Help me move from Resin/Bondo to EVA.

[HappySalesman]

Firstly, I apologize if this is in the wrong place, it's been a long time since I posted here and this seemed like the best spot?

Anyway, back about 10 years ago, my friend got me into armor making using pepakura, and then resin/bondo. I liked the process because of the very high level of detail you could get out of it. However, it was teeeeeedious work. What would invariably end up happening is it would take so long I'd lose motivation (or I'd screw up somewhere and lose something like 10-20 hours of work, and then lose motivation).

So it seems now that the generally accepted and most common method of armor/prop crafting is to use EVA foam. I've seen the videos posted by people like Kamui cosplay and i'm stunned at the amount of detail she's able to get out of the material. Especially in such a short amount of time. It'd take me the same amount of time to get one piece of a set of armor finished as most people would have had the whole armor done and worn it to a convention.

What I'm struggling with is obtaining that same amount of detail. I was considering making the T-45D armor from Fallout 3 (an armor that I had built 10 years ago using the resin method) since I was familiar with it. I took a look at some foam pep files and while a lot of the parts are pretty straightforward, some of them have parts that look night impossible to cut out of foam (such as the two nostrils on below the eyes on the helmet). So how do you guys do it? Just use ultra thin foam for detailed areas or is there a trick I'm missing?

Thanks!

 

[harmgrooten]

Well, the first thing you could do is cheat ;-) There's no law saying you can't combine foam AND resin/bondo. So if you are open to using various materials, you are good to go! Escpecially if you want to use some sort of resin to coat the helmet anyway. (rather than go for flexible paints).

If you want to go full foam, it's very worthwhile to spend some time looking at other builders to get to know the material. I really like Evil Ted's stuff, but that's because I'm partial tot people with "Evil" in their names.

The cool thing about foam is that it's just as easy to take away material as it is to add. So for detailed stuff you can use knives, files, rotary tools and whatnot to make holes, textures etc. So rather than buiding a pattern, you can build something solid and remove material to get to the disered shape.
I'm not familiar with the T45D, but the nostrils seem to be some small dome shaped knob with some pattern in it. I would just make those out of solid foam, create a cylinder, sand the edges and create the pattern with a soldering iron.

Make sure you have som tools for the job. I have some knives from Logan/Foamworks that work well for cylinders and bevelled edges.

Also, there's foam clay, that you can model to smooth out edges or fill gaps. I'm not very familiar with that myself and just started experimenting with it. But it does broaden the option list

Lastly, a fair warning: If you thnik switching to foam will remove tedious work and frustration: Think again ;-)

Good luck!

 

[chibobber]

Watch the videos from "Raw Kustoms" . He sells laser cut kits that would be great for you to start and learn the techniques. Then you could broaden your skills to do it all on your own. Other vids to watch: Odin Makes and Punished Props.

 

[HappySalesman]

Well, the first thing you could do is cheat ;-) There's no law saying you can't combine foam AND resin/bondo. So if you are open to using various materials, you are good to go! Escpecially if you want to use some sort of resin to coat the helmet anyway. (rather than go for flexible paints).

Lastly, a fair warning: If you thnik switching to foam will remove tedious work and frustration: Think again ;-)

Good luck!

I actually have tried combining foam and resin/bondo. It did NOT end well. Resin ate all of the foam (even after I sealed it with like 5 layers of mod podge) and the base was so flexible all of the bondo ended up cracking after a short time.

I know foam will be tedious for sure, I just figured it'd be less time consuming (no waiting for resin or bondo to cure, no 18 hours of sanding to smooth out one part) and less weather dependent.

Watch the videos from "Raw Kustoms" . He sells laser cut kits that would be great for you to start and learn the techniques. Then you could broaden your skills to do it all on your own. Other vids to watch: Odin Makes and Punished Props.

I've watched a good amount of Punished props stuff, it's one of the other things (besides Kamui) that convinced me that i could get the level of detail I wanted out of foam. I'll take a look at Raw and Odin though.

Thanks for the responses guys. Once I get a bit more comfortable I'll start posting some progress.