Hello there! I have decided to cosplay Dr. Elizabeth Shaw from Prometheus.
And, whilst planning for the bodysuit itself has gone quite well, I've hit a wall with her body armour. I have never made body armour before, and have no idea how to go about it.








This is her costume, with the body armour. I was considering modifying some Martial arts/football/paintballing body armour. My boyfriend also suggested resin casting, but warned me this would be expensive.
Does anyone have any suggestions for me that won't break the bank? Your help would be thoroughly appreciated!

Camilla.

I'd personally try a cardboard and paper-mache approach and then go crazy with detailed painting and materials but I accept that's not a great approach if you want the armour to look realistic. I could suggest looking around for something you can alter or build up, your idea to use sports wear is a good idea. I dunno, I'm not totally helpful, sorry. D:

Craft Foam Armour Tutorial

Hopes this helps - I've not used it myself yet, but I've had a friend make armour this way, which was pretty good.

I also hear EVA foam is good too. But I don't know much about that either.

I would suggest the craft foam technique as it's a nice thin foam. Equally you could use plastazote which is a bit thicker but can be bought in giant sheets. EVA foam is probably too thick for most parts of that costume.
The technique for all of them is pretty simple - cut out your shapes with scissors or a knife, heat into shape (if you can afford a heat gun, get one), glue bits togethr or glue straps etc on, then finish the foam with PVA, latex, paint, etc. This avoids pretty much all nasty chemicals and tricky techniques - while things like fiberglass can look nicer, it's not nice stuff to work with.
I tend to get all armour making supplies off've ebay, http://www.coscraft.co.uk/, http://www.webbingbucklesstraps.co.uk/ and local craft stores.

this this this!

We used Eva foam in our Gears of war group and it is amazing stuff to work with! its light and mouldable so i'd say its definetly the way to go! =D

Craft foam is EVA foam, it's just a low density and thinly cut as standard. When you look at specialist EVA sellers you'll find they have a wider variety of thicknesses and densities to choose from

Thirded, I love EVA foam. It's so easy to work with. As Amy-Lou says EVA is just the fancy name for craft foam but generally represents the thicker stuff. The stuff I get is 10mm thick foam floor tiles, and I get them off Ebay; just look for EVA Foam interlocking tiles. I just seal it with a couple coats of Mod Podge (or you could use PVA glue) and then use spray paint. For the detailing you could use a soldering iron if you have one but even just something that would leave a good impression in the foam like pressing really hard with a blunt screw driver or something would work.

My greaves for Carmine were made from EVA foam, infact as Numta said the whole lot was made from EVA foam. (Ignore the blue bits, that's just where the paints worn away, if you're getting foam, get it in black.)

Ooh wow this looks great!! I might use some thicker foam, but the weathering stuff is really useful! 8D Thankyou!
I'll run this by my boyfriend and see what he thinks (he has more experience with foam and whatnot than I do)

Oh, I see! That stuff does look pretty good.. so is that EVA? And whats the difference between EVA and plastazote? >< I have more experience working with metals and plastics and wood! ^^; I'm a bit of a foam noob, (unless its styrofoam)

Thankyou so much! This buckles store is brilliant!!!! Particularly since Shaw's costume has a couple of belts and buckles around the stomach and shoulers! 8D -dances happily-

Yep, it's just one of these.

They are both just a type of foam. Generally from what I've read EVA foam sounds like it's easier to work with as plastizote either needs latex to seal it or specific types of PVA. Where as EVA foam can be sealed with mod podge or most types of PVA but you would work with both in the same way. So both can be cut using scissors or a knife. It's just until you come to the painting and the preparing for painting stage that they really differ.

Would this be suitable?

So, if I get EVA I'll need to mould it into rounded shapes...
So do I just layer this stuff and PVA it together? And then seal it with PVA so I can paint on it?~

You guys have been so helpful by the way! ^^

I wouldn't use PVA to glue it as generally PVA is slow to dry and not particularly strong but if you have a hot glue gun, they work amazingly well for foam. If you use the EVA you probably will need to use a hot air gun (AKA paint stripper) to get it to keep the shape around your shoulders or possibly you could heat it on a low heat in the oven and then mold it on something (not yourself as it might burn) until it cools into the right shape but yeah PVA is great for sealing it then you can paint away.


No problem at all. Glad to help.

If you are going to use a knife to cut it I'd highly recommend using a very sharp knife. You get much cleaner edges. I used a snap-off blade knife for my foam and as soon as it didn't go through the foam like a hot knife through butter I'd snap a couple(as the foams thick) of blades off.

This video might be helpful for you. He is making armour from an EVA foam tile and he also shows you a technique for getting curves without heating it by cutting away behind the bend which I have used myself but I do prefer the heating method.

Personally I use contact adhesive to glue plastazote foam, which is very similar to EVA foam. It is very strong, and is applied in a thin layer on both pieces and allowed to dry before bringing them together. I find hot glue doesn't have the strength and PVA will take too long to dry.

As for sealing, I used a specific brand of PVA to give me a little flexibility. I have details here

To get the rounded shapes you can either heat form or cut on a bias, I used both on Priss depending on the shape I required. I wrote a tutorial on vacuum forming foam which enables some of the more difficult shapes to be created, hopefully this should be going up here soon which could help you.