This is the project that first clued me into the fact that EVA foam (erroneously called PVA foam in previous posts) was such a good costuming material.
for this you might want to look into a few pieces of equipment. a must for any armor project is a heat gun. The heat gun will let you fold the eva into shape and after a while it will hold that shape.
an optional piece of equipment is a hot knife... basically a soldering iron with a blade this allows for nice clean cuts on EVA or plastic
I made a template using craft paper and applied it to two of the 2 foot square EVA pads.
After cutting I used the heat gun to bend the armor into place.
It's boxy for now, (with my body shape It was necessary) but once I build up the layers it'll look pretty cool
For now the seem down the front looks the most out of place but that will be taken care of as it's built up
I created a couple new templates for the armor. I traced them out onto another sheet of PVA foam. I then used my new hot knife to cut out the templates. I rounded down the edges with the sander tip on my dremal. I used the heatgun on the piece to curve the plates
I used another rough template on the front, I then cut the template with my hot knife, I also cut the slots for the face guard into the top piece. I then uses the heat gun to curl the armor so the top layer would fit over the contoured belly armor. I beveled the edges with my dremel tip. Its not done yet I'll use the hot knife to even out the face guard. I'll then cut patches to cover the gap in the sides of the breastplates. After that I'll be installing under lighting in the face plate and I'm going to install lights in the sides of the contoured belly armor. It'll be set so that you can't see the leds themselves but the light should shine across the armor. I'm thinking reds, for the lights
