Been a while, got distracted by grad school, but slowly but surely made some progress. Painted a few finished pieces, and finished helmet save electronics.
So here's where I'm at:
Armor test fit:

Shins:
These have been painted, going to look at adding straps tonight.
Painted:

Weathered:

Helmet:
Silver finished:

The alter ego armory helmet didn't have a practical vented model for the rear keyslots, so I modeled my own to learn fusion 360:
Fan mount/trim:

Keyslots:

Printed Assembly with test fitted 40mm fans:



Helmet painting:
Gloss black undercoat:

Initial aluminum paintjob. Well, the version it was before I painted it. Did a lot of sanding and smoothing and perfecting here. Then I said yolo on the paint job because I figured the mottled look would be nice under peeling paint anyway.

I painted this in multiple layers to give the appearance of having been someone elses before. Hypothetically it was a lighter purple and green first, but I never took the masking off to do purple before throwing the final pink on the ear caps.
Undercoat:
Light Purple (most)
Green - earcaps, keyslots
So here's the progress pics as I build up to final layers:


Final purple coat (Some issues on the cheek here, but came out nicely with sanding, and otherwise, whatever.

Finished paintjob:

And finally, weathered up, with the shoulder armor attached to vest (Used chicago screws here).

So for the fans, I'm planning on controlling with an Arduino Mini, and running power from my belt pouches over CAT6, which would be able to accept the analog signal from another run to the gauntlets. Might mess with wireless, but trying to avoid Li+ batteries 1 inch from my head.
Schematic for fan control:

Circuit in fan with one fan group setup:

Struggling a bit to get the other fan (Centrifugal fan) to run off the 5v signal, the Noctua ones went perfectly though. We'll see if it even fits, and if the placement on the bottom of the visor is viable space wise, but my first test fit went okay, though it was strategic once glasses were involved. Did the PlastiDip trick on the interior, which worked wonders on the claustrophic feelings I was getting when my first coat of it got dusted with white and silver from painting.
Short term, gonna try and finish up lower legs, since the knees are painted as well. Just need to nail down placement. Still need to order boots and do thigh plates. The codpiece is also todo, but I've got it traced onto the Sintra. Probably going to try and do once more trim on these chest plates, and redo the velcro on my vest again, so I can lock that in. Nailing the sizing and spacing has definitely been the biggest struggle.