have been dozens of projects here that involve someone modifying a physical model.

As far as the timeline you've set yourself (I'm assuming you're shooting for Halloween of '14 rather than this October), it's going to be difficult; I won't say impossible, but it won't be easy making that deadline. It took me about 14 months to finish my own suit. Take into account that I was in school for 8 of those months and all I was able to work on during that time was my shins, undersuit, gun and a bit of the thighs; once I graduated, the pace of my work accelerated; I probably could have finished the suit from start to finish in about 6 months. However, you're talking about creating 4 suits, all different sizes and complexities. I say you've got a lot of work ahead of you, but go for it! Just make sure to keep us apprised of what you're up to.

Cheers again guys. So got the Iron Man mock helm cut out ( any one else find the pep cutting calming? ...well except for the Tabs anyway lol )
Gonna start gluing that together in about 2 hrs or so depending on traffic. So expect first pic upload then. Once that's done it's on to the Halo helm. Although I'm actually thinking of making the concrete decision on what Pieces I'm gonna use for the boys Spartans. And skip the Halo mock helm.

Another thing I've thought about doing as a sidetrack which I googled and couldn't find existed maybe. Is as a kid I watched a lot of boys toons ( xmen, transformers etc ) and one fave of mine isn't what I feel "represented" by cosplay/prop community. What I'm talking about is "Centurions" that show IMO kicked ass when I was a kid, and I idolised Ace McCloud. If noone has heard of it I will upload a pic when I get home. But I'm think of doing a Ace scratch build. Should be fun.

Cheers again

Sorry it took so long guys an gals had a ton of IRL stuff come up and got swamped.

So heres the Iron Man MK VII Helm ( Darkside501st ) All pepped and ready for Resin/Glass. Which I will be doing tonight. This will be purely a display piece as I have decided that me and all 3 boys will have Halo armour. For mine Ive settled on the Mark VI set which I'll post once pepped ( I wanted to do a Mark IV But couldnt find a set I liked. )

And the boys im still deciding.

The Centurion thing is gonna have to be a side project....

Considering the majority of your project will be foam, I don't think you will have a issue with a 1 year timeline to finish this. To me the real factors come down to time and money. By going foam, you will save on money as the fiberglass cloth and resin adds up. Time is a facter you will have to work out on your own. I liked what you had done with the iron man helmet btw, ill check back later to see how everything comes along.

Great job so far! do you plan to work on all four suits at the same time or are you going to do one by one?

This should be a really interesting thread to watch, You may, however, want to start a new thread for each project just for confusions sake. you know, or not...
Your Pep work looks nice and crisp, as well as that, the actual model is a particularly good one.
Looking forward to the follow up
Stu

BlueFreeze128 said:

Great job so far! do you plan to work on all four suits at the same time or are you going to do one by one?

Click to expand...

Thanks As it stands my plan for builds is as follows:

Complete Iron Helm/Practice run to familiarise myself with build process.

Make my full VI Suit with a target date for completion by November ( To coincide with release of Xbox One for the midnight launch )

Then start the boys 3 sets all at once starting with the 3 helms.

Noble9360 said:

This should be a really interesting thread to watch, You may, however, want to start a new thread for each project just for confusions sake. you know, or not...
Your Pep work looks nice and crisp, as well as that, the actual model is a particularly good one.
Looking forward to the follow up
Stu

Click to expand...

Thanks I'm also picky about messy threads etc, so my plan was to start new thread for my suit once this helm is finished. And the 3rd and final thread for the Boys 3 suits ( Building all at once )



Once again guys thanks for all the feedback/ideas. Im really enjoying myself in both the build itself and with this community.

Cheers

Pep work looks good man.

Ok decided as I had time this afternoon to resin the pep....and the moment I started with the resin, Cyclone "UMadBro" hit with winds coming from nowhere So due to wind I had to rush the first lot of resin but am hoping it hasnt affected anything too important.

On a side note, Im using a Poly F/G resin, and it started as a very slight blue tinge and half way through coating the liquid in jar turned a yellow colour ( Which I would assume is from it starting to flash ) is this normal?