Making Gears armor

Decided I'm gonna drive myself nuts and take on a big project.

As a lot of you know, I'm a whore for Gears of War. Been a gear head since Emergence Day (which happened to by my birthday).
So I decided to take my Gears obsession to the next level. Cosplay!

Yes over the next five weeks I'm going to attempt to make a full suit of C.O.G. Armor from the Gears series. More specifically, Hoffman from Gears 3. (pictured below).

I'm going to be using EVA foam that you can buy in sheets at Harbor Freight. It shapes and paints really well apparently, and a ton of people use it to build Halo armor, Gears and Mass Effect armor.

So I have 5 weeks (starting today), to get this bad boy going and see what happens. Needless to say this is gonna cut into my gaming and social life pretty substantially. Wait....what social life? HA!

Anyway. Here's the schedule breakdown I have set for myself. Hopefully I won't hit too many roadblocks and can stick to the schedule.

WEEK 1: Research, Template creation (using poster board), and create a torso dummy (using duct tape, an old shirt and sheets)

WEEK 2: More Templates (because there's a lot of them), Begin Foam cutting and shaping (using a heat gun & exacto knife)

WEEK 3: Foam Cutting cont., Shaping cont., Gluing pieces (w/hot glue)

WEEK 4: Major Assembly Begins, Priming, Painting & Wiring up Lights

WEEK 5: Painting & Finishing Touches / Details

It's gonna be a lot of work. But it's gonna be fun.

Thankfully I already have weapons ready to go. I own both Lancer props that NECA sold with the launches of Gears 2 & 3. I may try to make a grenade to go with the armor though if I have time. Doubtful though. I also have a bunch of NERF pistols I can paint up for a temp side-arm until I have time to spend on making an actual Snub or Boltok pistol.

Wish me luck.

Here's a few reference shots so you can see what it will hopefully look like when I'm done.

Click images above to see a larger version