Raw EVA is porous, and the pores do the choosing: paint sprayed straight onto bare foam sinks in unevenly, bites the surface, and cracks along the first flex of a strap. The first armor build guide's primer section carries the fix, a seal coat before any color, and the rest of the paint chain follows from what the seal changes.
Two sealers carry the craft: Plasti Dip (sprayed, rubbery when cured) and a glue-based gesso brushed on. Either one closes the pores and puts a coat between solvent-thin paint and foam. The guide's dose rule: two to three light coats beat one heavy one, heavy coats level worse, run at edges, and their own thickness becomes the crack initiator the seal was meant to prevent.
The same physics runs the whole chain: a rigid paint cracks at every bend of a bending material. The guide's fixes table names the symptom (paint cracks over bending foam) and the fix (re-prime with a flexible system, repaint in light coats). Flexible paint or a flexible-primer system is the choice; the seam work from the glue stage, bevels, contact cement, also lives under this rule, since the seal bridges the seams and the flex tests them.
On a sealed, primed surface, the guide's paint recipe does the metal trick in three passes: a black base, a dry-brushed silver on the raised edges, a translucent color glaze over the whole. Each pass does one job, the base sets the shadows, the dry-brush catches only the peaks (which is where wear light hits real metal), the glaze tints the metal by the color it represents. The full chain runs on the Build TV weathering wing, and the guide adds the painter's inspection rule: photograph the piece before the con, hall light reads paint differently than the bench does.
Seal in light coats, keep everything flexible, and hang the mask. — the workshop crew