This year, I decided to participate in my company’s halloween contest. My Instagram news feed usually has a few cosplayers on there, and they started inspiring me to try and build a costume of my own. First I thought of dressing as Geralt from the Witcher, since I’m still in the middle of playing Witcher 3. All the sewing and fabric cutting got me a bit nervous though. Then I came across a video of a cosplayer showing how she built armour and she made it look SO easy! Seeing her video I then decided I’d build an armour of some sort and quickly decided on building some Halo armour.

Off I went, exploring the world of cosplay armour building! I quickly found out the fastest way to build armour is to use EVA foam with Pepakura models. The Pepakura program turns 3D models into 2D paper print outs. Making these files is a labour of love; lots of people make “foam-ready” files for others to use. Since I was building halo armour, I eventually came across The 405th, a halo armour building community. They have ALL the Pepakura files you’d ever want, for every single type of halo armour. It’s a bit hard finding the foam files for these though. The site is very old and the amount of content makes it daunting to go through.

Thankfully I came across a much newer resource that nicely summarized the build process for me! Angelend on Youtube has/is making a series of videos, showing step-by-step how to build each piece of Halo Mark IV armour. The playlist is here. He goes over everything and has tons of great tips. He also links to the Pepakura files in the description of his videos.

I followed his Halo helmet building videos, learned a lot about building with EVA foam, and ended up very happy with my final result.

Image of Taylor wearing a red halo helmet made from EVA foam

This took WAY longer than I thought it would. Originally I wanted to build the whole armour set over two weeks; incredibly foolish in hindsight. Lesson learned though, and honestly, I’m super happy I got the helmet done in those two weeks. I actually got the shoulder/biceps mostly done, but decided to focus on the helmet near the end of my two weeks. There are a few things off with it, but when I wore it to work, most people didn’t notice anything off about it. Everyone actually thought I bought it! I had to take the it off and show them the ugly innards just to prove that I didn’t buy it.

I plan to finish the rest of the armour over the next year. Next halloween, I’ll be rocking a solid red suit of Halo Mark IV armour!