KitKatGoose
Active Member
- Member DIN
- S127
Time for a new build!
Hey guys, it's been a little while! I had an incredibly busy year in 2024, but it was so great and filled to the brim with crafting! I haven't touched Halo armor since August when I updated my Noble Six for the Dragoncon Noble Team shoot (literal dream come true, highlight of my life, best day ever) . But I've had this build in my head since last February when I asked for ideas on instagram and Nick Scryer of Frontline Arsenal messaged me suggesting this! He recently finished his build of the same design and it is INCREDIBLE and made me so so eager to follow along with a similar build! I wouldn't be building this without his encouragement, thank you Nick!! Also a shoutout to Greywolfxn on instagram, who did render art of this armor combo that inspired Nick and is now inspiring me!
So, the basic design in question
It's a combination of ODST attachments, Rakshasa base and undersuit, and Reach arms. Because its across multiple armor cores and designs I don't have any references for all of the pieces that I'll be using together. I don't do tech stuff so I have no clue how to put that together for myself in a render, so I'm going off greywolfxn's art, Nick's build, and of course just looking at individual pieces in game. I really wish I had a good reference for this design on a feminine body, but alas Halo infinite has excluded any signs of female anatomy, so I will have to use my imagination. When making my Reach armor it was such an asset when dealing with scaling to have some curvature in game that mimicked my own body, but I won't use this whole thread to complain about how Infinite dropped the ball in visual inclusion of half the population, even though it bothers me every time I play the game.
I'm doing ODST helmet, shoulders and chest plate
UA/Type SN knees
Not totally decided on hand plates
I hope to add a helmet attachment, shoulder attachment, and the thigh throwing knives attachment when I can or if it feels like it'll work with the design irl.
I'll also probably just be wearing some combat boots to allow for better mobility and comfort.
I don't know the exact color scheme I'll be going with, but it will be dark. Probably dark grey/gunmetal/black. I'm always down for a lone wolf, rogue, sniper, assassin vibe.
While I will be aiming for accuracy in individual pieces, I will obviously be taking artistic liberties in the overall design, across armor cores and possibly combining attachments in ways they can't in game. This is definitely not my normal approach, I love having a design to mimic exactly, but I'm actually so excited to just see what I like and make a cool Spartan!
Reasons I chose this armor
I have had countless people tell me I should make an ODST through my years of Halo cosplay, but I never felt totally connected to the design, at least not to the extent that is required to spend so much time making something. But as soon as the Rak core was released I loved that base armor and was looking for an excuse to make some. Enter: everybody unanimously deciding it goes amazingly with ODST pieces and I was in total agreement. After Nick suggested the build I realized I could use all my favorite pieces of ODST armor (chest, shoulders, helmet), use Rak legs which I like much more than original ODST legs, and then more recently I decided to follow his lead even more and go with the Reach arms which I like more than ODST or Rak arms. It's basically the perfect combo for me to get fully on board with putting time and passion into it.
I also really appreciate the range of motion I will have in this compared to Noble 6. The idea of potentially making some fun videos, like spartan training stuff or even just silly things, has been a big motivator for me in my own fitness and weight lifting goals this past year.
Also looking forward to being able to sit down in this one. Noble Six can only perch.
Foam Techniques
There's easy access to the basics of foam everywhere you look. But I'm going to try to explain and show some of the ways that I tackle tricky pieces and make them as clean as I can. While the basics are usually the same, small habits and techniques can make a big difference.
-I use an Xacto blade for every cut. I recommend Z-Series blades, though they used to be even better than they are now before they changed manufacturers (I never even had to sharpen them), they're the best blades I've found. Smiths brand has a small yellow sharpener for $6 on amazon, and you can find a 100 pack of blades there as well.
-I use contact cement (barge brand) for every major seam (use appropriate PPE with ventilation and do not use around other people or pets), super glue (loctite professional liquid) for small pieces, and hot glue and shoe goo for reenforcements.
-I use many different foam thicknesses. 1mm, 2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm, and 10mm.
-I primarily use SKS props HD foam because it sands really well. But it only comes in select thicknesses, and often times I know if I will or won't need to sand a piece so I can base my foam usage on that. I also get foam from Hobby Lobby and Amazon.
-As often as I can, I make my bevel cuts with the first cut of that piece of foam. I very rarely cut a straight edge knowing I'll need to bevel it later, unless I know I cannot achieve the correct bevel with hand cutting. I see a lot of people cut pieces in a very straight forward way in a big batch and figure out the angles later, but that has never been my own approach. I go piece by piece, comparing angles the whole time and building as I go.
-I modify virtually every pattern I ever use. The pep files are an incredibly helpful start, but I add details, layers, modify base pieces, reshape things, and often fully draft a new pattern or new pieces to the pattern as I build. I do this all by hand, as stated somewhere above I have no tech skills and much prefer working with my hands on something I can hold.
So, last April I got started
I made lots of paper mockups, bought some fabric, and made a few foam armor pieces.
I made a thigh, a shin, and cod piece. I think I'll keep the thigh, I may need to resize the shin and cod but that'll get tackled later.
Paper mock ups, so tedious but very helpful. I use Armorsmith when I need to make a piece in non-uniform scale.
A first (right) and second (left) attempt at shin detail. The left piece is fully patterned by me after realizing I didn't like the look of the file pattern on foam. Much happier with the left, though I will probably be fully remaking the shins lol. It is covered in 1mm foam to give it a seamless look.
First foam piece and a bunch of paper pieces.
Onto the thigh
Gonna try to break down how I approached this bevel.
I traced out the base shape. Within that shape I outlined where the bevel edge needed to start. I cut that bevel edge along the inner line, and then leave the new cut off adjacent foam piece where it was and use it as the guide to cut the actual base edge shape as well. So the bevel is cut and the base shape is accurate to the pattern instead of the bevel possibly going outside the boundaries if I cut it too steep. Hopefully this makes any sense to someone else lol.
In this left close up you can see I have made the inner line bevel cut, and now have the cut off piece placed appropriately to guide my actual edge cut. I then did a straight edge cut down this whole edge, and went back in with the xacto to cut the little rounded inside pieces out. The little rounded pieces only needed a very shallow beveled edge so I went back in with my dremel after this.
I love little details and I think people get tripped up on them so I'm trying to share closeups that'll hopefully give people ideas on how they can tackle little stuff.
This tiny piece for the thigh has a base piece of foam, then a partially beveled partially straight edge piece glued on top, then a thin 1mm or 2mm piece on top of that. I made the little dowel detail with some 2mm foam, pre-bevel the ends, then super glue it to a tiny rod (wooden dowel is shown here but I think I went with something closer to a lollypop stick material), and glue that on the underside of the strip coming off the other piece.
If I recall correctly, I don't think this thigh is totally done but I'll have to revisit that when I make the second one
I got distracted with other projects the rest of last year and with taking a crafting break over the holidays and didn't pick this back up until January of this year when my best friend told me she's going to Chicago the same weekend as C2E2, so my husband and I are tagging along with her and her husband for a trip to Chicago and at least a day or two of the con! So that's my current deadline, though I will not be allowing myself to concrunch too hard, so we will see if that timeline works or not.
After tackling Reach armor for so many years, I always anticipate every armor build to take a huuuge amount of time to finish, but that's just not the case anymore with the experience that I have and the fact that most other builds I'm interested in are a good bit smaller in size. It's of course still a very large undertaking, but my brain is so used to something taking 800+ hours to create ( Noble 6 took me this long over a few years because I had to figure out my approach and materials and techniques for the entire undersuit, lots of trial and error), rather than the 300ish hours it will probably take to finish this lol. So I've already knocked out a good amount of pieces since starting back in January. But this takes a long time to write out and I wanna go play Halo, so we'll leave it here for right now and I'll get y'all fully up to speed soon!
Hey guys, it's been a little while! I had an incredibly busy year in 2024, but it was so great and filled to the brim with crafting! I haven't touched Halo armor since August when I updated my Noble Six for the Dragoncon Noble Team shoot (literal dream come true, highlight of my life, best day ever) . But I've had this build in my head since last February when I asked for ideas on instagram and Nick Scryer of Frontline Arsenal messaged me suggesting this! He recently finished his build of the same design and it is INCREDIBLE and made me so so eager to follow along with a similar build! I wouldn't be building this without his encouragement, thank you Nick!! Also a shoutout to Greywolfxn on instagram, who did render art of this armor combo that inspired Nick and is now inspiring me!
So, the basic design in question
It's a combination of ODST attachments, Rakshasa base and undersuit, and Reach arms. Because its across multiple armor cores and designs I don't have any references for all of the pieces that I'll be using together. I don't do tech stuff so I have no clue how to put that together for myself in a render, so I'm going off greywolfxn's art, Nick's build, and of course just looking at individual pieces in game. I really wish I had a good reference for this design on a feminine body, but alas Halo infinite has excluded any signs of female anatomy, so I will have to use my imagination. When making my Reach armor it was such an asset when dealing with scaling to have some curvature in game that mimicked my own body, but I won't use this whole thread to complain about how Infinite dropped the ball in visual inclusion of half the population, even though it bothers me every time I play the game.
I'm doing ODST helmet, shoulders and chest plate
UA/Type SN knees
Not totally decided on hand plates
I hope to add a helmet attachment, shoulder attachment, and the thigh throwing knives attachment when I can or if it feels like it'll work with the design irl.
I'll also probably just be wearing some combat boots to allow for better mobility and comfort.
I don't know the exact color scheme I'll be going with, but it will be dark. Probably dark grey/gunmetal/black. I'm always down for a lone wolf, rogue, sniper, assassin vibe.
While I will be aiming for accuracy in individual pieces, I will obviously be taking artistic liberties in the overall design, across armor cores and possibly combining attachments in ways they can't in game. This is definitely not my normal approach, I love having a design to mimic exactly, but I'm actually so excited to just see what I like and make a cool Spartan!
Reasons I chose this armor
I have had countless people tell me I should make an ODST through my years of Halo cosplay, but I never felt totally connected to the design, at least not to the extent that is required to spend so much time making something. But as soon as the Rak core was released I loved that base armor and was looking for an excuse to make some. Enter: everybody unanimously deciding it goes amazingly with ODST pieces and I was in total agreement. After Nick suggested the build I realized I could use all my favorite pieces of ODST armor (chest, shoulders, helmet), use Rak legs which I like much more than original ODST legs, and then more recently I decided to follow his lead even more and go with the Reach arms which I like more than ODST or Rak arms. It's basically the perfect combo for me to get fully on board with putting time and passion into it.
I also really appreciate the range of motion I will have in this compared to Noble 6. The idea of potentially making some fun videos, like spartan training stuff or even just silly things, has been a big motivator for me in my own fitness and weight lifting goals this past year.
Also looking forward to being able to sit down in this one. Noble Six can only perch.
Foam Techniques
There's easy access to the basics of foam everywhere you look. But I'm going to try to explain and show some of the ways that I tackle tricky pieces and make them as clean as I can. While the basics are usually the same, small habits and techniques can make a big difference.
-I use an Xacto blade for every cut. I recommend Z-Series blades, though they used to be even better than they are now before they changed manufacturers (I never even had to sharpen them), they're the best blades I've found. Smiths brand has a small yellow sharpener for $6 on amazon, and you can find a 100 pack of blades there as well.
-I use contact cement (barge brand) for every major seam (use appropriate PPE with ventilation and do not use around other people or pets), super glue (loctite professional liquid) for small pieces, and hot glue and shoe goo for reenforcements.
-I use many different foam thicknesses. 1mm, 2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm, and 10mm.
-I primarily use SKS props HD foam because it sands really well. But it only comes in select thicknesses, and often times I know if I will or won't need to sand a piece so I can base my foam usage on that. I also get foam from Hobby Lobby and Amazon.
-As often as I can, I make my bevel cuts with the first cut of that piece of foam. I very rarely cut a straight edge knowing I'll need to bevel it later, unless I know I cannot achieve the correct bevel with hand cutting. I see a lot of people cut pieces in a very straight forward way in a big batch and figure out the angles later, but that has never been my own approach. I go piece by piece, comparing angles the whole time and building as I go.
-I modify virtually every pattern I ever use. The pep files are an incredibly helpful start, but I add details, layers, modify base pieces, reshape things, and often fully draft a new pattern or new pieces to the pattern as I build. I do this all by hand, as stated somewhere above I have no tech skills and much prefer working with my hands on something I can hold.
So, last April I got started
I made lots of paper mockups, bought some fabric, and made a few foam armor pieces.
I made a thigh, a shin, and cod piece. I think I'll keep the thigh, I may need to resize the shin and cod but that'll get tackled later.
Paper mock ups, so tedious but very helpful. I use Armorsmith when I need to make a piece in non-uniform scale.
A first (right) and second (left) attempt at shin detail. The left piece is fully patterned by me after realizing I didn't like the look of the file pattern on foam. Much happier with the left, though I will probably be fully remaking the shins lol. It is covered in 1mm foam to give it a seamless look.
First foam piece and a bunch of paper pieces.
Onto the thigh
Gonna try to break down how I approached this bevel.
I traced out the base shape. Within that shape I outlined where the bevel edge needed to start. I cut that bevel edge along the inner line, and then leave the new cut off adjacent foam piece where it was and use it as the guide to cut the actual base edge shape as well. So the bevel is cut and the base shape is accurate to the pattern instead of the bevel possibly going outside the boundaries if I cut it too steep. Hopefully this makes any sense to someone else lol.
In this left close up you can see I have made the inner line bevel cut, and now have the cut off piece placed appropriately to guide my actual edge cut. I then did a straight edge cut down this whole edge, and went back in with the xacto to cut the little rounded inside pieces out. The little rounded pieces only needed a very shallow beveled edge so I went back in with my dremel after this.
I love little details and I think people get tripped up on them so I'm trying to share closeups that'll hopefully give people ideas on how they can tackle little stuff.
This tiny piece for the thigh has a base piece of foam, then a partially beveled partially straight edge piece glued on top, then a thin 1mm or 2mm piece on top of that. I made the little dowel detail with some 2mm foam, pre-bevel the ends, then super glue it to a tiny rod (wooden dowel is shown here but I think I went with something closer to a lollypop stick material), and glue that on the underside of the strip coming off the other piece.
If I recall correctly, I don't think this thigh is totally done but I'll have to revisit that when I make the second one
I got distracted with other projects the rest of last year and with taking a crafting break over the holidays and didn't pick this back up until January of this year when my best friend told me she's going to Chicago the same weekend as C2E2, so my husband and I are tagging along with her and her husband for a trip to Chicago and at least a day or two of the con! So that's my current deadline, though I will not be allowing myself to concrunch too hard, so we will see if that timeline works or not.
After tackling Reach armor for so many years, I always anticipate every armor build to take a huuuge amount of time to finish, but that's just not the case anymore with the experience that I have and the fact that most other builds I'm interested in are a good bit smaller in size. It's of course still a very large undertaking, but my brain is so used to something taking 800+ hours to create ( Noble 6 took me this long over a few years because I had to figure out my approach and materials and techniques for the entire undersuit, lots of trial and error), rather than the 300ish hours it will probably take to finish this lol. So I've already knocked out a good amount of pieces since starting back in January. But this takes a long time to write out and I wanna go play Halo, so we'll leave it here for right now and I'll get y'all fully up to speed soon!
