My Alpha Legion Marine WIP

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Hello, everyone,
My Name is Matt and this is my first attempt at making any 40k related cosplay or props.  I have been looking around this forum and the RPF for quite a while and tried to absorb as much as I could. Like many, I looked at Pilerud's Cosplay's Blood Angels Space Marine build on this forum to help get a lot of ideas.

To get started, I wanted to make something that not too many others have attempted, as well as choose a color scheme that i personally  like- as a result I decided to make a marine from the Alpha Legion.   One benefit of making a chaos build, is that you can be really creative about adding embellishments, deviating from "it must look this way" attitude  and if you make a mistake- or something doesn't quite line up- it sill will be fine.  The organic nature of a Chaos build can give you a little more freedom I think.    The following posts are all works in progress, and they may be all over the place- as i work on multiple things at once, rather than in any particular logical order. 

BUILD BASICS
Alpha Legion Marine armor and chain sword

- I am 6'5" and 260lbs and I wanted to make a set that fits me, I Know that many purists will die inside, as I am not a 7’ or 8’ tall marine… I figured due to my already big stature, I was close enough.   

- I am using a combination of Pepakura foam unfold templates provided by Shiney (thank you!) as well as ones  made by JF customs  on the RPF forum.  The scale I am using is neither 850 nor 935…  i am going with a base scale of 876, as that would make the suit fit a 6’5 person.

- The foam I use is a High density foam that is smooth on both sides. I bought mine (on amazon) from a seller called “the Foamory”  OMG this stiff is incredible. Its heat forms and cuts super well- my lines and seams are the best they have ever been with this stuff.
I also used bevelled cut foam edges from these guys- they work out so well

-I also have been using contact cement ( i used Dap’s Wood weld but should have used Barge ) as the brush on the wood weld is plastic and kept breaking.

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To get used to cutting & gluing  and just because it was a lot of fun, I started off with the chainsword.  I found a photo of the model I wanted to use and based everything off of that.

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After a few days of trying to figure out how to actually make this out of foam i found a wonderful video on YouTube by SKS Props, who has made an excellent Blood Angel Chain sword https://youtu.be/lbVuwwCO61M I highly recommend everyone check  this out before starting your own sword project!   

What is really nice is that SKS Props also provides a free outlined template of the sword you can print off and uses as a guide for sizing
 Here is a picture of the default Sword template

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While the blood Angels template is awesome, I wanted mine to look more Chaos like, so i added some drawings of my own and cut out the whole template as a guide.  Then i used a length 3/4 " of PVC pipe as the core that goes from the pommel to more or less the tip of the sword.

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The next steps were to follow the pattern and cut out the foam to match- making sure that the build looks good from every angle.  The sword started getting pretty top heavy, which made it uncomfortable to handle over time, so I decided to counterbalance the weight at the pommel of the sword with fishing weights. the line sinkers i used were 2 oz each, and i think i have 6-7 of them

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So, one of the best tips I found out was to use Googley Eyes as rivets- I bought a pack from Wal-Mart that has a tone of sizes. yeah,  it looks funny now- but the pained result is so cool. I figured that out while making a Dr. Doom costume (tons of rivets!)

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Next i wanted to make spikes/hornes/bony things to match the chaos theme- so I decided to try out Foam Clay-  This stuff is so neat!  basically its EVA foam that is in a putty form at first.  I used a brand called Foam-Mo (from amazon) All you need to do is sculpt the foam clay into whatever shape you want and use water to stick it to the EVA foam on your build.. then let it dry out.  it turns into hard EVA foam that you can lightly sand & Paint...  Additionally, I added foam bevels (bought from the foamory) as well as uses an x-acto knife and heat gun combo to make lines.    to do this, use a ruler  and knife to make a straight line, then go over it with your heat gun.  this will expand the foam and make it look like there is a machined edge on something very fun!

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After all of my googley eyes, and embellishments were done i covered the whole thing with 4 light coats of spray on Plasti-dip.  I had to make sure that all angles were covered which got really tricky    Once totally dry and done, I had the base of of my sword, now beguins the coloring process. 

Since I am making an Alpha Legion build, I wanted a cool blue, green/turquoise scheme.  My first thought was to get some coolk color changing paint- the same kind they use on custom car wrapping.  as it turns out Plasti-Dip actually makies a color change blue -green product  called 'plastidip chameleon' but NO ONE has it lol.. the only place i could find this product was online at a one store and they were charging $45 for it

Plan B

I bought a bunch of metalic paints of my own and deiced i would paint my own

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Before i did any painting, I used a hot knife to make minor scratches and battle damage. I feel that less is more.

when it comes to painting, I love the look of people who use air brushes. I do have one, but i never liked using it.. i am a dry brush / direct paint sort of guy.  If you load the paint on the end of your brush, with a small dab of water, and the go in small circles, you can get really good effect without brush strokes showing up I usually have paper towels on hand too to wipe down any extra paint

ORDER OF PAINT
here is what I did
- 4 coats Black Plasti-Dip
- 2 coats 'Rustolium metallic Turquoise 'Paint & Primer in one
- 1 Spot coats of 'Testers blue green color shift paint'
- Dry brush 'lamp black' acrylic paint around edges to make it look like shadows (kinds of what air brush people do)
- - Used the metallic blues  and reds to paint the rest

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Almost done,  need to paint the hand wrap and use a clear coat to protect it.

[adeptus mechanicus]

Nice work, can't wait to see more. Being that you're using spray paint, you'll likely have to plasti-dip the whole thing. Try some experiments on scrap foam to see if it damages it or not. If it doesn't, it'll save a ton of $. I ended up using custom mixed acrylic paint from home Depot right out of the paint section. I got the little samples for 4$ or 5$ and it goes a long way. Keep up the great work!

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Hey thanks Alot!  yep I have 4 coats of plastidip on everything - i can see that really adding up on the whole build. great suggestion about the home depot custom acrylic- ill be sure to check that out

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Helmet Project

For my helmet, i must say that I  made plenty of mistakes,  but i have learned a bunch from it which is good.  Using the template from Shiney, i have a base guide for the shape- however I was wanting to make the face plate more choas like, and something similar to the primaris helmets  the end result is a hybrid that is unique to my marine, which I like.

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Shoulders

For my Alpha Legion build, I wanted to try to use scales wherever possible. I decided to get a few hundred precut diamond shaped foam scales. I bought them from the cosplay pros on amazon, and they come as flat shapes like this

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I plan on putting these scales on the shoulders  (and anywhere else they may look good)   but I wanted to give them me depth and organic feeling.   so I decided to pinch & glue the tops of them and then attached them onto a 2mm eva foam strip