Starcraft Marine Costume

P

Phantomdgn

New Member
Hi All,
Well I've been wanting to do a major costume for the past 5 years and now finally have the time and money to actually do it. AND I LOVE IT!! I'm gonna make more costumes year round just for the pure joy and fun of it. But any way on to my post.
I have several photos of this project. I basicaly started off with the gun one day and it just exclated into something bigger. My goal is to complete this for haloween. It will be an extremely close deadline but I think I can do it. The only thing I have to go off of is photo refrence from the web. This project is all shooting from the hip and trying to get everything to match up symetrically. The base is old hockey shoulderpads as well as the hands are made from hockey gloves. I've started to fiberglass the torso piece last week in segments to hely maintain stability. This week I'm finishing the outer layer structure and started to fiberglass it. I am hoping to have the shoulders, chest and hands fiberglassed by sunday so i can start working with body filler to the the smooth shapes.

I will be starting ion the lower half of the costume hopefully monday provided the fiberglassing and body filling goes smoothly. Other then that I must say I'm having a great time creating this costume. I always loverd scuplting in the past and usind this media is a new challenge so i am quite enjoying it.
 
You've got a pretty good design there so far. I wish I had that freehand fabrication design ability. I have spent obscene amounts of time glassing pepakura parts instead to make my own giant full-scale terran marine space suit, and now the weather here is just getting too cold for me to do much more with it this year. Ah, well. I'm far too much of a perfectionist anyway, so I guess there's always next year for me.

Good luck, and can't wait to see your design for the leg armor.
 
Hi, got a question regarding fiberglass. I guess you put the fiberglass over the folded paper for the torso parts? I was wondering how durable/fragile is fiberglass used in that method...Will it break if I bump into something or someone bumps into while wearing the costume?
 
If possible, you should lay up the fiberglass on the inside. If you're making paper parts using pepakura, that's what you should try to do when possible because fiberglass tends to get pretty bumpy and rough after it cures, which means it will require more body filler and elbow grease to make your part smooth before you paint it. The OP made his armor out of stacked cardboard and foam though, so that method obviously wasn't particularly feasible, and he had to lay it up on the outside instead.

Fiberglass is generally pretty strong stuff and, depending on the quality of the cloth you use, it usually isn't fragile, but its strength depends a lot more more on the weight (and number of layers) of the glass cloth you use in your layup. Just bumping into someone in a crowd probably won't break even a single layer of 6oz cloth, but a part that thin will be vulnerable, especially during the sanding process, and a good bump may crack it. I recommend 10-12oz glass cloth (or 2 layers of 6oz cloth), which is usually enough for most projects IMO. But if you want a good, strong part that you know is gonna get banged up a lot or sat on (for example, a shield you intend to actually use for fight choreography), 18-20oz (or 3 layers of 6oz) cloth might be better.

More layers and heavier cloth = more strength, but remember, your part is probably going to need to be trimmed, and really thick fiberglass will require a heavier duty cutting disk to cut it. The friction cutting disks I used with my dremel had some trouble cutting through just two layers. Three is really pushing it, but if you're careful and have a couple replacement disks, it's doable. You would need a serious diamond grinding disk and a high-torque high-speed rotary tool (a dremel just won't be strong enough) to cut through more than three layers for sure, though.
 
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4 more days left and i just have to finish the lower RH leg and create the lower LH leg. Other then that fabrication is almost done! then fiberglass, sand, bondo, sand, prime, prime, prime, paint, electrical and detail. I will post pics when taking a break lol
 
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