In Progress - Halo Reach Spartan.

We are currently in the process of creating a set of Halo Spartan armour based on the armour of the Noble 6 character from Halo Reach and a set of Master Chief armour for MCM London in October.
Here is the progress that we have made on this armour.

Tools

-Craft Knife
-Cutting Board

-Hot Glue Gun

-EVA Foam about 3/4 Inch thich

- Webbing and Buckles

-Pepakura Files

-Dremel

-Acrylic Paint 

Here is a photograph of Noble 6 which we used for reference when working on this armour.

This armour is for Naomi and when using the Pepakura files you need to make sure that your measurements are correct or you will end up creating a piece of armour that is too big or too small. 

During the first stages of working on the armour we decided that it would be best to check every couple of steps that the armour was scaled right.

This is the chest peice of Naomi's armour, as you can see there are individual pieces which are cut out from the Pepakura files and then glued together, at this point we had finished the front and started working on the top/back.

This is the back of the armour, before we had attached it to the front part. This was a little bit tricky as we had to work out the best way as parts of the armour are further forward then others which left us with little room to stick it together, however with a but of luck and alot of hot glue we managed to make the armour sturdy enough to wear.

Here is the finished build for the chest armour, due to the glue leaking out of the parts there was a lot of trimming and tidying up to do before we could start painting the base coat.

However Naomi ran in to a problem while she was painting. After reading online that it is best to coat the foam in watered down PVA glue before you paint, the paint decided to go like this.

Naomi solved this problem fairly quickly by allowing the paint to dry and giving the armour another coat of the paint. She decided to give the armour an undercoat of black paint to add to the effect of being battle worn when we add the colour.

Here is the finished Chest Piece:

After finishing the Chest Piece we decided to work on the Cod Piece. After looking at the Pepakura files for the Cod Piece Naomi decided that she would customise this piece of armour herself but still use the base build. 

After searching online for tips on how to create the armour a little more efficiently we came across the method of scoring the foam where it needs to bend, which saves time rather than cutting out the individual pieces. 

This is the sides and the front part of the Cod Piece, as you can see the side parts were cut out as a whole and bent in to place. The Front part was created by cutting the base piece out and adding three additional pieces for the detail and then using the Dremel we sanded the sides down to meet the base piece. 

Here is a 360 view of the finished Cod Piece, as you can see Naomi has used the Craft foam which is thinner and easier to use for detail to add pockets and detail to the sides. The back part of the Cod Piece was simply the pieces from the Pepakura files with no changes.

Due to the craft foam being very flimsy Naomi coated the detail parts in PVA glue before painting.

Here is a photograph of the main parts of the build after they have been painted. 

Naomi has decided to work on adding a spine and an additional part to the front of the armour using reference photos from her own Spartan on the Halo Reach game.

Here is the work so far on the spine 

This was created using the blue craft foam, however Naomi does not have any templates to work from she had to create the templates herself.

After looking at countless photographs of the Spartan spine,  Naomi managed to work out a few of the shapes that could be used for the spine, although the spine doesn't look exactly how it should Naomi was happy with the end result. Here is a photograph of the trial build for the spine detail.

After building this we decided that we would us the trial build for the actual armour. 

We  then decided to build a base for the spine as this is built out of craft foam which is easily breakable. 

For the base we just up-scaled the general shape of the spine on EVA foam:

Here you can see how the base of the spine fits in with the chest armour and the cod piece, after the base was finished which includes sanding down the sides with the Dremel, which is something Naomi wanted to do as she felt that it would fit better. She then glued the spine detail on to the base.

After creating the spine Naomi then decided that she would work on the armour for the arms. 

First she created her shoulder plates, which she did by splitting the armour in to three pieces and cutting these out as whole templates, and scoring the parts which needed to bend.

From here she began to work on the armour for the legs, using the same technique as she did for the other parts. This is the first completed thigh armour.

Check back for the progress of the Halo Armour.