MarkVII foam armor build

[InterfectorF]

I am a little late to the party since my armor is already finished at this point, but I have plenty of progress pictures for a build log anyways. I learned a lot so I'll share my problems and solutions and what I would do differently next time. Maybe it'll be helpful for others

Index
1 - Materials, tools, programs [you are here]
2 - Lower arms
3 - Upper arms + Chest
4 - "The rest of the f*ing owl"
5 - Helmet
6 - Boots
7 - Strapping
8 - Electronics
9 - Painting + weathering
10 -The end result + things I still want to add
11 - Added hand plates
12 - Deployment
13 - Cosplay competition!
14 - Photoshoot

Materials used:
- about 2 square meters of EVA foam, mostly high density 5mm and 10 mm thick
- contact cement
- hot glue
- transparant flexi paint
- acrylic paint
- several sizes sponge brushes
- some old regular brushes
- Motor helmet visor
- Magnets+washers
- foam clay
- small plastic buckles
- 20mm Polypropylene band
- 20mm Elastic bands
- "mask eye lights" with attached battery pack and switch
- usb/5 volt powered fan(s) (I used noctua fans)
- Motorcycle gloves
- ski mask/balaclava

As you may have guessed I bought most of my materials at cosplayshop.be

Tools:
- hot glue gun
- stanley/craft knife
- heat gun
- Dremel/rotary tool
- whetstone
- 3D printer (optional)

Programs:
- Pepakura
- Blender
- Cura

130 hours of work, give or take, over the span of 6 months
and I do not want to think about the money spent

 

[InterfectorF]

The lower arms
One of the easiest pieces of armor is an arm bracer in my opinion, I have made a few before and figured it would be a good place to test the waters (it is, I recommend). I printed the pepakura file and cut the pieces from high density 5mm foam. I used a single knife for this entire project that I kept sharp with a whetstone. I highly recommend this because it saves you from having to buy a bazillion knives. I highly recommend checking out KamuiCosplay's video on cutting foam for tips on how to cut clean and how to sharpen your knife properly.
I marked edges that needed an inward angled cut / with a dashed line and outward angled cut \ with a dotted line. I also looked closely at my references and marked which pieces needed tobe either 5 or 10 mm thick.

I glued the pieces together using contact cement and strengthened the seams onthe inside with hot glue. The piece ended up a bit too large though the length was good (aka I am not buff enough) so I took out a section, you can see the seam in this picture.

The second bracer is as simple as flippingthe patterns over and cutting out the pieces that way, you'll endup with a mirrored piece

I made a mistake here! I did not watch my reference closely enough and missed the raised edge in the middle. You can see I noticed and did it right on the second bracer (the black one)
Note that the colour of the foam doesn't matter BUT ifyou are planning on a light coloured armor then a light foam will save you a few layers of paint later.

 

[InterfectorF]

Upper arms
For some reason this is the only progress pic I have of the early process of the upper arm pieces, this is my cat Lilith. Process is basically the same as the lower arms.

Chest
This is by far the most complicated piece, there's so many parts and because the fit is important it is good to assemble it in paper before you make it out of foam. That way you won't waste foam as much, hopefully. I had the pepakura file open at all times while working on this so I wouldn't get lost.

Once you start cutting make sure to number your pieces because there is a lot

I started with the larger pieces at the front and worked my way out from there. You can see here how I marked my edges with dotted and dashed lines for cutting angles.

my head fits though the neck opening by a hair so to put the chest armor on I made a connection in the armpit area with magnets instead of glue so I can snap them apart and slide the wholething over my head and shoulders before snapping it close. I used magnets on one side and metal washers on the other, to save on magnets.
Update: I ended up replacing the magnets for plastic buckles since the magnets would often slide apart

 

[InterfectorF]

The rest of the f*ing owl
the process of cutting, glueing and assembly is otherwise not very interesting. Just keep reference close by and stay sharp, I have definitely glued things on backwards on a late evening.
I filled in awkward gaps and seams with foam clay that I sanded flat using both a dremel and regular sand paper. Foam clay is easy to use: wet the surface, put clay on and use a wet finger to smooth it out. Once its dry it can be sanded and painted like the rest of the foam.

The belt is another thing I really should have done differently. It has two buckles attached with elastic and some pieces of foam to keep the belt "round". See the drawing below.

yeah this is the first thing that broke ofcourse. It's also not adjustable so really not ideal. I am still thinking of a better way to do this and I'll edit my post with what I end up doing.
The pouches on the belt are not functional and I should have made them functional! I could have kept buisness cards, batteries and like smints in them or something. Handy stuff. Make the pouches functional, because why not?

Edit: I ended up making loops on the backside of the belt pieces and looping and actual belt through that goes all the way around, so the foam does none of the work

 

[InterfectorF]

The helmet
The helmet ended up a little messy, I had to clean a lot of the seams up with a dremel or foam clay. I used a 3D printer to make the more complicated pieces like the air filters and the little "nose" piece. You can make these out of foam too but I couldn't make them as clean as the printer could.
My main tip: do the helmet last that way you have the experience from putting together all the other parts and you'll have the best possible chance to make a good helmet. I know the helmet is the most fun part, but trust me

the visor is a motorcycle visor that I got from amazon iirc. I trimmed the visor with saw bit on the dremel, protecting the visor with painters tape along the edge where I needed to cut. There's quite a bit of give in the visor so you can carefully wrestle the visor inside. I did not glue it in place, pressure does enough for now.

I just have some upholstery foam padding inside to keep the helmet nice and snug on my head. My noggin' fits through the opening so I didn't need anything fancy to get it over my head.
I added a "scar" over one side of the helmet with a soldering iron. You can see here how I smoothed out the seams with foam clay.

 

[N8TEBB]

WOW this looks great so far my guy!! You've really done a great job. Making helmets out of foam is certainly not easy. I've got to get my hands on some of those LEDs you listed in the first post because I think they're just what I'm looking for! Also, I've made that same torso with the pattern. I counted over 100 pieces, and lots of the have to be mirrored. So. much. work.

 

[InterfectorF]

Thankyou! I'm glad the mention of the light thingies was helpful! I looked into rigging up a whole LED system when I came across those things and they saved me some time and having to do more math. The chest armor is definitely the most 3D-chess part of the build!

 

[InterfectorF]

Boots
I did not want to glue anything directly to shoes and wanted to be sure I could comfortably walk for a while. I like stuff to not be permanent to a point. So how do you make shoe covers without ruining your shoes? This is what I did:

There's two pieces: the front and back of the shoe, both have two elastic straps, onethat goes underneath the shoe between theheel and the front of the shoe and one that goes around the shoe in the opposite direction of where the piece points.

I glued these down double: contact cement on the elastic and once that was stuck I covered that liberally with hot glue. This is gonna be under some stress and get the most abuse, it needs to be really. stuck.

 

[InterfectorF]

Strapping
There's some more pieces that need to be kept in place. Here's how I did that:
The upper shoulder pieces just attach to the torso piece with buckles. This is the only thing about this suit that I cannot fasten myself when suiting up due to the chest area being too bulky for me to reach my other shoulder. There might be a better way but it is slightly adjustable which is neat!

The upper legs both have a strap with a loop that I can feed a belt though. I made only one strap at first but with longer wearing I noticed the pieces would slowly turn so I plan to have a second pair of straps on the back to prevent this (hopefully) as pictured below.

For the codpiece I am currently workshopping a new method, as mentioned before. My current idea is this:

The idea is that I am not ruining a belt and I can adjust the tightness on the fly. I could also possibly use the same belt for this as the one for the upper leg pieces. I'll update this post when I figure this out.

The lower legs and lower arm pieces just stick with pressure, using a little upholstery foam where things were sliding.
The knee pieces are held in place with two straps of tight fitting elastic, similar to skating knee caos. Like the shoe covers: use glue liberally! This is going to be under a lot of strain.

 

[InterfectorF]

Electronics
This is all a little scrappy but I used small pieces of foam to create straps and pouches for the batteries and lights to sit in. I made these quite snug so nothing can fall out but left them open enough so I can pullthem out and replace the batteries or lights in case something breaks.
I have a single fan installed in the chest piece since thats where I had space for one, it is aimed slightly up so it hits my chest and neck. It does a wonderful job keeping my visor clear and keeping me at a reasonable temperature (aka I did not die).
The van (this is a noctua computer van) is attached with pieces of wire that I poked through scrap foam on the inside of the suit and the holes already in the frame of the fan. This way I can take it out without breaking anything. At the back of the armor I have a little pouch made of foam that I can put a powerbank into to power the fan. Again made so itcan be taken out for charging and use for other things.

 

[InterfectorF]

Painting
Before I started painting I found myself a colouring page of the Mrk7 armor and roughly coloured it in photoshop. This gives me a good way to play around with the placement of the colours. You can ofcourse just base this on your favorite in-game skin but I am an artist at heart and I wanted something unique to me. So here's the design I came up with.
[Template here]

I used small plastic containers, like the trowaway plastic stuff you get when you order takeout, to mix my paint in. Do not use your brush to mix paint! You'll ruin your brush when you get paint all up in the base. Use a stick (like throwaway chopsticks) or palette knife to mix. I used acrylic paints and mixed that about 1:1 with transparant flexipaint. This keeps the paint flexible when it dries. I used spronge brushes to apply the paint and I needed 2-3 layers to properly cover the foam. I did notice this paint can stick to itself and masking tape and pull back off so use masking tape meant for fragile paint or wallpaper!

Bonus: cat in chest armor

Weathering
First off: here is a good video on how to weather foam armor by Punished Props
There's 2 types of weathering I used: paint chipping and adding dirt. For the look of chipping paint I used a flat brush and silver paint and went over all the spots that would get hit most if this were a real armor used in rough conditions. This knee piece shows the end result quite well.

Then there is adding dirt: A common method for doing this is called "applying a wash" basically you thin out brown and black paint to the consistency of milk and spray that all over your prop, then wipe the excess off. Whatyou get left with is a dark colour in all the grooves and holes. This can add a lot of depth and work really well. In my case I thought the effect was too subtle so I used paint and an old brush to apply more sand and dirt colours in places that felt natural.
In the two pictures below you can kindof see the difference between before and after I applied the wash.

 

[InterfectorF]

The end result!

Things I still want to add
- I am missing the boosters on the back, which I may or may not add later.
- The back/stomach undersuit, I can probably use thin low density foam and close it at the back with velcro.

This might not be the final entry in this thread! But for now it is.

 

[N8TEBB]

This is the only thing about this suit that I cannot fasten myself when suiting up due to the chest area being too bulky for me to reach my other shoulder. There might be a better way but it is slightly adjustable which is neat!

This is the part I'm currently dealing with. I'm am in the middle of modifying my torso piece to open at the bottom. When it opens up, I have enough flexibility to reach through the armhole and clip in the shoulder pieces. I've strapped my shoulder pieces in the same way as you did.

Looks great dude! Love it!

 

[InterfectorF]

This is the part I'm currently dealing with. I'm am in the middle of modifying my torso piece to open at the bottom. When it opens up, I have enough flexibility to reach through the armhole and clip in the shoulder pieces. I've strapped my shoulder pieces in the same way as you did.

Looks great dude! Love it!

I haven't tried attaching them before putting my arms through, that might be possible. Mine already opens on the bottom at least. I should maybe include a closeup of that

 

[vTRONCATv]

This is rad as hell man. I’m going to do the same thing you did with the strapping in the thigh pieces, because even after sewing Velcro to the undersuit and adhering the other part above the knees, they STILL slowly turned as I was walking and it aggravated me to no end.

How are the knees holding up? For my Reach build, I attached the knees to the top of the shins to prevent any strain and to give myself better articulation. Although, I know that the Mk VII knees may sit in a different place than the Mk V does.

 

[InterfectorF]

This is rad as hell man. I’m going to do the same thing you did with the strapping in the thigh pieces, because even after sewing Velcro to the undersuit and adhering the other part above the knees, they STILL slowly turned as I was walking and it aggravated me to no end.

How are the knees holding up? For my Reach build, I attached the knees to the top of the shins to prevent any strain and to give myself better articulation. Although, I know that the Mk VII knees may sit in a different place than the Mk V does.

Thanks! Yeah the turning tigh pieces are a pain, I hope my solution actually works: I have yet to test it.

The knees hold up fine, they press a little bit into my shins when I step forward but nothing that I felt by the end of the day (as opposed to my shoulders) Bending my knees is a-ok and because its foam it gives a little, I can kneel and sit just fine. I thought of attaching the knee pieces to the shins but I don't like how that looks when you walk (seeing the knee piece float a good 10-15 cm away from your knee when you bend you leg)

 

[pythonmaster245]

That looks really good! Planning my own MKVII build rn, and this helps!

 

[InterfectorF]

That looks really good! Planning my own MKVII build rn, and this helps!

Awesome! I'm glad that this helps at least someone ^^

 

[Rock Lobbster]

Those light panels are absolutely genius! Great job with the chest fan too, more people need to hop on that trend

 

[InterfectorF]

Those light panels are absolutely genius! Great job with the chest fan too, more people need to hop on that trend

I am not super tech savvy so anything to make that easier is a pro x) plus I don't have cables running between the parts to connect everything to one battery pack or something which I really didn't want.
Don't tell me armor fans are rare among spartans? They're a life saver it's so much more doable with them.