Half Life 2 HEV Suit - My first costume build!
- Thread starter Bob McCormick
- Start date
Bob McCormick
New Member
It's been about 8 months since I last posted in this thread, but I thought some of you might be interested in hearing about how the costume has held up to being worn at Dragoncon, shipped back to Denver, and then stored for the last 8 months. I know that when I started building this costume I was certainly interested in hearing about how EVA foam costumes held up over time, so maybe this info will help someone else who's in the same shoes.
Let's start with rewinding back to Dragoncon 2013. I've talked a little bit about how things went, but in the interest of sharing lessons learned, I'd like to say a little more.
What went right:
Lots of people told me EVA foam was good for making your costume lightweight and that's definitely true. I wore my HEV suit for hours late into the night at DragonCon and the costume never got uncomfortably heavy. It's also nice that there's never a sharp edge to poke you or any hard edges to rub or pinch you uncomfortably. For wearable comfort, I give EVA foam an A+.
Using diluted PVA glue and spray paint also worked great. Overall the paint held up pretty well (I'll talk about the exceptions in a sec), and the diluted PVA glue gave the foam a nice, smooth surface that really let the spray paint do it's own thing. I've heard of some folks having adhesion problems with PVA glue, but I haven't had any. I'm not sure if I was just lucky, but it's possible that it was because I used an adhesion promoter between the glue layer and the spraypaint layer. I wish I'd had some time to do some head-to-head tests on different coating methods.
For glue, I'm completely sold on using the Zap-A-Gap superglue, with major seams backed by a layer of hot glue. That's absolutely the approach I'll be using for any future EVA/craft foam work.
What went wrong:
I'd originally wanted to do the middle abdomen piece of the HEV suit in some kind of fabric, but in the interest of time (and running out of time) I want ahead and made it out of EVA foam. In retrospect, I really wish I'd made that piece out of fabric after all. EVA foam is not particularly breathable, and having it wrapped tightly around your midsection kind of creates a portable mini-sauna.
My big mistake though was in not putting enough thought into how to hold all the pieces onto my undersuit. I thought I had an easy solution with using heavy duty adhesive velcro. And it did work great in my initial around the house testing. But it didn't hold up well to extended wear in the heat and humidity at DragonCon in Atlanta. By Saturday most of the adhesive backing on the Velcro was all but useless and it became a bit of a struggle to keep the pieces of the HEV suit from kind of flopping about on me.
How the costume held up:
For the most part, I think it held up pretty well, but there are a few areas that are worse for wear:
Some scratches and dents:
There's some of these all over, most pretty small. A lot of the larger ones like in this picture are probably from my crowbar. It might not be a great idea to have a solid metal prop with a foam costume. :unsure
Some cracking paint:
This seems to have been confined to one heel area. I don't recall anything different about the surface prep or undercoating on that area, so I'm kind of stumped as to why this happened.
Wrinkled foam/paint:
My understanding is that this kind of thing is common on EVA foam costumes wherever they flex? But in my case I think the primary cause is the previous mentioned velcro failures. That and I made the forearm pieces a bit too tight, which made them difficult to get off. That piece and the chest piece would have been much better to have made in two pieces for easier putting on and taking off.
Outright failure:
This is certainly the worst part, and it started failing the first night at Dragoncon. I had to glue and patch it repeatedly throughout the weekend. The major problem here is that I thought of the middle chest piece as a detail piece, when actually it gets a lot of stress. That area is just made of thin 3mm craft foamies and superglue, so it really doesn't hold up to abuse.
There were also a few spots where silver paint rubbed off on the orange or black paint from the crowbar rubbed off onto the orange, etc. I think that was mostly in transit and storage though.
The plan:
I'm not sure there's much I can do about the wrinkled areas, although I would REALLY appreciate any suggestions if anyone has had success with fixing that kind of thing. The deeper scratches and dents I'm going to fill with the same paintable caulk I used originally while building the suit, then spot paint with some orange acrylic craft paint that's a pretty decent color match. I'll use the same touchup paint for the smaller scratches and to cover up the paint that rubbed onto the orange. It's not going to be a perfect match, but it's better than nothing. Maybe I can cover it up by doing some weathering?
For the cracked chest piece, I'm going to need to find something more durable than just superglue. I backed a lot of my other seams with hotglue, maybe that's what I should do here? Or try something heavy duty like an epoxy?
And of course, before I wear it out again I'm going to need to do something better than adhesive velcro for sticking it to my undersuit. I'm thinking maybe strong magnets?
Let's start with rewinding back to Dragoncon 2013. I've talked a little bit about how things went, but in the interest of sharing lessons learned, I'd like to say a little more.
What went right:
Lots of people told me EVA foam was good for making your costume lightweight and that's definitely true. I wore my HEV suit for hours late into the night at DragonCon and the costume never got uncomfortably heavy. It's also nice that there's never a sharp edge to poke you or any hard edges to rub or pinch you uncomfortably. For wearable comfort, I give EVA foam an A+.
Using diluted PVA glue and spray paint also worked great. Overall the paint held up pretty well (I'll talk about the exceptions in a sec), and the diluted PVA glue gave the foam a nice, smooth surface that really let the spray paint do it's own thing. I've heard of some folks having adhesion problems with PVA glue, but I haven't had any. I'm not sure if I was just lucky, but it's possible that it was because I used an adhesion promoter between the glue layer and the spraypaint layer. I wish I'd had some time to do some head-to-head tests on different coating methods.
For glue, I'm completely sold on using the Zap-A-Gap superglue, with major seams backed by a layer of hot glue. That's absolutely the approach I'll be using for any future EVA/craft foam work.
What went wrong:
I'd originally wanted to do the middle abdomen piece of the HEV suit in some kind of fabric, but in the interest of time (and running out of time) I want ahead and made it out of EVA foam. In retrospect, I really wish I'd made that piece out of fabric after all. EVA foam is not particularly breathable, and having it wrapped tightly around your midsection kind of creates a portable mini-sauna.
My big mistake though was in not putting enough thought into how to hold all the pieces onto my undersuit. I thought I had an easy solution with using heavy duty adhesive velcro. And it did work great in my initial around the house testing. But it didn't hold up well to extended wear in the heat and humidity at DragonCon in Atlanta. By Saturday most of the adhesive backing on the Velcro was all but useless and it became a bit of a struggle to keep the pieces of the HEV suit from kind of flopping about on me.
How the costume held up:
For the most part, I think it held up pretty well, but there are a few areas that are worse for wear:
Some scratches and dents:
There's some of these all over, most pretty small. A lot of the larger ones like in this picture are probably from my crowbar. It might not be a great idea to have a solid metal prop with a foam costume. :unsure
Some cracking paint:
This seems to have been confined to one heel area. I don't recall anything different about the surface prep or undercoating on that area, so I'm kind of stumped as to why this happened.
Wrinkled foam/paint:
My understanding is that this kind of thing is common on EVA foam costumes wherever they flex? But in my case I think the primary cause is the previous mentioned velcro failures. That and I made the forearm pieces a bit too tight, which made them difficult to get off. That piece and the chest piece would have been much better to have made in two pieces for easier putting on and taking off.
Outright failure:
This is certainly the worst part, and it started failing the first night at Dragoncon. I had to glue and patch it repeatedly throughout the weekend. The major problem here is that I thought of the middle chest piece as a detail piece, when actually it gets a lot of stress. That area is just made of thin 3mm craft foamies and superglue, so it really doesn't hold up to abuse.
There were also a few spots where silver paint rubbed off on the orange or black paint from the crowbar rubbed off onto the orange, etc. I think that was mostly in transit and storage though.
The plan:
I'm not sure there's much I can do about the wrinkled areas, although I would REALLY appreciate any suggestions if anyone has had success with fixing that kind of thing. The deeper scratches and dents I'm going to fill with the same paintable caulk I used originally while building the suit, then spot paint with some orange acrylic craft paint that's a pretty decent color match. I'll use the same touchup paint for the smaller scratches and to cover up the paint that rubbed onto the orange. It's not going to be a perfect match, but it's better than nothing. Maybe I can cover it up by doing some weathering?
For the cracked chest piece, I'm going to need to find something more durable than just superglue. I backed a lot of my other seams with hotglue, maybe that's what I should do here? Or try something heavy duty like an epoxy?
And of course, before I wear it out again I'm going to need to do something better than adhesive velcro for sticking it to my undersuit. I'm thinking maybe strong magnets?
ha not bad I think I saw this 8 months ago XD
the wrinkly bits are to be expected. The foam parts of my HEV suit went to hell too, try giving them a blast with a heat gun, (or hairdryer on max) it should stretch the foam out a bit back to its original shape... or at least a bit closer/less wrinkled, might lose a bit of paint though.
Also I tried a thick corduroy style material for the undersuit. It didn't look as clean as foam, nor work half as well so I had to bin that section and re-do with foam... Unless you've got some sweet needlework skills. That middle section I'd re-do in thicker foam if you want a more permanent fix, that 3mm stuff isn't great, very 'stretchy', used it to hold some shin armour together, just tore off :/
For fixing the dents, just shade round them work in some damage with the paint work so it looks deliberate.
For the velcro issues, stitch them to the undersuit section or use hot glue to attach, those sticky pads are worse than useless in the real world
the wrinkly bits are to be expected
. The foam parts of my HEV suit went to hell too, try giving them a blast with a heat gun, (or hairdryer on max) it should stretch the foam out a bit back to its original shape... or at least a bit closer/less wrinkled, might lose a bit of paint though.Also I tried a thick corduroy style material for the undersuit. It didn't look as clean as foam, nor work half as well so I had to bin that section and re-do with foam... Unless you've got some sweet needlework skills. That middle section I'd re-do in thicker foam if you want a more permanent fix, that 3mm stuff isn't great, very 'stretchy', used it to hold some shin armour together, just tore off :/
For fixing the dents, just shade round them work in some damage with the paint work so it looks deliberate.
For the velcro issues, stitch them to the undersuit section or use hot glue to attach, those sticky pads are worse than useless in the real world
Bob McCormick
New Member
the wrinkly bits are to be expected
Thanks for the suggestion Matchbox! I've got a little bit of painted scrap material left. I'll try hitting it with the old heat gun and see if the paint holds up or not.
BTW, I checked out your HEV suit thread. That is one DAMN fine looking HEV suit! Very impressive.
ijduncan
New Member
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