This all started in the summer of this year. My son asked for a fallout themed birthday party after watching me play FO4.
I ordered some basic workman overalls and my lovely wife attached gold ribbon in the right places. We also picked up this purpose printed 76 from an ebay seller.
Once the basic suit was finished and the party underway, a colleague told me about a local comicon coming up. I thought about giving it a go and set about building a laser rifle which you can read more about here.
I ended up pulling apart an old computer mouse and wired up the laser rifles trigger too!
Shortly before the St Albans Comicon, I decided to add one more addition. A leather shoulder guard. The basic shape came from the lid to an old beauty machine I had kept hold of from some years back, I just knew it would come in handy eventually. The fake leather was bought from a local market and I covered this lid and a couple of bits of card.
A strap and buckle was then added to the underside and the corresponding clip sewed on to the vault suit to hold the armour in place.
While the basic vault suit won us second place in the St Albans cosplay comp (the whole family went as vault dwellers), I knew there was more to do to even come close to those cosplayer's you see on Instagram.
The chest of the suit, in my opinion was letting it down and although it had 76 on the back, I used the FO4 suit as a guide (You're not catching me in a latex FO76 suit).
With some blue fabric from the local haberdashery and some thin wadding, I had to sew lines running across these custom cut panels. This was the first time I had used a sewing machine and my wife showed me what to do, in no small part to her not wanting to do it herself i'm sure.
Next came the expansion to the leather armour.
I used a few old belts and the remainder of the fake leather I had from the shoulder guard to create the light armour harness. The old belts were covered in this fake leather and a lot of glue and G-clamps came in handy.
Some inert ammo I collected years back came in handy, not quite the size of the rounds on the FO4 counterpart but they'll do.
A little bit of duct tape goes a long way.
I've yet to take any good photos of the completed harness.
I then built the metal parts of the vault suit, these were made from the same plastic I used for the laser rifle as well as half an old Yoyo.
I used the cable from an old pair of head phones for the vault wire and sewed on blue ribbons to hold this wire in place. To make sure these ribbons were positioned correctly, I stuck a line of J tape to the suit as a guide. The metal parts, once painted had Velcro stuck to the back and Velcro sewed to the suit.
The vault-tec patch came from an Etsy seller called patch perfect. She also makes an Atom Cats patch we used for the back of my wife's leather jacket.
I knew I needed to add some head gear, I thought about easy options like police hats, berets, or other real life head gear, but it felt like an easy cop-out.
Then at a car show, I found this fiber glass helmet. A little more German than the American style needed for a Pre War helmet but its close enough.
Using some more bits and pieces, the back radio was added.
Then my sign writing skills came in handy for the paint job. A simple army green helmet was too easy, a Fallout themed pinup on the side, that's what I wanted.
The rounded helmet always makes the proportions of the pinup look out of scale in my photos, but it's fine (IMO).
Last of all I can add some Rad-away and the FO lunch box to the belt.
I haven't got a photo of it all together yet, i'm eagerly awaiting the MCM Birmingham con this year!
December 1st, 2019
So over the last month I went to my first proper Con (MCM Birmingham) and helped promote Modiphius Entertainment's Wasteland Warfare, to which I came home with a few extra mini's as you can never have enough models stuck in the paint queue.
I had also forgot to mention above the Pipboy, it's a FO4 special edition unit that isn't hard to find online. However I made sure I equip it with an old phone linked to my Fallout 4 character inventory, there's a pre-made app to do this.
Anyway here are some more photos;
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