Enlist In The NCR!

For those of you who don't know or aren't big fans of the Fallout franchise, the NCR - New California Republic - is a faction withing the game "New Vegas." Within this faction, there is an iconic figure that is known by almost anyone who has seen the cover of the game - The NCR Veteran Ranger! More commonly known as the "cool looking guy on the cover."

In the game, "New Vegas" you can't actually join the NCR as I would have hoped. although, you can come fairly close. Unfortunately, that isn't close enough in my books. I wanted to walk around like a bad ass toting the label of an NCR ranger just so I could watch the other Mojave wasteland survivors throw bottle caps at my feet. Yes, I suppose I could have installed on of the various mods that let you legitimately join the NCR ranks, but I'm too lazy. And I might have felt a little cheated about it. Bending the game to let me do something.

I'm not going to let a simple role playing game ruin my dreams of becoming a ranger. Instead, I'm going to take it one step farther than joining the NCR in the game, I'm going to become a fully fledged ranger outside of the game. I mean, it's probably no closed than modding the game, but at least it has a bit more realism to it than an in-game character.

I have began forging my own NCR ranger armour so that I can wander the great Australian wasteland  and have Powder Ganger flee at the sight of me! That or get quite a few odd looks.

To complete my goal; I need to make the helmet, create the chest armour & find a duster to wear over the top. And when I have all that down, then I can focus on the smaller details - such as the belts, armoured gloves and etc.

So far, I have finished pepakuring the helmet and I'm about to resin it piece by piece (Pepakura is a paper craft program that lets you print of 3D models in pieces you can glue together. It's a really neat program. I have included a link to the pepakura website in the delicious stack linked below).

When that's dry(tomorrow hopefully), I'll start covering the inside with  fiberglass cloth which will increase the strength 10 fold. When that's all finished, it will be quite a tough helmet. 210msg paper soaked through with resin and covered in fiberglass? That's gotta be a tough combination.

While the helmet dries and in between coats of resin, I will be stenciling and cutting out the pieces for the chest. I still need to get a black shirt to glue it onto, but at least for now I can just work on getting their pieces to fit properly. I'm using a rubber mat that you can shape using a heat gun. It sounds pretty low tech but there is quite a lot of incredible stuff made using this technique. And I mean Incredible!

And the duster is a pretty simple. Just need to find on that isn't upwards of $60. Perhaps an op shop? I'll find something eventually so I'm not too worried about this.

Hopefully when everything is pieced together, painted up and detailed, it will look pretty great! I can't wait to see it all finished. Well, mostly the helmet. My hand is killing me after cutting out 32 pages of pepakura pieces and gluing it all together.  But, I suppose the more effort you put into something, the more you get out of the finished product.


Thanks for reading. I'll try and upload bits and pieces of the costume as I go. Maybe I'll have it completed in time for next years Halloween? Ha, it shouldn't take that long.

--Luke / Afterfield

bit.ly/NCR_Ranger_Stack - Delicious Stack "NCR Ranger Armour."
bit.ly/EnlistInTheNCR_WordPres… - The same post on my Word Press Blog.