Vanguard Armor – Case Study

As I mentioned in my portfolio here, the vanguard armor is something I came up with that I could use in my friends and classmates short films during my time at Full Sail University. It helped to provided a lot of production value to anyone who was making a sci-fi.

The first step in making this armor was to come up with a design. I made a few sketches and decided on this one.

Then I had to decide on what materials to use. I ended up using EVA foam because it was a material I was familiar with, along with the fact that I could make the armor in my apartment and wouldn’t need power tools or a real workspace. Then based on the drawing, I cut poster board as a template for the armor. Once the template looked good, I transferred them to my EVA foam and cut it out with a sharp knife. I, then, glued the pieces together with Barge contact cement. The following pictures are progress pictures I took as I was making it.

When it came to the helmet I had a little trouble due to the fact that it was the first helmet I’ve made. So, it took me a few attempts to get it right. First, I made this helmet following these two tutorials. Evil Ted Smith’s and Punished Props. When making the test helmet the proportions of the pieces were a bit off and the the seams were super noticeable.

I tried to see if some dap kwik seal, plastidip and paint would hide the crimes. It helped a bit, but it still looked pretty bad.

So, keeping that in mind, I made the second helmet trying not to make the same mistakes. Here is what the helmet looked like after I was done.

After a while of looking at it I decided I didn’t like the lack of detail on the face guard. So, I cut it off with and exacto knife and replaced it with this one.

I then gave it a coat of plasti-dip. Before I could really get a chance to fully finish the suit, one of my friends wanted to use it in a short film. So I rushed it out and finished it by attaching a red lighting gel as the visor.

I’ve added onto it and made a few changes since then . I added a small piece of foam around the chin of the helmet so that an actor’s chin wouldn’t poke out, I changed the visor to a teal color, and I even gave it another paint job.

Take a look at some production stills of it here.

One of the things I tried to do with this suit is make it unique enough to be something visually interesting to look at but not make it so unique that it couldn’t fit into any “cinematic universe”. I think it ended up turning out pretty well. I enjoy making things asymmetrical, I think it helps give the suit some character. The only thing I wish was a little less generic is the helmet. Being the second helmet I’ve ever really made I was more focused on making it work rather then creating a good design. It ended up looking a little too much like a motocross helmet. Although I definitely learned a lot from it and used that knowledge in making my Finn helmet, which I will talk about more in my next post.

If your looking to make EVA foam armor I highly recommend looking at Bill Doran’s E-books, His YouTube and Evil Ted Smiths YouTube as well. they are invaluable resources and helped me greatly.

Thanks for reading!