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So I have something of a history with armor making and have decided that I'd like to start another suit. After running into scaling problems with my alphonse armor and realising I couldn't finish it before PHXCC I decided to do something I was a bit more interested in. As such I'd like to make...

Yea an XV22 Battlsuit. I'm not going to go for the shadowsun route with dual fusion blasters either, I'm thinking plasma rifle and haven't quite decided what I want the second weapon to be. Unfortunately I don't have a whole lot of reference...or pepakura files. So if anyone has either it would be greatly appreciated! In the meantime I'm going to canabilize a decrepid Elite Ranger chest piece I have since I can't see the back of her armor anyways beyond its large collar and a flat plane to attach the jet pack to.

And so work has begun! My own, life sized suit. It'll be scaled to about 6' 7 or 8", which should be truescale based on what I know of tau height to stealthsuit height...

Here's the chest piece:

As you've no doubt gathered it's not painted yet...I'm gonna wait until I have the rest of it assembled so I can work out how the color scheme will look better.
Side:


And top, complete with the collar tubing around the head (even though it won't be seen!)

WOAH. freeaaking sick

~Subbed

So I was going to save my next update until I had the whole torso assembly done but unfortunately my dremel broke :( which means even though I have the pieces for the head cowling cut out and shaped I can't assemble them because the edges are still ragged. In the meantime:

Jetpack!


Yea never realized how much shadowsun's jetpack looks like butterfly wings till I had to make it myself...
from the side:


And it's not quite done yet as I need to install the fan which will blow up the pipe into my helmet to help keep me cool


The Shield Generator is designed to be removable also so that I can service the fan if it breaks and replace batteries and such. I'm also probably going to add better attachment than just the friction/gravity lock I have now, probably some neodymium magnets.

Ooooooooooh... Me gusta!

What do you use to carve out that foam? Box cutters? Also, what kind of foam is that? It looks like those interlocking foam floor pads, if I'm correct?

Damn this is amazing work. cant wait to see more.

Cool! Also can't wait to see more...

 killykavekommando wrote:
Ooooooooooh... Me gusta!

What do you use to carve out that foam? Box cutters? Also, what kind of foam is that? It looks like those interlocking foam floor pads, if I'm correct?

I started originally using my leatherman, but that left a really ragged edge and dulled quickly. I tried a box cutter, but actually for best results I use a metalshop exacto knife (it's designed for scoring and cutting aluminum) that I totally didn't steal specifically I use gold's gym floormats that come in packs of 6 for 20 bucks at walmart. However even with my super sharp knife i get something of a ragged edge, so I use a dremel for sanding and a heat gun to shape in curves and arcs

A friend of mine uses Pepakura prints and fiberglass to make armour, have you ever tried that?

Fiberglass is too expensive and toxic to use where I live, plus it doesn't give me anything I can't get out of foam (for a far less durable and far more labor intensive method). Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the original post, I can't find any pep files for the suit so I'm making all the templates by hand.

Smart. What paints do you use? If I remember correctly, spraypaint corrodes styrofoam instantly. Is this the same for foam mats?

 killykavekommando wrote:
Smart. What paints do you use? If I remember correctly, spraypaint corrodes styrofoam instantly. Is this the same for foam mats?

Not at all. My spartan armor (link in the first post as well as here ) is just straight up spraypaint-on-foam. The ironman armor I linked to as well is foam that's been sealed with a 1:1 mix of woodglue to water in about 6 layers first and then sprayed on, which is why the color is a lot more vibrant.

So the helmet assembly is basically done, I'm debating whether or not I want to add a red light before I install the "crest" on the front of the cowling


And the side


It's actually a lot less airy than it looks, because my head fills all the space in there...it was a lot of "measure measure cut cut dremel dremel" to get the face plate to such a size that I could even wear it inside the cowl, but I think it looks good now Also I'll be wearing a balaclava underneath the cowl, because the faceplate is essentially a face sized pair of goggles.

Also, I'm debating if I'm gonna do just lenses or lenses with blue LED strips surrounding them so the eyes light up. Either way the lenses are gonna be darkenned so people can't see my face inside...I don't feel like painting my face blue to wear this thing

Looks great! Just get the fundamentals first, and then worry about lighting is what I think you should do.

Sorry for the long wait...it took some kajiggering and I couldn't find a good example of what the interior edge of the bicep was supposed to look like beyond a bar...Still, I have finished the upper arms:

The whole assembly:


The right shoulder:

The antenna also adjusts up and down so that I can easily get through small doorways without knocking anything

The left shoulder:

Instead of the standard Tau symbol (which I figure is enough to have on his chest) I used his homeworld sept symbol on the shoulder: Fal'shia

And here's the bicep underneath the shoulderpad

and Dear god Gamesworkshop loves oversized shoulderpads. Because shoulders are obviously the most important part of the body obviously.

Good to see you're still working on this project!

So I finished the forearms but I'm stuck waiting for some parts for the purpose of making the actual guns. With that in mind I decided to continue working on the armor itself by assembling the cod piece:


The gauntlet mounted button controls (for whatever reason)


the notches for the bar to hold on the guns to slot into

The whole assembly so far:


And the back:

Nicely done

So I noticed this sort of bumpy ridge on the thighs of the suit (seen here


And I didn't really feel like just adding more bulk to both sides of the thighs (since that would restrict my mobility further) so I got clever. Namely, in the event of power failure or plasma leak, a commander might have to ditch his weapons (especially with such an experimental suit...there's a lot that can go wrong with it). So any commander worth his muster needs a holdout weapon. Namely:



A pulse pistol. It'll slot into the thigh ribbing as a holster, and the ribbing will fold out so I can pull it out and shoot people

Speaking of which, here's what I got. A major update (because instead of doing hw I got jazzed to do this...I suspect a bit of a manic episode) in that I have the thighs assembled for the most part, and now is just the boring bits of tweaking and rigging it so that the thighs don't slide off as I walk:

Very creative. Are you going to SDCC? Will your suit be done by then? Or is this for next years PHXCC? I missed that part on the first read through, I went to PHXCC this last year, had a lot of fun. Maybe I'll see you and your costume next year, and I can get my picture taken.

BTW, I went to SDCC about 3 years ago, and I ran in an amazing Techpriest costume, he even had a friend who had a pole strapped to his back and high above it was a very nice looking Servo skull as well.

Awesome, I like hope to see you build a Riptide cosplay

 happygolucky wrote:
Awesome, I like hope to see you build a Riptide cosplay

I'd rather see a warhound titan.

PAULDRONS FOR THE PAULDRON GOD!

Seriously, though, this is incredible. Subbed for sure.

happygolucky wrote:Awesome, I like hope to see you build a Riptide cosplay

Highly unlikely...the riptide is not conducive to a proper human figure and would necessitate vast amounts of overly restrictive plating...I am however considering and attempting to workout the designs for a Jager.

ImotekhTheStormlord wrote:
I'd rather see a warhound titan.

I dislike the warhound for its lack of hands and digigrade feet, which would make an effective cosplay difficult to pull off to the level of accuracy I would like. An imperator or a Warlord however...

Coyote81 wrote:Very creative. Are you going to SDCC? Will your suit be done by then? Or is this for next years PHXCC? I missed that part on the first read through, I went to PHXCC this last year, had a lot of fun. Maybe I'll see you and your costume next year, and I can get my picture taken.

I dislike SDCC because of how crowded it is, having grown up going to it I found that more often than not I didn't move so much as the crowd moved me in places. As such I much prefer PHX which has significantly fewer people but still has a lot of great things to see and do I also went to PHX this last year, but I went in my folding Ironman Mark 5 suitcase suit...got a lot of people who wanted pics and a couple interviews, it was good Much better recognition than my Spartan. However the damn suit was also a ferrari: great to look at but unable to travel more than a few yards without breaking...so that's why I'm going with the XV22. Sure almost no one will know what it is but I'll have much better mobility and it'll be less prone to breaking than my previous suit

Also, progress! I've gotten the basic plating done for the knees and the shins, now they just need their gibbuns and rigging. The knee will be elastically attached to the thigh with a double velcro strap to keep it on my knee like a skateboard pad, while I'm still working out how to rig the shin to the thigh so it doesn't slide down as I walk. Also I'm debating adding suspenders to the crotch to prevent the weight of the lower body dragging it off my waist.

Here you can see how the knee begins to bend. I have 90 degree rotational movement in it, down from the normal 130 degree movement of a my unarmored knee:



And here you can see how the knee properly slides beneath the thigh plate as it does on the model armor. This means I don't lose any straightening movement while wearing the knee pads, but can still use them to kneel down!

So instead of working on the feet I got jazzed to try making the guns before the LEDs have arrived to light it. Here's what I've got so far:

The main body and harness to attach it to the arm. The handle is a placeholder until the LED's arrive, because the switch to activate them will be in the handle:


And to ensure I have some place to store my wallet and phone and keys unlike my ironman armor, I built in a handy little pocket:

So with the armor almost assembled I couldn't help but keep working aaaaaaaaaaand:

The physical armor bit itself is done!

I got the feet done here, as heel-less high heel shoes:

Here we have the toe features. I originally tried to make them mobile so that as I walked they would bend and flex, but it was too difficult to anchor them flush to the housing and still have them move.

Here are the heels with the sept logo on them as per the original model


And the whole ensemble so far:




And now that that's done and ready to be painted, I'm working on making the weapons and the electrical bits so that I don't die of dehydration in the suit. Starting with the plasma rifle:

It's warping a little but I'm gonna add struts to help it keeps its integrity before installing some polycarbonate or the like so that when i pull the trigger it does this:

Awesome Stealth Suit costume! I look forward to seeing it completed.

So with the armor assembled now it comes down to finishing the weapons. I had to get the barrel sprayed first before I could install the polycarbonate:

Holy mess... That is fantastic! keep it up man!

Coming along nicely. Very impressive