Alphonse Elric armor from FMA -- my first pep build!

Hey all,

This is my first pepakura build and my first build thread at all on this forum. Al has always been my favorite character from Fullmetal Alchemist and I've thought it'd be neat to dress as him for a while now, but I haven't quite felt up to patterning it from scratch, as I haven't built any sort of armor costumes before. Well, a couple of weeks ago I found out my sister would be bringing her Ed Elric costume to Dragon*Con and just on a whim I googled to see if anyone had made a pepakura pattern since last I looked. What do you know, someone had! So thank you to PepMaster for that.

Anyway, the pattern was scaled to fit someone 6' tall, and I am only 5'6. However, rather than scaling it down to fit me, I am actually scaling it up. For those who don't know the show/comic, Al's soul is bonded to the armor, so there's nothing inside. If I make the armor taller than me, it'll be closer to the character's actual height and thus more impressive, and also I'll be able to take the helmet off and have it appear empty. Figuring out how to wear it may be a challenge, but it's one I'm willing to take. I mean, the worst that can happen is that I'll have a cool but unwearable piece to put on display, right?

So I have started cutting out and folding the pattern. The helmet is the coolest part of course, but as I haven't done any pepakura before I decided I'd start with something simpler so I am working from the ground up. Right now I have both calves done. That went pretty well, I think a few of my joins are not quite lined up perfectly but for the calf they should be fine--by the time I get to the helmet I should have a better handle on this. I've attached a picture of my progress so far and also a reference pic from the anime for those wondering what the whole thing is supposed to look like.

Cool, idea for a build, A couple ideas for you, look up the bumblebee costume from comic con and see how that the guy in the costumes arms are only in the bottom part of the arms, and his head is not in the helmet at all, you can use this technique for your build, second idea is do the helmet just like the show, so since your head wont be in the helmet you can still take it off just like he was able to do in the show and that way you can walk around carrying your head. (helmet) I would see about finding a two way radio so you can talk though the helmet.

So, I decided I was not actually very happy with the pattern as it stood--it's not very detailed, and some parts are just out of proportion--so I decided to buy pepakura designer so I could make a few changes. First time I've bought software in several years actually. Here is my modified version of the calf (next to the old, so you can see the difference). It ended up having about twice as many edges to glue together but I'm much happier with it.

Whetstone--that was the plan with the helmet, being able to carry it around anyway. I don't think I will go with the radio idea though, unless I end up deciding I want the helmet separated further from the body than just me carrying it. I am thinking about maybe using video glasses to see, though.

I totally want to do this as a costume also. Keeping an eye on this one =0)

I might be really interested in your modified pep files. The redone greaves look spectacular.

So I finished the other calf and folded one knee and thigh, using the pattern as is so I can see what changes need to be made (yeah, this is going to be a somewhat slow build. My goal is to have all of the paperfolding done by the end of May.)

Here's a pic of the calf, knee, and thigh all together. While the shape of the thigh seems pretty much correct, it's too small. Perhaps this is because the original pep patterns were scaled to fit a person rather than to match the anime, but it needs to be just a little bit taller and wider than it is. This is a good thing because--while I'll admit I need to lose some weight--of all the fitting problems I expect to have with this costume, Al's thighs not fitting around my own should not be one of them :rolleyes

The knee on the other hand I think may be too big, though that might just be the way it's positioned there.

In related news, my cat has made it clear that she likes to chew on cardstock *sigh*

Nice! It's always interesting to see where someone will start on a project. Here is a link to my thread, which is old and has some additional work to be added for an update. This is my first armor though and thought it would be a good place to start.

http://www.therpf.com/f24/fma-alphonse-build-134034/

I'll just say the size range is optimistic and I've had to scale things a bit to fit my size. Check out the distance between two points in the latest version of designer and it will help greatly with the scaling.

I'll enjoy watching you put your's together.

Dean

BIG FMA/ANIME fan! this is going to look awesome when its done.

Still working?

yeah still going? I need to build one as well and its my first, need inspiration