Pipninja's MK VII Gungnir

[pipninja]

Now that I am no longer rushing this build, I have decided to create a thread on building my MK VII armor!!

This one is going to be a little different than my normal threads, because I am already in the middle of the build, and I'm going to have to backtrack a bit to show what all I have done up till now. I'll probably split it up between a couple posts to stay organized.

First and foremost, this is what I will be making!!

The only exception is that I changed up the shoulder, but I don't have a new screenshot handy

I started with scaling, and to do this, I made a 3d scan of my body with an app on my phone called polycam, and cleaned up and scaled that scan in fusion to import into armor smith. From there, for the armor, I took the game rip files, and directly ported them into armor smith, and scaled accordingly.

A key part of that, was group scaling a few parts. When I exported the files, I attached the knees to the shins, and I attached all the torso pieces from the belt to the chest, abdomen, and attachments. That let me scale them all together as one to make sure they looked correct together, and properly lined up one to the other.

The next bit of computer planning, was the helmet. I decided to use my near and dear reach Gungnir 3d model that I worked so hard on, only this time with a twist! I wanted light up victory laurels!

That was it for now for the computer work, next let's talk about construction so far!

 

[Zevbutt]

ooooo this is gonna be a cool one!

 

[pipninja]

To start construction, I am actually going to back track for a second. To get the 3d scan to scale onto, I wanted to get all of my undersuit parts done, and the major heavy lifter in that was the 4" riser boots!

Conveniently, I actually made a YouTube video on this that was edited by Zenghilios !

The basic rundown is essentially the exact same as my reach boots that I have made a thread about before. It's all just sandwiched foam, glued to a boot, and then had a rubber sole attached to the bottom, with some foam clay cleanup, and foam sealing. I definitely made a few mistakes when making these, the most major one was not giving my foam clay enough time to dry. I should have waited at least a couple days for it to completely cure.

The next part of construction was getting the 3d printing underway. There is only a few printed parts in this build, the helmet, and the knives on the front of the chest plate. I used armorsmith to get the scale right in fusion, and then 3d modeled these!

They they got printed along side the helmet parts in PLA

From there it was priming and sanding with filler primer, a step that is still in progress

The difficult yet exciting part of this build for me was the laurels.

They were printed in a clear pla to let light through, and I printed each leaf separately and flat to maximize their strength. They then got glued into slots on the central holding channel.

From there, I hand brushed on alcohol inks to tint the crown

(Also my hands here were dirty right after Black washing a different project)

The last step to tackle was lighting. I figured out this solution really early on, and was one of the leading design elements of these laurels. I used these flexible 3v led filament rods to light the length of the crown.

Amazon.com

And here is the initial temporary lighting test

 

[pipninja]

Next up, FOAM WORK!!!

all the foam work starts off as the same process. I unfold in armor smith, clean up the patterns in illustrator, have my cricut cut out my cardstock, then it's tracing into 10mm foam, marking angles as I do, and making notes on the foam for the cuts, and cutting them out. From there I just assemble with contact cement, add 4mm, and 6mm layered details, and take my sanding drum at a low speed, and round every single edge on the piece.

I started with the boots, and worked my way up!

Here you can see the difference between dremeling the edges (left) and not (right)

From there it was on to the shins. Because I was using full lace boots, I wanted the shins to be able to clam shell for easy suiting and desuiting! They are magnetically shelled, with the front of the shin being attached to the shin pad strapped around my leg. For the undersuit here, I'm using lacrosse goalie shin and knee pad.

I did the knees next, then a test fitting

From there it was on to the thighs!

The thighs were attached by sewing thick soft elastic to square 2mm Eva foam pieces, that were then contact cemented into the inside of the thighs. These straps cross my body over my shoulders to hold them up.

The next step was the belt! The front and back are attached together with a buckle and magnet setup, and the front cod will be attached with elastic after paint so it can bend out of the way without being crushed if I sit down.

Next it was time for a lower half suit up!

Also the spine I'll cover in the next post, but it's two stacked layers of 10mm Eva foam, that was Dremeled into shape.

 

[pipninja]

Now on to the undersuit!! This was made really similarly to my reach one, with one exception. I made the front and back sewing jackets, a little differently.

First things first, the game rips, these were made directly from the game rips, and patterned the same way I do the foam armor. Then they got traced, cut, and assembled from 6mm eva foam.

From there it was tracing and cutting out of fabric. I used a stretch pleather on one side, and a spandex on the other. These get clipped front and back with the outsides facing in, and sewn around the edge.

I then cut along the back side along this dotted line, only on the spandex inside fabric.

From there, I turned them right side out, stuffed them with the Eva foam pieces, and sewed the back together with a ladder stitch followed by a wip stitch in the other direction. This may be overkill, but I wanted to make sure this seam didn't break.

From here it is a whole lot of seen elastic holding the parts together

From there it was a test fit!

I then sewed on this 2mm Eva foam on the back plate, because this will be where the belt is contact cemented on. Everything from chest to belt gets connected through the spine.

After that, it was time for a full suit up test with the whole lower body!

 

[pipninja]

Now, we are all caught up!! The last thing I want to touch on, is why I have decided to connect the chest plate and belt to the undersuit through the spine. This is because I have been working with installation 00 on creating a thermo electric cooling system for this armor!!! I will do a full rig breakdown once it is done, but essentially it works by running cooling wanted through the undersuit, and then into the cooling unit pack, which uses thermoelectric coolers to draw out the heat. The thrusters on the chest plate are what is going to house the cooling components! Here is a few sneak peaks of that part of the project!

 

[SigmaProps]

Thermo-electric cooling you say? Can't wait to see this finished Pip! If your Mark V was anything to go off of, I just know this thing is gonna be immaculate!