Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor-Latex Paint discussion

[sq10e]

Hey, I have been lurking for a while, and I have been planning on doing a War Machine armor from Iron Man 2, but decided to do something a bit simpler first to get more used to using the EVA foam, will have my wife take some pics of me soon so I can post it up, a fantasy style armor of my own making and design.
Quick question about Plasti-dip, Where is the cheapest place to get it and how much foam does one can cover?

 

[sq10e]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor++Plasti-dip question

So here I have a couple pics of the chest piece I built Saturday. A little bit inspired by LOTR Urak'hai and a little of some of the Thor Movie armors and everything else fantasy armor.
In the one pic it is just taped to me to show how it'll fit once it has the back-plate and straps.

I show in this interior pic how I got that shape, just like JFCostume's speed-build tips thread, valley's and peaks, his thread has a better illustrated explanation than I could manage, so take a quick look there, it is a very nice resource on therpf.

On Saturday when I had the chance to work on it, I was were I couldn't use my hot-glue gun but could work on this (I was paid to sit somewhere for four hours in case I was needed so hey, build time). So I swung by a hardware store and bought some brush on Krazy glue, to experiment with, and boy those seams are a lot cleaner than a costume I built with foam before I joined therpf.

I still am hoping for more information about plasti-dip spray, I know it is used to seal the foam for better painting, but I don't know if it is cost effective, RPF-ers please help!

 

[Briciius]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor++Plasti-dip question

i've no time know but tomorrow i will up your thread with some info on Plasti dip.

 

[sq10e]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor++Plasti-dip question

Great! I have been asking everywhere, over at the Game of Thrones Kings Guard armor thread in particular, and it is nice that someone posted on my thread!
Anyway, made the backplate last night, will post a some pictures when I get home from school.

 

[Briciius]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor++Plasti-dip question

Well I'm not necessarily good at English so I'll use Google to translate for me. Plastic dip paint is a paint that turns into plastic layer. It is a painting which serves to finish your piece of foam. you should not put it directly on the foam. In fact, the foam will absorb the paint and you will have 10 layers in moin to have some kind of finish.

Prior to painting with plastic dip I heard he had a coat of white glue PVA but I did not try again. The problem is the glue that hardens pieces ca strength and your paint will crack.

Personally I put two black undercoat directly on the foam with a normal spray paint. Then I apply my effects (brushing, etc.) and after that, once everything is dry, I finished with a layer or two plastidip transparent matte or gloss finish to protect the paint and give a small effect.

For your torso foam seems to me that a lot I'm waiting to see the piece back and what kind of details you will bring!

Nico.

 

[Dadmanwalkin]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor++Plasti-dip question

Got mine at Home Depot for about 4 bucks a can?? Not too shabby....

 

[Drack]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor++Plasti-dip question

So I thought I would put in my info regarding plastidip here for you. If you are using plastizote foam for your build then yes PVA coats are needed but seeing as you are using EVA mats you are fine to use the plastidip straight on to your foam. I would use the paint on plastidip cause you get more for your money, just one coat will do.

 

[sq10e]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor++Plasti-dip question

Thanks every one for trying to help out with the plasti-dip question. After the information that I gathered, I have decided that I can't afford the plasti-dip, someone who built an armor about the same size (game of thrones kings guard armor build) as what I am planning told me he used two cans on his suit, and that cans cost between 5-8 USD, which I could maybe afford one but not two (my wife and I, though on a tight student budget, allow ourselves a small ammount of personal spending money for hobbies and such every month. A small ammount.)

Any way, on the interwebs over at cosplay.com, I read a post where someone suggested sealing EVA foam with latex base house paint (his reasoning, plasti-dip is a rubber covering, latex is a type of rubber) and he said he was getting decent results. My in-laws say they might have some left-over paint that I could expirement with. I will let everyone know if it works (bonus that I don't have to pay for the paint before even knowing if it works like I need). Yeah, I could just do the PVA glue, but I want a better job than that (building this to improve my foam skills, and will see if I can sell it on the internet when done. Want to sell quality if I can, and learn how to do quality.)

Sorry for long post without pictures, I have been making progress, but the past couple of days have been pretty busy and then by the time I start thinking about having my wife take pictures, it is the baby's bedtime and he is eating his night-time milk... So I can work quietly, but no pics... So far since I posted pics, I cut out of craft foamies a wing design to go on the chest and finished the back-plate, just a simple back-plate that does curve nicely when worn I think.

I will get pictures soon, and share them with you all.

 

[infymys]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor

I'm using Zinsser Bullseye 1-2-3 latex primer. I believe it cost around 6 bucks for a quart. I'm using it on my current foam build and brushing on 2-3 coats for each piece. I've barely used any and I've gotten a lot of coverage for what I've done so far. Only downside is that you can't sand it.
I also have a quart of the Rust-Oleum latex primer which they say is dry and wet sandable. I'm going to use that on a different foam build and see how that works with the sanding. Cost was around 8 bucks for a quart. I got both at Home Depot.

Edit: Biggest advantage is being able to use it indoors since the odor is negligible, so a simple cheap odor respirator that costs around 5 dollars will do. Or having some good circulation in your painting area is fine.

 

[sq10e]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor

Infymys, Thank you so much for that information, that it will work. I don't think I will want to or need to sand this, So just hearing an RPF-er's experience is really encouraging.
Anyway, finally managed to have my wife snap a couple of update pics before we started the baby's bed routine.
When I paint (eventually) this armor will have a generic fantasy style two-tone scheme, the main color and the trim color. Still kinda debating with myself over that, maybe thinking blue and silver.
So the wing decal in the picture, I was looking through JFCustom's SpaceMarine unfold for foam, and I really liked the wings on the eagle there, so I cut them out and slapped them on. Then I took a step back and realised that I glued them on to the chest a little lower than I had thought. So I carefully cut out a few more "feathers" and added them, the best that I could, to fill the space above more completely . I think it looks good but my wife says all she can see is the vague flask shape between the wings. So all that marker in the middle there is just me doodling trying to find a way to break that image. I am kinda thinking of making it like a pheonix, and bringing the tail end of the bird design down into the ab-plates..But having a hard time with sketching that out there. If someone with better sketching skills where to help, I would be so grateful...

And also, a pic of the back-plate, mainly to show its curve. Like I said a couple nights ago, it is just a simple back-plate, doing the peak/valley thing between the shoulder blades like JFCustom's foam advice thread said, and heat curved the sides to follow the curve of my sides.
I also permanently attached the back to the chest at the shoulders using a small piece of foam on the inside, so that there is a slight spacing at the shoulder, like two plates butted up against each other, and in the pics I just have the sides taped shut, going to do the straps later on.

So next on my to-do list (aside from finals week and spring break road trip to see relatives in Idaho and Utah):

• Figure out if I want to add to the chest design or leave it alone
• Pauldrons (I am trying for minimal waste here, the chest structure is made out of a single 2'x2' piece of puzzle edge foam, almost the whole piece of foam, the back-plate is a little smaller so a touch more scrap there)
• Gauntlets
• Possibly tassets and greaves

 

[sq10e]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor

BTW my arm flexibility is good in this breastplate, I made sure that I was able to move my arms and such when I tried it on, even making trims as needed

 

[Tsabo Tsaboc]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor

This looks awesome, I can't wait to see it painted!
Great design too.

 

[sq10e]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor

This looks awesome, I can't wait to see it painted!
Great design too.

:bashful
Aw, gee thanks... That means a lot to me that someone likes what I did.

And now a pic of what I have been working on the past couple of days.
Pauldrons were finished Friday
And when I said tassets earlier that was wrong word, I meant cuisses. Made cuisses and gauntlets Saturday.
Cut and prepped the greaves on Monday, need to finish them, won't take long, I think I'll take pics of how I do things like that and the gauntlets and cuisses. I normally don't have much success with straight on heat curving this foam. I have a tendency to burn the surface of the foam while not really doing the curve strong enough. So I'll show step by step how I got those parts formed using the greaves as an example.

 

[sq10e]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor-How I curve it Tutorial

So in the first picture I show that I just simply cut out the shape of the piece that we need to curve, in this case it was one of the greaves. This Method that I came up with works with simple curves such as a sort of roll. So to start, I just cut out the whole shape and traced on it where I would cut it to make the overlapping plates, which is sort of a continuing theme with this piece.

Then to the back side of the piece, I carefully cut out long wedges parallel to each other. This will be what allows us to have a controlled curvature (at least I get more control out of this that with a heat gun).

Then back and cut the lines that we marked on the front, our plates are now separated.

Now we glue them back together, but slightly staggered, sort of stepwise. That is how I achieved the overlapping plate effect in this build.

Then hold the piece up to the part of the body that this will curve to, in this case my lower legs. Look carefully at how and were it bends, as it will bend on those wedges you cut out of the back.

Then go to the backside with your hot-glue gun and use the hot-glue to set and lock those wedges into those positions. Liberal amounts of hot glue while it is flat then "roll" the piece into the shape you want and hold until the glue cools and sets. I like to keep an ice cube handy so that I don't have to hold it as long. In the picture below the large yellow ovals are where most of the hot glue went, because that is where the most extreme curves are, and then place a dab of glue further up along the wedges to reinforce the shape you achieved.

There are pro's and con's to this method, for one complex curves would be difficult to implement, and the armor piece takes on a sort of angular appearance, which works for this build, I like that look, but might not work for your build... Hypothetically speaking, haven't tried this, but to achieve a smoother curve could try more wedges more shallowly cut.

On other news, my in-laws had several gallons of old latex-base paint laying around in their garage, and they let me claim one. Tested a small piece to see if would seal and prime, it looks good. Looks like it will work great.

 

[sq10e]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor-Foam Curve Tutorial Post #14

Hey, I am back, and ready to go again. So I had decided to do red and gold colors for my final paint, but for my test piece all I had was blue spray paint. Anyway, I did two light coats of the latex house paint, then a slightly thicker coat of latex paint. Then I did two light coats of the spray paint. As you can see in the pictures, it has pretty good flex and coverage, here I bend it far more than it would get bent while wearing it. And you cannot see the marker lines under the paint (unlike a costume I made before I joined theRPF, you could still see marker through the paint because I did not seal/prime it.)

So I got every thing that I made put into a big box that I scrounged up, it is gonna be my paint box, here is a nice picture of everything laid out ready to seal/prime. My test piece was actually one of my hand plates, I figure it would make a good test piece because it was so small that if the paint was a fail I could replace that part easily. So now repainting the test piece as well. And you can see how the phoenix on the chest turned out, I am pleased with it.

And the last pic, so I had been looking around for something to use for straps for this suit. My mother-in-law was at the thrift store and saw this leather skirt and thought of me. Sounds weird until you realise how much leather she got me for $3.00. I am gonna chop that into straps like crazy. I might die the leather too, it kinda has a slight purple sheen to it.

 

[familyman]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor-Foam Curve Tutorial Post #14

Nice build man, I will have to try the latex paint. Did you have a problem with brush lines or hairs from your brush?.

 

[sq10e]

Re: Fantasy Style Chest Plate Foam Armor-Foam Curve Tutorial Post #14

No problems with the hairs from the brush. But if that bugs you, or if you have history of hairs in your paint you could use a foam brush, they are cheap disposables.
Brush lines, the latex paint is a little bit self levelling, but too thick a coat could give you brush lines I think, but again, several thinner coats (also to prevent blobs forming). Only if I looked closely at my test piece did I notice brush lines. Overall I was quite pleased with my test piece. If I had red spray paint at the time I would have just kept it like that.
And thanks for your comment. I know I am not doing one of those mainstream builds, so it is nice to hear that some one likes what I am doing. This is partly for practice after all. And because I like armor and I like costumes.


EDIT
I just looked at your page in you signature, that is quite impressive

 

[sq10e]

Took a look at my project, wasn't as careful as I thought I was with the paint, got a couple big ugly drips due to too thick layer in certain parts, gonna need to address that. Mean while, spring break is over and school starts back up

 

[sq10e]

Haven't done much with this lately, busy with college and my little family, and of course it is rainy here in the Great North-West. Between all that... yeah..
BUT THIS PROJECT LIVES!!! Just need a little time, so maybe resting... yeah, resting.