Comic-con starts a week from tonight, oh my gosh we are so tired. It doesn't help we spent last week camping in the Sequoias... In the beginning I was writing this blog each few days as we did the actual work on the armor, but things around here got busy and I got a little behind, but don't worry, I took pictures so here is some catch-up blogging!
So we started making the N7 thighs, these have very large areas that need to be cut away so we can inset different colored craft foam to get the details looking good. Up until now we had been using the sanding bit on the dremmel tool to sand away any areas we needed. Well, now that we had been playing around with the soldering iron to burn in the detail lines, we decided to switch to the big flat head our iron came with and use it to burn away large areas, and WOW, this works soooo much faster. Now a word of warning, it doesn't look pretty, which is fine if you are going to cover it in craft foam, but not great if you are going to leave it uncovered.
The thighs have lots of detail pieces that we made out of the thin craft store foam.
The butt has a funny butt cheek shaped detail, which we were also going to make out of craft foam, but it looked really stupid that way.
So for that piece we just cut out a butt cheek out of the EVA Foam and shaped it in the oven and then glued it back in smooth side out. It may not be easy to tell from the pictures, but trust me it looks much better this way.
So we needed something to shape the thigh piece around. We used a wine bottle for the arms, but needed something bigger for the legs, so we used a growler from a local microbrewery. Don't read too much into this, I swear we are not alcoholics, hahaha, but glass bottles seemed to be the only thing around our house that wouldn't melt, ect... Well anyways, it was not tall enough to do the entire thigh piece. We actually couldn't think of anything better to use, and it was difficult to shape such a large piece. Luckily there is a stripe halfway down the thigh, so we just cut the thigh in half there, shaped both halves, and glued them back together and covered it up with the decorative stripe.
And for the decorative circles, we just did a bottom circle in craft foam and then cut out concentric circles of craft foam and layered them on top. To attach the thing we have two straps that buckle along the leg and also a belt that sits around the waist.
There are cute little details where the straps attach to the thigh. We just made those out of two layers of craft foam and then put a slit in it with a craft knife so we could run the strapping through it.
So I will also point out that the thighs fit my husband GREAT! Me however, not so much. Mine are too loose at the bottom and too loose at the top, but perfect in the middle. Well I was thinking about this and it makes perfect sense. A lot of men don't really have hips, they just have straight legs that go up and down (my husband for sure fits this description). Where as women tend to be a lot more curvy in the hip area, so ideally for a woman's thigh armor you would mold a compound curve, so that it not only curves around the leg, but also curves from top to bottom. Now that sounded COMPLICATED and Comic-con is a week from tonight (OMG!!), so yeah, I am not doing that. I am just going to make my lowest strap tight, as well as the waist belt, and that will kinda hold it into position.
The shin armor was pretty easy, it's just 3 pieces, with an inset craft foam strip down the middle. The upper knee (the teal part in the female armor) is made from one piece that we heated and just bent. The smaller lower knee (medium purple on the female) was too small to just bend, so we just made a little 3 sided box out of 3 separate pieces. And the actual shin part is just one piece that we cut out and shaped.
And here is a picture of inside the knee and shin. We just held all the bits together with hot glue and strapping.
For boots, we bought "Response Gear Tactical Footwear" boots from Big 5 Sporting Goods. They were $29.99, which is the everyday price, and they are actually pretty comfortable. They come in men's and women's, and it is an item that Big 5 carries all of the time. For me footwear is NOT something I am willing to compromise on, walking around Comic Con all day is exhausting, and I have done it in cutesy little heeled boots and regretted the heck out of it later. So $29 for something that is comfortable, yes please.
We were going to glue foam bits to them, but seeing as Con is in a week....eh....maybe we won't. Also the armor looks pretty good even with the boots plain. Here are some pictures of the progress so far and you can see what I mean. I don't seem to have any complete pictures, there is always at least one piece of armor missing, hahaha. Well, I will take more pics soon.
Wanna see a really funny picture? Here is my husband attempting to sit down in the armor, hahahaha
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