Work is in progress for the custom Sparkly Gundam, which should be ready for Fanime, 2007. To make sure my ideas are working, I started with the chest, since it’s probably the most complicated single piece of the armor/costume.
I started off with wooden dowels, using several extras just to lay out the correct proportions:
After that, I removed the extra dowels, and opened up the space inside:
Next, I used a hot glue gun to attach fiberglass fabric to the dowels:
And finally, I used graphite-colored “Coat It” bonding liquid to coat and harden the fiberglass:
Next steps – add another, finer layer of fiberglass fabric to the outside of the armor, to smooth it out, and possibly a layer on the inside, for added strength.