NEW grenadier/jorge helmet and reach build

I went in to hiding over winter break and come back an Infantryman?!? I feel awesome about myself now, so I'm gonna be sure keep current updates on this project.
So far I've just got the helmet pepped, and it is a bit too cold and snowy outside in the garage, any recommendations on a space heater thats safe around resin and bondo work? Anyways til I tackle that obstacle I'm just gonna move on to pepping other body pieces until it warms up.





I noticed right before i put the chin fins on that the face shield and cheek was warping a little more than slightly to the right in this next pic, so i decided to brace the insides heavily to correct it and apply the fins with bondo freehand later.








This last one is an almost straight-on look at it after I corrected the warpage. It may not seem that big a deal but taking pics didnt cross my mind when it was real bad I guess haha but it was off about an inch to one direction.


Now its acceptable for my standards at least, no robotchicken pep but still way better than my first try, and all the dents and bumps will be cleaned up later. Thanks to ForgedReclaimer for the beautiful unfold!

Nice pep, very clean.

Thanks man, I appreciate it, you should have seen how bad the first one was lol

Update!!!

Update! So after a long debate with myself I went out and bought some clear epoxy resin as an alternative to poly, being that its been too friggin cold to work outside recently with fiberglass resin. It took awhile to dry, but other than that it did the job I wanted. Its supposed to be used for coating tabletops or bars so I used an oversized shin piece I made in the past as a tester. All of the white specs are where its really shiny on the piece.


You can tell the shin is way to big when its so close to my large helmet size lol You can also see some of the drip drops on top where I left it upside down to cure, I'm really hoping they sand down like poly resin and bondo would and dont react like hot glue.

Here you can see where I made a few notes to myself for the detail stage. I have alot of plans to overhaul the crap outta the game detail on this helmet to help it stand out, Im going for a chiseled look with natural curves where they seem to flow with the overall contour.

I then did the first coat of rondo on the inside, which I seem to have forgotten since Halloween how messy this can be. Especially with all the supports on the inside I made making it hard to get a brush inside to evenly coat. The pics arent great, but you can kinda see the dents in the top where I left it upside down to cure. Also notice the Great Corn Starch Massacre of '14 that took place on my work table. It got rid of the outside tackiness but left everything looking like the Pilsbury doughboy was murdered in my garage.








Right now is the hardest part for me, leaving my helmet alone for school and study time! My heads just racing with all the carving and detailing I'm getting ready to do. I've also started on my chest piece and I'm maybe half done pepping it. My plan is to pep continuously inside especially on cold days and as pieces are ready for initial coats of resin and rondo to move them outside for that, and do one piece at a time in detailing until they're all ready for paint. With the helmet details, I'm gonna try to work in sections in Cereal fashion and not jump around like I know I'm prone to do. Any comments, advice or critiques are encouraged and appreciated.

Update! not much to say other than I definitely thought I was better at bondo work than I actually am, being a prior machinist, we had precision tools and machines to cut angles, bevels, and contours for us. Boy was I pampered cuz doing it by hand can be pretty tedious, fun, but tedious. Here is some of my rough bondo work.




And here is it smoothed out, I'm trying to get it rounded and dome-like in the back as much as possible before I move on to another section, still a few flat spots I wanna work up but its still in the rough stage. At least its looking less and less like I started with a birthday cake.


Here's where I got smart and started using stencils for my detail work. I found a few concept renders where there was an oval recess on the back of the dome and I'm trying to recreate it.



It came out WAYYY better than I thought, I'm gonna bevel the inside edge and fill in spots with putty later. On to the raised lip in the middle. I cut out another stencil with double-sided tape and cardstock and used the same method.



Ehhh, not quite what I'd hoped, you cant see it but it was pretty crooked from the front edge. I'm gonna keep forming it so it sits straight and smooth it all out and once I'm happy with it overall I'll update when I start the next section.




Please feel free to comment and critique as you wish!

Looks awesome. Great idea using the reverse stencil for the recessed area.

Very nice work so far. Jorge is my favourite character from Reach, so I'll be watching this one closely. Probs too early to call, but this should come out looking really good.

reiseman said:

Looks awesome. Great idea using the reverse stencil for the recessed area.

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Thanks man, I had the concept floating round in my head and then seeing Cereal do stuff like that with playing cards kinda made it click for me to do it like that, much of the detail I plan to add will be done like that just so I can control the symmetry a little bit.

Thank you Squishy, it may be early but I dont mind you calling it a future success, I've been working on it pretty readily but I must of broke through in at least 8 places and now I'm just repairing before I move on. I went in to theater mode and saw that the recess on top is a bit more rectangular than oval, and I'm debating on whether I should change it or not. Anyways, thanks for your comments and I should be posting again soon when I get the back rim filled and smoothed and the top face overall how I want it.

Be my guest to leave a note!

I don't think anyone's that much of a purist to pick you to pieces over it. It looks good with the round edges, so I guess it ultimately comes down to whether you like it and whether you can be bothere/want to put the time into re-doing it.

Ok so I've been a bit stagnate, been cold and only did a few minor things on the helmet, filled holes, smoothed the top more to my liking, but not enough for pics yet. I'm sure no one would pick it apart for it not having a recess exactly game accurate on the top, but I just wasnt sure if I want a bunch of circular details or more rectangular with radiused edges. In the mean time I've got a shin and shoulder piece pepped ready for resin which I can do inside away from the cold and messy bondo and I'm also building a Skele for my duct tape double I made last night(That process was a NIGHTMARE, my gf reminded me of her powerfully sharp scissors as she cut me out) but I was just gonna do the helmet for this thread but now I'm going all out and doing the full build, undersuit and all! next post will have progress for sure

So I really wanted to have more done before I posted, but I met a few speedbumps along the way, mostly because I was happy with the crookedness on top. The perfect tool to help me would have been a small dotco to level out small areas without hitting others but I couldnt find anything electric that was small enough or easy to control, my dremel was just a tad too small and my air compressor does have enough mass to keep my dotco going. So I butchered my helmet with a big orbital sander and took it all back down to zero on top. I didnt like looking at it for a couple days. But I got over it and started to come at it a little more methodical and precise and started taking measurements for the brim to build it up to look like a separate piece.







Then I took a cutting wheel and made and angled slot just like the in-game has, my angles werent identical but it's hard to notice with the next step.




I decided to pour the rondo around the edges of the slot and scoop excess out of the middle so I would have a very smooth inside surface since it would be difficult to grind symmetrical opposing surfaces by hand. Whenever I get a chance to use a stencil or a controlled rondo pour I will because I dont have the steadiest of hands.



I started to feel like it may be too big. I have bulky hair with plans of dreading it and there is plenty of room for that and padding, but I wanted to get a look for how it meets my shoulders. I still think it's borderline too large, but I really need my chest and shoulders to tell for sure, or maybe you guys could tell me what you think. If it does turn out too big though I dont think Ill worry about a new helmet until the rest of my suit is done, I sincerely hate pepakura with a good chunk of my soul and I may transition to foam very soon.



Then I just went and backtracked and redid the stencils for the top rectangle thingy(anyone know what you call this?) and the recess behind it only I made it less round at the end and more shallow.







I hope I'm keeping it interesting but I just cant move forward on it until I'm entirely pleased with a section, I want the finishing phase to be just little spot fills and clean up dings so my roughing is a little more extensive than it should be. I'm almost ready to start my undersuit in the house and need to find a good forearm file to pep out so I can finally take a day to play with all my smooth-on goodies, I cant wait! I'm also thinking of keeping my shoulders simple since I already have Emile's smaller one pepped and I'm leaning towards Jun's sniper one for the other shoulder. Please please please feel free to leave comments and critiques I'm constantly working on this and will update again soon.

The helmet looks a lot better for the front slot being properly formed, but I worry slightly that you may have made that raised area on the crown of the helmet a little too thick. From what I see it's meant to stand proud of the helmet by a few millimetres, at the most.

Other than that, very good work.

Keep it up. You're doing great.

Arcanine said:

The helmet looks a lot better for the front slot being properly formed, but I worry slightly that you may have made that raised area on the crown of the helmet a little too thick. From what I see it's meant to stand proud of the helmet by a few millimetres, at the most.

Other than that, very good work.

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Very good eye, from the back the middle is low, but i plan to take down alot on the sides i just couldnt last night because it was too late and the neighbors complain about the noise but that will happen soon thanks for the input from you both!