Halo Reach ODST (WIP)

After nine months of working on this project I decided to finally post my work. I only have time to work on it during my breaks from school and I kept losing track of where I was so this will give me a nice refresher when I do have time to work on it. I'm trying to draw solely from Reach but I might have to refer back to Halo 3 for a few parts.

After months of researching and a few failed attempts, I took a fancy to the ODST armor from Halo 3 and I set out pepping that armor. I used Kirrou's HD Rookie Helmet which can be found here. Before leaving for my fall semester I was able to make a tester, pep, and fiberglass it.



I have the luxury of enjoying a five week winter vacation so I got most of my helmet done during last winter. Reach was released that fall and I made the decision to convert the Halo 3 ODST helmet into a Reach ODST helmet. The two are extremely similar except for the detailing and sides. I found some excellent reference photos on Flickr from commorancy and started bondoing and sanding. I used bondo to build up the sides to model the Reach helmet.



I’ve got to keep working on the detail but it’s getting there slowly but surely. I'll upload more recent pictures soon. It looked a bit rough in the beginning but I think it's coming together. In the mean time I’ve starting creating test files for the shoulders and gauntlets. I’m using Kirrou’s shoulder and Hugh’s gauntlet.

The differences in two ODSTs armors are the helmet, the thigh armor, Reach ODSTs seem to be missing the side hip armor and butt plate, and the side abdomen armor is different. Most of my references pictures are from the Bullfrog unit so I don't know if these differences are only in this unit. If anyone has any reference pictures they would like to share or know of a good picture or two, I would be greatly appreciative if you would share them.

Suggestions, comments, tips, and questions are more than welcomed!

The only tip I can really give is for the reference: it's pretty easy to gather your own using the theater in Reach. Just play a couple minutes of the mission "The Package" and then go to the theater and grab a bunch of screenshots of the ODSTs who are with you at the beginning. I'm sure there are other ODSTs in Reach, but I think this would be the quickest way to get pics of them. Upload them to your bungie.net file share and you can view them anywhere, not just when your xbox is handy.

I'm pretty sure there are ODST's in the mission "Exodus", and the lighting might be a bit better/lighter for taking reference photos.

Off to a good start on the armor! Good job smoothing the helmet out, looking forward to more.

Here are a couple screen caps from theater of the Reach ODSTs who were with the bullfrogs. I captured these to use as reference for my Reach Trooper armor. It's basically a UNSC trooper armor with an ODST chest, gauntlets and shin armor. Hope this helps.

Here is my best friend with my build, I hope that helps. It's not the exact same thing but helps a lot: