Day 0 - Planning & Purchasing Supplies

My husband Trevor and I are going to attempt to make N7 Mass Effect Armor for this year's San Diego Comic-Con!!  While I have lots of arts and crafts experience, I have NEVER attempted anything like this and neither of us has ever worked with EVA foam, so this is going to be quite an adventure.  There are a lot of good blogs out there on the subject.  I will especially point out:

Evil Fx / BioWeapons http://bioweapons.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/mass-effect-n7-armor-build/
Volpin Props http://www.volpinprops.com/n7-armor-dragoncon-2010-recap/
Narayas / Julian Beek http://www.julianbeek.nl/blog/

But all of these great gentlemen all seem to have experience in the replica armor making field.  I am hoping this blog will be useful to show what triumphs and mistakes a couple of total noobs end up making.

So Day: 0 is basically shopping for supplies.  Pretty much everyone uses the interlocking foam EVA mats that you see in home gyms, day cares, ect...  A lot of people online mention it was cheaper to buy in person than online.  So I spent an epically long day driving around trying to find this stuff.  Home Depot has it online, so I went there and they DO NOT carry it in stores.  They suggested Big Lots, I went there, it IS cheapest there, but the wrong pattern.  I had a long day of fail, here is a recap:

Home Depot - N/A
Big Lots - Wrong Pattern
Kmart - N/A
Auto Zone - N/A
GTM - Rubber, not foam
Walmart - Wrong Pattern
Target - Correct Pattern! BUT crazy expensive $27 for only 4x 2'x2' mats
Big 5 Sporting Goods - Correct pattern, still expensive $24 for 4

I did some online searches of Sears, Lowes, Sports Authority, ect.... and I decided that buying it in person was not the way to go for me.  I live in San Diego, so maybe Southern California is more expensive?  Who knows?

So where did I end up going with?  I ordered from http://www.getrung.com/
Actually....they have a store through Amazon as well, so I ordered from there so we could use a gift card.  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_sporting-goods?_encoding=UTF8&field-brandtextbin=Get%20Rung&node=3375251

Get Rung seems to have very competitive prices, you can order as many as you need in sets of 6x 2' x 2' mats.  It's $15 for a 6 pack, so that certainly blows away the in-store prices I was seeing.  And my favorite part, they have COLORS!!!  I am going to make my FemShep armor in bright freaking purple, cuz well... that is the color of armor my FemShep wore!  I am lazy, so I am hoping ordering purple to begin with will save me a lot of painting time.  My husband Trevor is boring, so he got Grey.

So I am not 100% sure of the exact armor I want to create, a LOT of people online are doing the Mass Effect 2 armor, and I do like my ME2 Armor, and that's what all the online templates are for.  Here is mine:

But the ME3 armor is also really great, this one is the classic N7 set:

But I REALLY am digging the Hahne-Kedar Legs with the ME3 N7 torso.  I like how the Hahne-Kedar legs don't wrap around the back completely, which I think will allow for easier movement and sitting at Comic-Con.  Also I like how the piece that attaches at the waist does so with just some straps and pouches.  Which, OMG, pouches!  That sounds REALLY important since it will look REALLY stupid if I wear a purse with my space armor and I am going to need somewhere to store my wallet, lipstick, ect,...

Honestly I am not too fussy, whatever I make will probably be a bastardization combo of all three.

My husband is just going for the straight up classic grey N7, so I did not bother to take a picture of that.