Foam My Fourth Armor Set - Halo: Reach Foam Build

[Sharpworks]

i want to start my reach build, but I have no idea what part I should start off on. i already have the helmet, but I need everything else. what armor piece do you think I should start with?

My approach to every step is always to start with the parts I care the least about - whichever parts I don't think people will see or pay attention to very much. That way, if I mess up early it won't severely effect the costume as a whole. So with that in mind I really don't recommend starting with anything big like the chest or the shoulders. I would start with either the boots or the biceps personally. No one is really gonna stare at your feet and most of your biceps will be covered by your shoulder pieces if you decide to include any.

 

[Sharpworks]

Just an update on the build, as I know it's been a while. I had painted my entire costume and was ready to move on to the next steps in the process but when I started unmasking the pieces, all the paint peeled off. See my post here:

Help Please - Paint not sticking

I painted my foam armor with black plasti-dip, then Rust-Oleum gloss black as a base coat, then Rust-Oleum bright coat metallic for weathering and doing paint chipping, then I put toothpaste on the areas I wanted to chip off and painted Rust-Oleum colonial red on top of the silver. The problem...

www.405th.com

I figured out it was because I had painted everything silver first in an attempt to follow one of the tutorials on weathering. Moral of the story, never try to paint a lower gloss paint on a higher gloss paint unless you know exactly what you're doing.

So after months of applying acetone to my costume and peeling off all the paint, I finally repainted my costume and have begun weathering

Here is a picture of the paint job pre-weathering. I decided to go with a different color scheme than my original maroon/black idea because I don't want to think about how badly it failed last time

 

[Harri51]

Looking super clean man! nicely done.

 

[Sharpworks]

Aaaand this is why we weather our costumes.

I did a bunch of work in the last week and I finished the paint job! Everything is nice and dirty now, and I feel a lot better about the look of it. I also installed the visor in the helmet and used MoeSizzlac's tutorial for the helmet speaker system to add lights and fans in my helmet. I also wired most of the speaker system but the sound was super quiet so I have a set of smaller resistors coming today that should boost the sound.

Next steps are strapping and padding, which I'm going to start working on now, and then at some point I should be receiving Asgardianhammer's Halo: Reach decal set and I'll be putting those on the costume and weathering them a bit, and then it'll be done. I will also be building a PVC mannequin for it to display it in my room but that's not really part of the costume so it doesn't count.

Looking forward to posting a pic of my first suit-up once I get all the padding on

 

[Sharpworks]

First suit-up

Still needs more work but I think it's looking real good. Side note... DAMN these things are warm. Took me 10 mins to put it on and take pics and I was already sweating.

 

[ItSpartan116]

The overall build look great. For the shoulder is it loose? If it is, make a shoulder harness that connect to the torso and will keep it stable enough where they don’t fall down to your elbow.

 

[Sharpworks]

The overall build look great. For the shoulder is it loose? If it is, make a shoulder harness that connect to the torso and will keep it stable enough where they don’t fall down to your elbow.

Good eye! Yes, it was loose, and so were pretty much all the parts because I only added the foam padding, I haven't made the strapping for it yet so everything just slowly falls down right now, but I will be sure to add that when I make the harness.

In other news I found the right resistor for the helmet speaker and got that installed. The 4.7M Ohm resistor that Moe said to use was waaaaay too quiet and I ended up using a 300k Ohm resistor instead which has the best balance between volume and sound quality for what I wanted. It sounds like I'm talking through a walkie-talkie and that's kind of perfect since it'll just sound like the comms in game when you get too far from a character.

 

[The Wolf]

First suit-up

Still needs more work but I think it's looking real good. Side note... DAMN these things are warm. Took me 10 mins to put it on and take pics and I was already sweating.
View attachment 299098

How did you get the shoulders to stick/strap onto the bicep piece?

 

[Sharpworks]

How did you get the shoulders to stick/strap onto the bicep piece?

Industrial strength velcro strips. I wanted it to be modular so I can potentially make other shoulder pieces in the future

 

[Sharpworks]

It's finally finished!!

I ended up getting the decals from Asgardianhammer a few days early on my birthday so that was a nice surprise. I think they really make the whole thing look a lot more authentic in my eyes. Shoutouts to Ashuraa as well for the strapping tutorial that I based my strapping off of.

It may have taken a full year to complete but I'm really proud of the results! I had a lot of fun making this and I can't wait to make more armor in the future, Halo or otherwise. As you can see in some of the pics I do have other props already in the works that I'll be posting about whenever I have time to finish them but those will all be in a separate thread.

Thanks to everyone that followed this thread and gave me kind words of encouragement. You guys are awesome! I'll be posting this in the Hall of Honor now!

 

[Lukavago]

Fantastic build! I'm also really enjoying the color scheme. You said that the shoulders are modular so that you can trade them out with other pieces right? What's next on the list, or is it time for a (well deserved) break?

 

[Sharpworks]

Fantastic build! I'm also really enjoying the color scheme. You said that the shoulders are modular so that you can trade them out with other pieces right? What's next on the list, or is it time for a (well deserved) break?

I'm taking a break from foamsmithing for a bit just because I'm in the process of moving until the end of the year but I've considered a second security shoulder with the knife at some point, or maybe a commando shoulder. Either way if I make one it'll be replacing the EVA shoulder because I feel like I could've done better on that one

 

[Lukavago]

Looks better then my build
*looks at my current build that's nothing more then files on my computer*
Of course, I should probably start my build at some point.

 

[Sharpworks]

Looks better then my build
*looks at my current build that's nothing more then files on my computer*
Of course, I should probably start my build at some point.

Go for it! Everyone has to start somewhere. There’s so many great tutorials on here and on YouTube. Take your time and stay motivated and you’ll make a great build

 

[Lukavago]

Go for it! Everyone has to start somewhere. There’s so many great tutorials on here and on YouTube. Take your time and stay motivated and you’ll make a great build

Thanks! I'm not lacking in confidence, just equipment, money, and time. I've got really high hopes for next year though!

 

[PlanetAlexander]

Rock on Sharpworks !! I know the build was painful but it was so worth it.