Fearless Son
Active Member
So I know I have been talking about making a set of ODST armor for a while now, yet I have not posted any images to show for it. This is not because I have not been working on it, but it is because I feel a little bashful about showing an incomplete work in progress. However, I have been snapping a few pictures as I go, and as of early Friday morning (barely in time for PAX '09) my ODST armor passed the "presentable" milestone. While there are more details I would certainly like to add (and intend to do so before the ODST launch party on the twenty-first) the armor is now in a state that it looks represenative of final.
Behold:
That picture would be titled "Ready to drop" but I had forgotten to put on my ammo belt.
As you can see though, I put the Marathon logo right in the center. We know that ODST can customize their armor a little, so I figured "Hey, why not put the Marathon logo there?" I like to think that this ODST is a veteran of "the liberation of Tau Ceti," so to speak.
I like this picture taken at PAX because I think that I blend in well with the background:
And for those so interested, here is me in the same place getting my picture taken with Bungie environment artist Vic DeLeon.
And this one I like to call "homecoming". I hope I communicated the right sort of emotion in it:
Enough showing off, I am sure that people want to read a little more about the construction. The undersuit was taken from several places. The legs were actually two pairs of pants, one with a subdued urban camo pattern and one straight black. The crotch was cut out of the urban camo pants, and the legs from that were grafted onto the black pants. "Splicing jeans", if you will. The excess material cut out of the camo pants was then used on the forarms of a black long-sleave tee shirt. The sewing was done for me by my friend Lizzy (Hotmail account Sasami_jurai, she has a degree in theatatrical costume design and would be happy to work commission on soft costumes for anyone in the greater Seattle area.) On top of that I put a Molle Replica tactical armor vest I ordered from Play Asia (from in Hong Kong so the shipping was pricy.) I also wore a balaklava, though that is not shown in the following picture:
This also might come as a surprise, but my father and I actually choose to forgo our usual methods of foam and plastic, nor did we use more conventional methods of Pepakura and fiberglass. Pepakura was involved, but only as a model. Instead, we constructed all the armor plates on the outfit entirely out of wood. Shown here is the unpainted ammo belt buckle, with the Pepakura model for compairson:
Though not the case with the belt buckle, most of our plates were made using lightweight medium density fiberboard. MDF is the same kind of wood that IKEA uses in furnature, which is honestly not the highest quality of wood for sturdy construction. However, it has advantages for costume armorers such as us because it is very easy to carve and sand into shape and has no woodgrain to worry about. Further, by gluing the MDF down to a piece of harder wood like plywood, it becomes a composit that allows easy forming of the exterior surface while still being hard to snap in half.
The helmet did use slightly more traditional methods, being my first attempt using resin, only with cheesecloth instead of fiberglass. We discovered that the resined helmet was coming out poorly though, somewhat distorted and would not hold the right shape. So we ended up correcting it by reinforcing it with several pieces of wood. Shown below is a picture of the inside of the helmet as it was almost complete so you can see for yourself:
There is still more work to do on this though. For example, the visor is not actually attached, being held inside by its own tension. It needs to be cut down to the proper shape and actually fixed into place (it pushes back into my glasses and nose uncomfortably as it is now.) Plus I need to make some shoulder plates for this, but that should not be difficult. They were just a low priority in the scheme of getting things ready for PAX. I would also like to get my hands on a vox unit like they use in gas masks so I can talk out of the helmet without my voice being muffled. If anyone knows where I can buy on of those, I would be obliged to know it too.
Well, that is it for my costume for now. It might appear in a few other photo archives from PAX '09 around the internet (I am on Kotaku as number four here and number three here, so keep your eyes out.
Behold:
That picture would be titled "Ready to drop" but I had forgotten to put on my ammo belt.
As you can see though, I put the Marathon logo right in the center. We know that ODST can customize their armor a little, so I figured "Hey, why not put the Marathon logo there?" I like to think that this ODST is a veteran of "the liberation of Tau Ceti," so to speak.
I like this picture taken at PAX because I think that I blend in well with the background:
And for those so interested, here is me in the same place getting my picture taken with Bungie environment artist Vic DeLeon.
And this one I like to call "homecoming". I hope I communicated the right sort of emotion in it:
Enough showing off, I am sure that people want to read a little more about the construction. The undersuit was taken from several places. The legs were actually two pairs of pants, one with a subdued urban camo pattern and one straight black. The crotch was cut out of the urban camo pants, and the legs from that were grafted onto the black pants. "Splicing jeans", if you will. The excess material cut out of the camo pants was then used on the forarms of a black long-sleave tee shirt. The sewing was done for me by my friend Lizzy (Hotmail account Sasami_jurai, she has a degree in theatatrical costume design and would be happy to work commission on soft costumes for anyone in the greater Seattle area.) On top of that I put a Molle Replica tactical armor vest I ordered from Play Asia (from in Hong Kong so the shipping was pricy.) I also wore a balaklava, though that is not shown in the following picture:
This also might come as a surprise, but my father and I actually choose to forgo our usual methods of foam and plastic, nor did we use more conventional methods of Pepakura and fiberglass. Pepakura was involved, but only as a model. Instead, we constructed all the armor plates on the outfit entirely out of wood. Shown here is the unpainted ammo belt buckle, with the Pepakura model for compairson:
Though not the case with the belt buckle, most of our plates were made using lightweight medium density fiberboard. MDF is the same kind of wood that IKEA uses in furnature, which is honestly not the highest quality of wood for sturdy construction. However, it has advantages for costume armorers such as us because it is very easy to carve and sand into shape and has no woodgrain to worry about. Further, by gluing the MDF down to a piece of harder wood like plywood, it becomes a composit that allows easy forming of the exterior surface while still being hard to snap in half.
The helmet did use slightly more traditional methods, being my first attempt using resin, only with cheesecloth instead of fiberglass. We discovered that the resined helmet was coming out poorly though, somewhat distorted and would not hold the right shape. So we ended up correcting it by reinforcing it with several pieces of wood. Shown below is a picture of the inside of the helmet as it was almost complete so you can see for yourself:
There is still more work to do on this though. For example, the visor is not actually attached, being held inside by its own tension. It needs to be cut down to the proper shape and actually fixed into place (it pushes back into my glasses and nose uncomfortably as it is now.) Plus I need to make some shoulder plates for this, but that should not be difficult. They were just a low priority in the scheme of getting things ready for PAX. I would also like to get my hands on a vox unit like they use in gas masks so I can talk out of the helmet without my voice being muffled. If anyone knows where I can buy on of those, I would be obliged to know it too.
Well, that is it for my costume for now. It might appear in a few other photo archives from PAX '09 around the internet (I am on Kotaku as number four here and number three here, so keep your eyes out.
