After seeing what I was able to do with foam for Amie Lynn’s Lighting armor, my friend and Cosplay model Jessica Nigri , contacted me about helping her with an armored costume. She wanted to dress as Anya Stroud from Gears of War 3, and wanted to show people that she does costumes other than just sexy versions. She had attempted to use foam and bondo in building her armor but did not have the tools, skills or understanding of how to build her costume. She was trying to use pepakura files modified for foam use but it wasn’t going anywhere.
At that time, I was living at home with my parents, taking care of my mother who had contracted cancer, but I still made time to help Jessica reach her goal. The first step was to teach her how to use the materials and tools properly. up until this point, it was a mess, and hard work with little to show for it. I helped her make templates and how to properly fit the armor to her body.
My Gears of War foam armor (in progress pics) So I have started and stopped this costume several times over. But I finally decided to buckle down and get this done for Comic-Con. I am going to show some. Previous foam construction experience and the use of the Pepakura Designer software is recommended. Add details and personalize to create your own unique armour. Ideal for cosplayers, replica prop makers and foamcraft enthusiasts. Includes.pdo files and.pdf files. The scale can be adjusted using your printer options.
Because I was busy with family issues, I didn’t have as much hands on as I normally do but I was still able to help Jessica design and fit each part. It was then that I showed her the basic steps needed to seal and paint foam using modge podge, wood glue. I then needed to add the electronics to the chest armor and to do this, I visited my local Pepboys and purchased 2 prewired LED pads. These are some of my favorite tricks to adding lights to a costume without the need of a breat board. The trick was to cut the wires shorter and then solder the leads in a paralled circuit so the lights would be equal brightness rather than in series where the second set would be dimmer. Using a frosted piece of plastic, I placed the lights into the shoulders and took a look at the results.
At this point, my part was done due to my mother becoming more ill, but the positive side was that Jessica and I had gotten her to the point where she could finish the costume on her own. She sewed the fabric parts, used the foam working skills I had taught her, and completed the costume on her own. So I guess you could say this was a collaborative build rather than a commission. Either way, the fans loved her finished costume.
There are a few ways to get the in-game model. I generally search for XNALara models on DevianArt. I have also extracted the in game models for PC games that use the Unreal game engine by using the Unreal Engine Viewer. The image to the left is Garron Paduk from Gears of War: Judgment in the XNALara XPS. You can use XNALara to look at the character from all angles, and even post them using the controls in the program window. We'll just use it to export a .obj file of the model. | Garron Paduk Model in XNALara |
I use Autodesk 3D Studio Max since I already own the software from back when I did 3D modeling for a living. There are other shareware 3D packages available that will do all we need to do, which is delete everything until we have just the element we want to work on. For instance, just the boot, or just the chest armor. Once you've got the piece of armor isolated, you can export it as a .obj file. | |
| You'll now open the armor piece in Pepakura Designer. When you import the model, it will not have it's texture map. You'll need to find the .tga texture map file from the XNALara model & save it as a .jpg file. | Boot imported into Pepakura Designer |
You'll apply the texture map by going to the top menu dropdown: Settings > Texture Settings... Choose the Specify Texture Image... button, navigate to the .jpg of the texture map & click Open. | |
You can now unwrap the model by choosing Others > Unfold from the top menu. The unwrapped model will be a MESS! You can use the Divide/Connect Face tool (it looks like a zipper) to start sorting out your model into usable pieces. | |
After a bit of work, you'll have the boot separated into all the useable pieces. As you can see, there are some issues:
| Boot separated into pieces |
This is where I take the models into Adobe Photoshop to start to break the pieces into what will be the final shapes. In this image, the heel will still need some work to break the two straps apart & get them to the right angle. Of course, if you don't have Adobe Photoshop, you can always do this part by hand. Just print out the page above & trace over the pieces. Final Template PiecesI use Adobe Illustrator to trace all the pieces, scale it to fit me, and print the templates onto 8.5x11 paper. | Boot piece after edge warping in Adobe Photoshop |
| Here is my posterboard mockup of the boot. Sizing looks good, but I hadn't added the top kneepad strap on this model yet. | |
| In this side view test, I don't have the kneepad backing applied yet. This causes the kneepad to tilt back in the test. Good enough! ...so I moved on to cutting the EVA foam. | Poster Board test of boot templates |
| Here are all the pieces of EVA foam ready for assembly. You can see alignment notches along some edges. These are to either mark the centerline of a part (like the heels), or where panel lines are located (like the side of the boot). |
Free Pepakura Files
More Patterning Photos and Information
One of the biggest problems with going from the 3D printout to the 2D pattern pieces is accounting for the areas that are curved in the original model. You can see one such spot on the bottom inlay for Bermie Mataki's shoulder pauldron. The wedges left from flattening the model make the bottom edge of the inlay too wide. To account for this, Robin narrowed the bottom edge of the pattern slightly when she traced the pattern onto card stock. Then when was able to add the rounding to the picece by stretching the EVA as she heated/formed the pieces. | Bernie Mataki's shoulder pauldron fabrication |
| <-Back to Basic Tools & Supplies | On to Assembling the Armor-> |