Why?

I’d attended OnyxCon several times as a staffer for an indy comic publisher. The event organizers actually put on two shows each year: OnyxCon: Sankofa, which coincides with February’s Black History month observances and OnyxCon, a larger summer show. The marketing materials for the 2014 Sankofa event featured a futuristic, female character wearing light armor and a jet pack. I was in love! I had been slowly (read: tedious trial-and-error) experimenting with materials and techniques, but the PR-build was still my main focus. The lack of ready-made patterns or templates was no longer a concern, but I was sure I needed to finish my first effort before starting something new.

I eventually convinced myself this was not true…this will be come a repeated theme…

I shot the the show runner an email asking for permission to cosplay their mascot (for lack of a better term). Normally, no one would do this, but because the character had been developed strictly to promote the con, I felt it was a bit different than a standard media character. YMMV. The originanizers were both kind and very excited! They quickly put me in touch with the artist, James “Mase” Mason. Mase was equally supporitve and even supplied some additional references (yeah, I even had the ever-elusive-rear-view) and I got to work on the build.
Although the charachter’s aremor is more hardened plating, I decided a basic foam construction with matching paint and detailing would have to work; I was still a noob and all I knew was rolled eva and craft foam. The boots were the most distinctive part of the armor and I still hand’t figured out how I would aproach the drivesuit legs, so I figured it was a good place to start. I did poke around in some of the Pepkaura forums to see if I could find something to repurpose, but couldn’t find anything that wouldn’t need a ton of editing. A scratch build would just be faster.

I’d learned a bit from making my PR patterns and decided to use a combimation of Illustrator and tape overlay drawings to create my parts. I again used the reference images to trace and create basic outlines, then resized based on my own measurements. For some elements, like the boot shins, I made a masking tape pattern which I then scanned and created a fine tuned version in Illustrator for printing.

Don’t Overthink

I’d decided on a quasi shoecover and separate shins to achieve the boots. The shins took several adjustments and iternations, before a I had a set that I deemed worth of paint. There rear are separate parts, while thr fnt was a single heat formed piece. I made the ankles by heating the foam and then palcing it in a lime press. I trimmed the excess, but left  half inch margin which I used to assist with mounting to the shin.