ODST Build By Kusak3 and Ashuraa

Well as a way of starting with an introduction and the story behind this project. My Wife Ashuraa like's doing costume's for ren fairs and sci fi con's and what not. She has been on me for years about wanting me to go with her in costume to these events. I have resisted till now. She has finally won the battle and I have gone to the dark side of doing costume's. I informed her that the only way I would go was in armor. Originally I had wanted to so a space marine from Warhammer 40k. I quickly discarded with my recent opinion of GW and some of the little things they have been doing. With much snooping around in youtube and other venue's we both found our way here. I was already looking toward a Halo armor or a mass effect type of armor.

Thankfully my wife and I are to the stage of life that our two legged child is grown and out of the house and we are down to just 4 legged children which are perfectly content to spend hours laying beside you on the floor or on their favorite chair while you work on projects. We are both also well blessed with ton's of modeling skills between the two of us. We have spent years playing miniature war game's and building scenery and making our own pieces for these games. So moving to one to one scale in a lot of ways is a lot easier then modeling in 1/87th or even smaller.

Anyhow I am straying. We found our way here and I did one of the first things that the noob guides suggest. We started to read. Thankfully the two of us read rather quickly. And not only did we read but we spent hours watching the various video's that have been posted by various members of this fine community. We started out in concept that I was going to build a foam rubber costume. After a couple days of reading and more consideration I decided I did not want to be a cooked Kusak if I went to a summer convention in about 30 Lb of body encasing Foam rubber.

My first thoughts were I was going to do a simple Marine armor. From the pictures and models my conclusion was that it was going to be the simplest of the armors to do and complete in a timely fashion. About this point in time my wife Ashuraa stepped in and Said No if we were going to do this she wanted to do something that presented us with a challenge. Back to the drawing board I went for about 15 minutes at most and with her holding the proverbial wife type autocannon to my head I opted to go with an ODST. My though process was that the ODST armor presented me with sufficient opportunity to mix and mach part's and still look correct and be close to the Lore of the books and Games. Part of that logic being at 40 years old I am no small guy. Being a Delivery truck driver I am build more like a tank. May of been easier to costume myself as a Warthog. Anyhow I could pick and choose parts from various ODST Armors that would best fit my size. I wanted us to be able to complete one suit of the armor with minimal fussing around with sizing issues. And later if we really enjoyed the process we could come back and try some of the more complex pieces that I had concerns about fitting on my not so small frame.

Anyhow at this point in time it was off to the Races. Thanks to the wonderful resources of this community and us doing lots of reading and snooping quietly. We quickly settled on Pep. It would permit her and I to use skill sets that we already have and to advance skills that we know we could do but needed more practice in. Insert one week of my yearly vacation at this time. I have now spent a week patiently folding paper into giant pieces of armor. We started with Kirrou's unhinged shoulder guards. In a few hours we pushed them through and they weren't what Id call show quality but we had something to work on. I hardened them and we spent an afternoon applying the first layers of bondo to them and learning from our mistakes. And Mistakes were plentiful. I also discovered my patience for fine detail bondo work SUCKS as Ashuraa puts it. But I can happily spend hours on end folding and making the Pep pieces and doing all of the resin work because the odor from the Resin causes Ashuraa to have migraines. Anyhow we spent about 2 days on these two shoulder guards and at the end of the second day I declared that I was not satisfied with them and they also were not going to fit correctly.

At this point in time Ashuraa had been looking at the PEP's and Kirrou's hinged shoulder guards had drawn her attention. A slight increase in the sizing and we were off again on these. Again another evening of folding and gluing my fingers together and I had the PEP's done for two of them and now my skills on that front had improved dramatically and the result was much better. Also in the process I had been looking at the various chest and back pieces trying to find a combination that I was fairly sure that we could make fit on me. I found a torso back that I figured would present the least problems for my size and folded that out. That Piece is currently sitting on the work bench ready to be bondo smoothed once I make some adjustments to the neck guards to make it fit correctly. Otherwise it fits about perfectly. Again thanks to the various video's on sizing that I found links to here.

Somewhere in this process. I had come to the conclusion that in my opinion the component that was going to make or break the entire project was going to be the helmet. If I couldn't get the helmet made to my satisfaction there was no point working on any of the other pieces. I spent about 20 hours folding the helmet pieces and at this time I happy to say it is sitting on my work bench in the basement. It has received one layer of fiberglass at this time. I am going to add another here in the next few days when Ashuraa is not home. But I opted to go ahead today and start working on the smoothing coats of bondo. And I am very pleased with how it is coming along. A few more hours of patience and we should have the basic smoothing work done. I will need to build a vacuum forming table here in the next few weeks or so to vacuum form the visor. Once we have completed the helmet we will move on to the other sections that I have waiting. Once we have them further along I will begin the pep work on the next sections of the armor.

Ashuraa has the various pictures that we have taken so far and she will be adding them to the thread once she has some time to do so.

I also would like to say Thanks to all of those who have taken the time to do the various videos and FAQ's and to those folks who have taken the time to unfold the various components to make the PEP files.

Hopefully if we can maintain a steady rate of work on this I will have it ready for a January showing at one of the local sci fi con's here in Pennsylvania. We will do our best to keep updating this as we make progress.

Thanks
Eric <aka Kusak>

Yes yes, my husband has spoken. And here I am. Now on to the various pics of the work so far.


Here is Kusak, AKA Eric working on glueing pep pages together, and starting the glue work.




Here are the first two shoulder pauldrons we made.







Here they are in the rosined state before we scrapped them.







This is the current chest piece pepped









Here are the new pouldorns pepped.









Here is the back plate rosined.









And finally the helmet pepped.

looking great so far! those odst helmets are very tedious due to the radius of the helmet. yours looks great! keep it up.

looking great keep up the good work

Back to work after vacation and haven't even had any energy to look at it. Also need to get myself a detail power sander the rotary sander I was using for some reason is suddenly spinning faster than it was. It actually did some damage to the underside of my helmet nothing I cant fix. But still annoying. So once we get paid this week going to pick up a mouse sander and then possibly get back to work next week on my days off.

Kusak3 said:

Back to work after vacation and haven't even had any energy to look at it. Also need to get myself a detail power sander the rotary sander I was using for some reason is suddenly spinning faster than it was. It actually did some damage to the underside of my helmet nothing I cant fix. But still annoying. So once we get paid this week going to pick up a mouse sander and then possibly get back to work next week on my days off.

Click to expand...

I have built 3 sets of armor and 5 helmets and that walmart bought mouse sander has been there with me at my side through it all since 2007. I just recently (last month) bought a new one which in no means replaced my old one but rather to have two different attachments readily available. It is a wise choice to get that sander. Get paint sticks and chop sticks as well with a roll or two of adhesive 80grit and 120 grit. Keep it up yall!

Thanks Swampbilly. I will be looking into the prices of the sander at walmart. I work there ane hubby works for Lowe's. In that one fact it helps us save alot of money. One we can buy things with our discounts, and secondly being both of those stores are over a mountain for us, we can buy the items after or before work and save the gas funds.

nicw man,i 'm naver good at pep .keep it up ^^

Ok. Someone should shoot me now. I decided to start a helmet for myself. I thought Kusak's had lots of small parts, and we had to scale the thing UP to fit his head. Mine I had to scale down. Some of these folds are miniscule. Please remind me what I was thinking. Apparently I am a glutton for punishment.

Because you love supercons and dressing up and youre doing what you love with the person you love lol

<chuckles> Well got a mouse sander today and a new variable speed moto tool. Ash got some pictures while I was putting another skin coat of bondo on the top half of the helmet. <cross's fingers> Hoping with this skin coat that Ill have the top of the helmet done and just be down to the lower half.

Need to divert my attention here soon to build the vacuum table and a heat box to be able to heat form the visors for the helmets. I am definitely sticking to that the helmet is going to be the make or break part. Everything else is pretty straight forward.

More pics...

Well work has kept me pretty well away from this for the last week. I did get some time to start the peping of the Silenced Magnum. Have it most of the way pepped out but to say that I am disappointed would be an understatement. The Pep file is beautiful so not taking away from anyone on that. And my own Pep work has come a long way so the folds isnt the issue. Its just simply the silenced magnum is a beast of a gun. The problem being at the moment the grips are so large that it barely fits in my hand at all and Well Ash might as well forget it. Because of the fact that these are going to be props that we are going to be handling and holding in our hands and bumping into things with. I have a high level of concern of them taking the abuse well. With how the magnum is put together it is nearly impossible to get rondo into many of the sections without cutting multiple holes in it and or handling it in pieces.

Due to the grip size issue I decided to look outside the box so I could modify it to make it fit in my hand and ash's better and make the weapon a bit more tough so that if we smack it into something or drop it it wont break. Being I am rather skilled with working with wood and have access to a semi decent woodworking shop. I am going to use the pep model to build a wood version of the magnum which will give me the ability to adjust the grip size a bit and make it more hand friendly.

Well I am making progress. Helmet is done with resin and bondo work. Gave the inside of it a coat of Rondo last night to seal it up so the fiberglass wouldnt be sticking into the side of my head. Mixed it a tad thicker than paint and then brushed it on. A couple hours of finish sanding and spot putty to fill a couple little marks in and then a nice coat of primer and it is ready for Ashuraa to paint it.



Started the pep work on the chest piece as well yesterday it is about half done. Going to try and get the first coat of rondo on the shoulder guards that have been waiting for me to finish up on the helmet for about a week now. Fun I do say. Relaxing actually. Must remember to get some more sanding pads for the mouse while im out and about today

Yes I was the one who pushed him towards trying out the rondo. Apparently it does not have the fumes issues pure resin does for me. I was actually able to stay inside the house, above the shop, and no get a migraine. *Does happy dance*

While he has been doing bondo and rondo work, I was working on pepping a helmet for myself. First try came out just a tad small. I realized it before I got halfway. So being a goof ball I made a Kali Snail... aka one of my kittens inside the pepped helmet.



I have then decided to start a different helmet then the Rookie from Kirrou. I am doing the Dutch Helmet.

Well, we have Kusak's helmet finished now save the painting.
Here is Kusak wearing his new helmet. He is like a little kid with a toy he always wanted on christmas morning.



I made the foam insert to fit the helmet to his head. I used the foam edging you get with EVA foam mat kits. I cut it into lengths that I just kept building up till we had the fit right.




Then along the outer edges of the neck hole we used car trim strip. I had managed to get a lot of small strips of chrome from a display at work that was beigh destroyed.

Kusak also primed the whole helmet so the chrome doesn't show.


Finally he drilled a few ventilation holes in the shade visor, and the back edges of the side pods. We are going to add a small fan to the helmet with a battery pack. We still have to build our vacuum forming to make the visor itself.

nice work sir! . i love the helmet, keep it up

Thanks Anhtrung. I really really want to get the vacuum table built so I can form the visor. I am about as excited by the helmet as a little kid on Christmas day. I need to mess with the 15 minute suspension that Ashuraa and I put together for it.. got to admit I was sitting here with it on just being curious. It is hot to say the least even with no visor and I realized after a bit that the current suspension we have in it is causing a couple of pressure points on my head. One of them is bad enough I suspect I wont be able to keep it on for extended periods of time. I need to make a few more adjustments to spread the pressure out across the front of the helmet a bit. I am also looking into a small low voltage fan from a computer to put in the top of the helmet to get air moving down across the visor. I will post some pictures of that once I get that far. Right now it back to work on the pep work for my stomach and thigh pieces. Got to get some more Fiberglass cloth and other materials for on that end

Ok, we have updates on Kusak's armor. here are pics of what we have gotten done to this point.


Here is the back plate, which... again we are putting to the side, due to it is actually a marine backplate, and not an odst one. We will be making marine armor for him in the long run, but not right now. So that being said we are going to attempt to make the back plate out of foam.


Here you can see some of the shoulder pauldrons. They are the hinged plates.





He actually has them in the starting stages of bondo and rondo now.

I have also started a thread on my own armor build, which is going to be as accurate of a build in foam as I can do for Veronica Dare.

I agree with what you said earlier about the helmet being the make or break part of the build. It was the first thing I pepped too and I know how you both feel wanting to get it right. I tell you what though, that foam edging for the bucket support is genius!! I'm tempting to rip out what I have now and try that, because I got tons of that edging left over.

Those look like Kirrou's hinged shoulders right? I found that the hinge doesn't seem to make life any more comfortable than a normal solid shoulder. I pieced it together using a smooth carriage bolt with some nylon washers to protect the fiberglass and paint from damage, and it didn't seem to hinge very much. Idk if I did my technique wrong or if that's how it is designed, but I'm interested in seeing how you make yours work out.