Destiny Hunter Build

Hello People! I started working on a Hunter from Destiny about a month ago, and have recently hit a point where I have made enough progress to write home about. This build will be comprised almost entirely out of foam.

Some things to note, My work space is the limited area between my desk and workbench (a 2'x2' sheet of fiberboard with a cutting mat). I have areas I can paint, but I'm fairly limited by what tools I can use. (No dremel, etc.)

The Plan:


Helmet:
- Celestial Nighthawk
- http://www.destinydb.com/items/838933125-celestial-nighthawk

Torso:
- Prime Zealot Curiass
- http://www.destinydb.com/items/3833808556-prime-zealot-cuirass

Gauntlets:
- Prime Zealot Gloves
- http://www.destinydb.com/items/1835128980-prime-zealot-gloves

Leg Armor:
- Prime Zealot Greaves
- http://www.destinydb.com/items/1698410142-prime-zealot-greaves
Cloak:
- Hood of the Spawn
- http://www.destinydb.com/items/488703545-hood-of-the-spawn


Weapons:

- Badger CCL
- Standard Vanguard Paint (Grey/Orange)
- This is gonna be a future thing, it's pretty complex

- The Devil You Don't
- Standard Vanguard Paint (Grey/Orange)
- Using punished prop's tutorial.

- Blade Dancer Knife
- Grey


Color Scheme (Shader):
- Grey/OD green with Red Accents on armor
- Celestial Nighthawk has standard red/white/gold
- Red cloak with black design

Work Log:
Helmet:
+ Pepped (12/25/15)
+ Not Cut (In Progress)
+ Not Prepped
+ Not Painted
Chest:
+ Pepped
+ Cut
+ Not Prepped
+ Not Painted
Leg Armor: (Foam)
+ Free Hand
+ Cut
+ Not Prepped (In progress)
+ Not Painted
Arm Armor: (Foam)
+ Pepped
+ Not Cut (In Progress)
+ Not Prepped
+ Not Painted
Hood of the Spawn:
+ Stencil Found (Needs to be modified)
+ Not Cut (In progress)
+ Not Painted
Knife: ​(Foam)
+ Stencil Made
+ Cut (In Progress, redoing)
+ Not prepped
+ Not Painted
Badger CCL (Pep) (On hold until armor completion)
+ Not Pepped
+ Not Cut
+ Not Prepped
+ Not Painted
Devil You Don't (Foam)
+ Stenciled
+ Cut
+ Not Prepped (In Progress)
+ Not Painted

Post Edit Log:
- 12/25/15 Original Post
- 1/4/16 Added tool post
- 1/4/16 Work Update for chest, legs, helm, chest, knife, cloak and hand cannon
- 1/18/16 Work Update for shoulder, chest, legs, helm, and plans for cloak/hand cannon
- 1/25/16 Work Update for shoulder, chest, belt, and emblems
- 2/22/16 Work Update for helm, chest, knife, misc
I will keep links in the work log updated so newcomers can easily get to my updates. This is my first armor build: Please ask questions and tell me what I'm doing wrong, everything helps.

Solid plan! good luck

While working, I figured it would be worth showing what tools I am using.

Sharp Stuff:
- Scissors
- Various Flavors of X-Acto Knives (Those fancy looking blades on the top of the case aren't worth crap on foam)
- Razor Knife (Flip out)
- "Clicky" Razor knife
- Hot Knife (I find I don't use this as often)

Sticky Stuff:
- Scotch tape (for holding together rough pep models for scaling)
- Hot Glue gun (Cheap from Wal-Mart)
- Glue Sticks

Writing Utensils:
- Mechanical Pencils (Good for making light impressions on foam when tracing)
- Pens (Creasing Paper)
- Multi-colored Pencils (Good for differentiating parts when sketching out plans)
- Sharpies (For marking cuts on foam)

Measuring Stuff:
- 6" Clear Ruler (For sketching)
- 6" Metal Ruler (For guiding razor on Short cuts)
- 18" Metal Ruler (For guiding razor on long cuts)
- Fabric Tape Ruler Thing (Making measurements on body)
- Tape Measure ( For extra long measurements
- Digital Calipers (Bought on impulse, fantastic to make repeatable accurate measurements)

Misc:
- Ti-84 Caculator (An expensive calculator for doing stuff I should be able to do in my head)
- C-Clamp (For clamping things down, use caution on foam)
- Files (The right-hand one works amazingly for rounding off foam without power tools)
- Sharpener (Makes my blades last a bit longer)
- Sewing pins (For holding down templates on foam.)


Progress thread in just a few hours.

Build Update 1/4/2016:
Happy New Years, Dudes! I have a fair bit of progress into cutting and shaping the armor and the hand cannon.

Hand Cannon:
I got all pieces cut. The receiver is made of 3 sheets of 3/8" EVA mats and the Barrel is 2 sheets. I have all the pieces cut out, but only the grip has been shaped properly. I use a file (shown) to work down the edges and it only really takes a few minutes to get a nice curved edge and happens to be just wide enough to make the finger grips on the handle. The cylinders will likely be made from a PVC pipe with some EVA stuck in the end.


Left Leg:
All parts are cut shaped, and just need a little love on the edges to make them ready for sealing and paint. The point on the knee piece will have a layer of craft foam on the front of it to give it some depth without making the sanding awful. I ad-libbed a pad to sit on the side of the left leg, as I've seen it on other armor variants.


Right leg:
All parts are cut, shaped. I think I scaled the shin too small, and I made the relief cut (for easy bending) on the front instead of back. Probably going to remake it with a larger scale. The thigh and knee pad sit well.
(Pics above)

Chest:
I had this cut awhile ago and haven't had time to heat form or glue it. Will get to it after belt and helmet. They were cut out when I was still using 1'x1' tiles, so I'll probably re-cut them with bigger pieces (Get it to about 3 pieces for the base of the chest. (Top two are left front chest and left rear chest). I'll put buckles under the sides between the front and back halves.


Belt:
All the components are cut, pouches are bought, the scarf (sits under belt) is bought. All the pouches were found at a local surplus store. The detailing on the buckle thingies on the front and back are completely done and the belt cover is half done (I have 1 of 2 pieces done). I still want to integrate the green into the design, but I'm afraid it won't look right with the red cloak/ gold,white, red helm, and the dark colored armor. I still need to come sort out the design of the webbing that holds all of this together. Will probably go with an elastic/nylon webbing hybrid for flexibility. Will use my actual belt to hold it up, though until I get my under-suit sorted, I won't know.


Knife:
I cut out the two layers for the knife, but screwed out the blade while hot knifing it. Like the chest, I originally cut it out when I still had by 1'x1' tiles, so that made me need two pieces of foam. I'll re-cut it in one piece.


Helmet:
I made a rough pep of the larger parts of the helmet to see the fit. I had plenty of room (to account for thicker material), so I'm going to continue with that scale.I cut off the tape and laid it flat to be cut out.


WIP:
The shoulder, and most of the components from the helmet are pined, traced, and ready to be cut out.


Cloak:
I got tired of cutting foam one day and decided to sketch out the design on the hood. The material will be a thicker table cloth with acrylic paint sketching out the design. Some leftover grey canvas from my Steampunk costume will make the "leather" strips. The test paint I did bleeds completely through, so I'll have to make the cloak double thick. It is VERY red. I have a pattern for the hood, but I couldn't be assed to work with cloth this weekend

Most of my time is concentrated on weekends, so I will probably update weekly.

Wow, really great progress! Suggestion on the knife, if you have it cut in two pieces as a hilt and blade... instead of redoing it, you could insert a couple skinny dowels to connect the two.. the extra wood should give it a little added weight too. Only thing I'm not sure about is how easy/difficult it is to drill out the foam. Just an idea, I don't like wasting stuff. I look forward to your post next week!

I actually found a really cheap metal ruler that would fit in between the layers, but I burned the face of the blade while cutting the "edge" , so a recut was needed. Great thing about foam though, couple cent mistake.

Update 1/18/2016:
- Finished cutting and gluing shoulder. This was my first "spherical" part I've made out of foam, and it had some obvious issues. It's gonna take a bit of spackle to fix the spaces between the pieces.


- Finished most of the cutting and gluing on the helmet. Same issues as the shoulder, but not quite as bad. However, the fit is very close... like, a quarter inch on either side of my head close. Not sure if I'm going to redo it with a different scale, or try to widen it as is. I


- The chest piece has it's lower layer done. After the top layer is done, I just need to add some temporary straps to see if the scaling needs adjustment.



- As for other things, I have a pattern and material for my cloak, and I have an idea for the hand cannon. I'm going to finish out a rough model of what I have now, clean up the edges and seal the living hell out of it. Then make a mold and cast a translucent gold-yellow version out of resin. Add lights and you have a golden gun. We'll see how well that goes (and costs). I also rescaled the right shin so it's about 75% as wide as the thigh (the old one was about half the size).

Work Update 1-25-16

Work Update 1-25-16:

Shoulder:

- The glue on the shoulder has been touched up and I've started filling in the gaps. Using "Paint and Patch" (DAP drywall spackle) according to Spacemeat's tutorial, I filled in the gaps and am letting it dry before adding another coat to fill in the rest.

Chest:

- The two parts of the chest are assembled, cut, and stuck together. I laid them over each other, pinned, and test fitted them. All was well. Then I took it off applied glue, and stuck the damn thing on backwards. I'll need to add some extra foam pieces on the front to make it look as intended. The damage is minimal though. I still have the "armpit" trim pieces to add, and the all of the chest will be assembled. I also added a coat of mod podge on the interior of the armor to add some structure and stiffen up the chest piece (as not much flex is needed. I added some webbing between the layers to give strength in the over-arm sections that will need to flex when moving and putting on.

Belt:

- I completed all the cutting, and did a test assembly for fit on the belt. I just need to add the lower strap to the right side (under the long pouch). The pouch on the left hand side doesn't match (Nylon vs. canvas on the big pouch), and it's a tad too small. I'll need to run by a surplus store to find one closer. The scarf is surplus wool and will be between the belt and my waist. I'll probably need to trim it a little bit to get it to look right, but it should come out pretty good. The foam panels on the belt also stick out too much, so some Velcro and straps will be needed to get it right.

Misc:

- I made some stencils for emblems. A hunter emblem for the chest, a Vangaurd symbol for the lower shoulder, and a jade rabbit symbol for the upper area of the shoulder. (As shown in my fantastic drawing)

Great stuff so far!!! Hope to see more progress posts. By the way where did u get the big canvas pouch? surplus store?

I love it, I can't wait to see more, DAP is amazing, isn't it?

kHiel said:

" By the way where did u get the big canvas pouch? surplus store?"

Click to expand...

Yeah, it is a tad too big though. Still trying to find one that is closer to 4" by 3". That one is about 6" by 7".

- - - Updated - - -

soldier466 said:

I love it, I can't wait to see more, DAP is amazing, isn't it?

Click to expand...

Quite. I've put two coats on the shoulder so far and flexed it around. I'm suprised how flexible it is. I expected it to harden more.

Build Update 2/22/16:

Helm:
- So I'm in the process of making the new helmet, as the old one was too small. I added about 10% to the original and it looks like it's going to fit well. All pieces are cut and beveled, some are pinned together and I'll get them glued on next weekend.


Chest:
- Added additional foam strips along the "arm holes" which will fix my backwards placement. Pics when there is an appreciable amount done.

Knife:
- New knife is traced onto the pieces of foam, but ran out of time. I'll be using two sheets of 3/8" and one 1/8" sheet of foam. (See Bill Doran's tutorial)

Misc:
- Doing a couple tests with mod podge and paint to figure out how the finish will look. It's looking like 5-6 coats of mod podge sanded gives a nice finish. The "mask" part of the helmet will remain finished with the brush strokes, as it adds a neat finish.

woo another update. keep up the good work man. i'm also working on a hunter armor and was thinking about how to give it a good finish. will try what you did with the mod podge/sanding and then hit it with some plasti dip.

Update 4/4/2016:

Helm:


Finished most of the pieces of the "respirator" and the mask. I just need to go into the detail on the chin area and the gaps under the center "cone" thing. (Everything is pinned on at the moment.). So after all the fretting of needing to cut a new helmet. I put it together and liked the original. Whups.

Knife:

It's cut out now, up for Dremel once I have time. I'm using the Punished Props tutorial and template.

Shoulder:

Cut out the detail pieces and the 3mm foam accents. I squared off the rough edges and I will be rounding off the edges soon.

Misc:
Got a bit of practice with the Dremel and worked on the belt pretty heavily.


If I don't have this pretty close to done by early May, I'm going to put it on hold until early June as I have two other (much easier) things to work on for a convention in late May.

I am loving this build! Thinking of doing a Hunter myself very soon here. I'll definitely be spending most of my time on the cape since I want to do Strength of the Pack (and do it right.) I'm torn between an Auto-Rifle or making myself a full-blown Nightstalker bow....Good luck, I'll be following your progress!

Nice job

Keep up the good work. You might just have convinced me do a hunter build

Looks awesome! Keep up the good work

nerdman234 said:

Build Update 2/22/16:

Helm:
- So I'm in the process of making the new helmet, as the old one was too small. I added about 10% to the original and it looks like it's going to fit well. All pieces are cut and beveled, some are pinned together and I'll get them glued on next weekend.
View attachment 18125View attachment 18126

Chest:
- Added additional foam strips along the "arm holes" which will fix my backwards placement. Pics when there is an appreciable amount done.

Knife:
- New knife is traced onto the pieces of foam, but ran out of time. I'll be using two sheets of 3/8" and one 1/8" sheet of foam. (See Bill Doran's tutorial)
View attachment 18127
Misc:
- Doing a couple tests with mod podge and paint to figure out how the finish will look. It's looking like 5-6 coats of mod podge sanded gives a nice finish. The "mask" part of the helmet will remain finished with the brush strokes, as it adds a neat finish.

Click to expand...

Did you ever end up finishing this build? It looks awesome