izzi

Alright! Progress report for today. Woke up in the morning. Put on my new plastic gloves... (Guess the song!) Anyway, I got to clear coat some stuff today: Didn't turn out too bad. Just needs some touch-ups and the tube stripes. -iz

Just finished the clear coat on these today. If we decide the Kneeplate is required I figured I better have that ready. I traced the top rim of my shin against a spare piece of plastic a friend gave me and took a heat gun to mold the pieces to match. Now I can just glue them to the knee plate and wrap around the top of the shin, instead of having to buy a new set of shins just to paint the top of one gold. I need to run out and buy some snaps tomorrow to match my current ones holding on the plate, then I guess I'll find out if this will actually work! I will really be nice if I can just keep things interchangeable. -iz

I now present: The TuskenTrooper! AAOOOO! RAOO! RAOOO! AAAAOOOOOO!

Okay, so I promised these and they're a little late... But let's post these anyway! Stripes! knees plate didn't turn out too well, se that may get some touch ups by hand: Backpack back section. Stinger is attached. So far I've just used glue and zip ties to attach everything: Some of the other parts are painted and getting ready to be attached. still have to gather up a few more parts to get it to work, just didn't have much time to go out today: Now I'm going to bed. I have Ninjas to attend to in the morning! Laters, -iz

Okay, since I can't start to paint today, I started gathering up what I had. As i stated before, I'm doing this cheap and while I'm going for the overall look, I'm not trying for 100% accuracy (yet), so some of this is what I had around the house, and others are my cheap alternative. The less shipping I have to pay for at the moment the better and most stuff I spent less than $2 per piece. 1. Rubbermaid "take-alongs" with the screwtop rim removed ($2.50 for 3 I believe) 2. Cleaning wipes containers, the smaller ones. The wipes were put in a Ziplock, we needed those anyway. (About $2.50 each) 3. Dissected Master Plunger. (This is about $3-4.) 4. Cannibalized tupperware lid. Sometime it pays to not throw away things that don't have a match. 5. 1" PVC pipe shaped with a heat gun. I actually had all the PVC I'm using laying around my garage. Way back in the day I almost tried to build a DLT-19 out of PVC and wood... Then I said "forget this" and ordered one. So I don't remember the price. 6. Left over 1/2" PVC pipe. See above for the story. I've been set on PVC for this entire project. Those pipes are freakin' long! 7. Kitchen funnel set. Small one for the flare, large one for the stinger to be made later, Second largest to pour windshield washer/De-icer fluid in my wife-to-be's car last night, and last one for the kitchen. ($1.97 for the set) 8. Ahh... The wondrous floral scent... ('Nuff said) 9. I'll leave this one to you to figure out... MUAHAHAHAHAHA! 10. 1/2" PVC pipe cut in 2.75" lengths. Refer to numbers 5 and 6. So I have to make a Box/tubie thingy (Technical term) for the top right, a tool kit for the top left, a radio for the bottom left, cap for the two bottom pipes and a "Mortar" tube for the right side. If this weather ever gets better, I may be able to take my so-not-a-winter-car out to gather up a few more cheap parts to make that happen. Oh yeah, I gotta buy strapping, and maybe something to rubberize the PVC that will be touching my armor. Can't go spoiling that shine! -iz

Okay, so some thing have changed since I wrote my last planning post. I did decide to go with a frame to keep things from flopping around. I realized a strong gust of wind could make the pack look really flimsy quick. So I decided to make one out of 1/2" PVC. The sterilite containers that I initially bought also didn't look right on the frame. The frame I made is about 2 inches larger than the average frame used, since I'm a bit taller than the average trooper, and the boxes just look too small so I went searching and found these cheap litter boxes. They seem to be about the same depth as most seed trays used, but are probably a little sturdier, and at a 10 inch width they fit nicely on the fame! Yay! But here's the problem: If the paint doesn't seal the scent in, for the next 3 months I will be known as the FLORAL TROOPER! Striking fear in the hearts of Imperial Florists everywhere! MUAHAHAHAHA! Here are some test shots. Things look to line up alright, now I just have to create, paint and mount the dohickies on it. And yes, dohickies are the technical term. And last but not least... I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS WORKED! Anyone who has seen me troop has seen my slightly skewed gray pauldron. The top didn't lay down properly when it was being made, so the guy just sent it to me for free when I bought the armor. Well... Apparently it takes gold paint and clearcoat REALLY well. It's been on there for a week, and I honestly thought it would start to flake when it was bent, but everything still seems flexible enough! Talk about an experimental gold pauldron on the cheap! That's it for now. And remember kids to ask yourself this: Do you know the Muffin Man? [insert sting music here] -iz

Okay, so I've look around, and I think this is the break down to the parts. Since it varies from build to build, I've figured out what I think will be the easiest items for me to get a hold of. These are all mounted on top of large tupperware type boxes. About 14 1/2" x 8" x 4 5/8". Some people put this on a backpack frame or build a pvc frame, but I hear you can do away with the frame all together and just have the straps connected to the main boxes. Also if you use zip-ties you cut down on a bit of the weight. So here's my plan: 1. 1" diameter PVC pipe 2. Some box 3. Round bowl 4. Water Bottle 5. Plunger 6. Sink/PVC pipes 7. Thermal Detonator plate 8. 1"-3" PVC pipe 9. Thermal detonator end cap 10. Tupperware pitcher lid 11. round container 12. funnel 13. Misc box 14. Misc knobs 15. Five 1/2" x 3.25" long 16. Sink pipe I guess I may go out later tomorrow after I teach the ninjas how to kick each other. I'm thinking I can get this ready and set to paint by Monday if I find all the parts I need. -iz EDIT: Scootch just pointed me towards a tutorial he wrote. So I'll have to check that out and all this might change.

Well, both the girl and the boy are sleeping, so I guess I get some more time to fool around on here. I'm going to leave the paint alone for a couple days and let it thoroughly dry. (Thank the gods for a dry sunny day X-mas Eve!) I'm also experimenting with an old pauldron of mine, (I have a new one on the way!) So I'll keep everyone updated on that as I figure it out. I think after the holiday I'm going to tackle the backpack. I'm going to go with a TD pack because, honestly I think that's what it is. I see what I think are a few identifiers that support this. Mainly the split back, bottom canister and the detonator panel. The pack doesn't seem too hard. Just a matter of gathering the supplies and painting. I'm hoping if all goes well, we'll have a new costume type to submit for the new year! If that happens, what costume should be next? The Radtrooper? Swamptrooper maybe?

Okay, well for some reason I can't get the dome sanded enough to fix the smoothness of the paint. May try to sand and prime over the paint to see if it'll even things out, but right now it's not showing to imperfections too bad. So I may be good just leaving it and starting a new one later. I'll see for sure tomorrow when it's fully dry. I may just dry brush silver over the imperfections to give it a weathered look too.

Well, disaster just struck! Had the garage perfect for painting, then a snow storm hit and my nice smooth paint job, on the bells and the helmet, now looks like crinkled tin foil... :'( Guess That's it for me today. Stupid weather. Guess when they start to dry I can bring em in and sand them down to get them all ready for another day. Sanded and taped for painting:

Looks like this is all I got done today. The last coats of paint don't seem to want to cooperate for the bucket. Maybe I can get the stripes on them tomorrow and worry about the bucket later. Though the weather looks to be taking a turn for the worse. -iz

Yeah, I have to figure out how to get one that matches the stripes. I was pointed in the direction of a pauldron maker, but I may see if there's an overlay I can put on my current pauldron that'll just hold the paint. Then it'll be an exact match. That'll probably be the last thing I tackle. I think next on my list is the pack. Though I have emailed my favorite armor supplier to see what he has in stock for pauldrons right now. Who knows I might luck out! Here's the paint I'm using: I'm only putting the clear coat over the gold stripes to mute the color a bit. clear coating the gloss black actually seems to make it seem less glossy. The metallic though isn't quite a gloss, so though it mutes the gold a bit, it actually adds a bit of a shine to it. Funny how paints interact. -iz

Okay so there has been a bit done for this: Stripes painted on the arms of the Nova: Got a couple coats of paint on my other pieces of Nova armor.

Great! Then I'll clear coat, the parts that are done the next chance I get. Nearly have the rest of the armor primed and ready to hit the paint stage. These will take longer as I'll need to hit them with a few coats of gloss black then let them sit for at least 48 hours before I try to stripe them. Can I get a ruling on the Knee plate? Will I need to have it? Just as many sources show it wit out a gold knee plate as show it with one. are we going to make it mandatory or optional? -iz

Okay, this is a rustoleum metallic finish gold gloss. Think this'll work or is it too bright of a shade? The other choice would be to find a darker satin gold, or an off yellow. Let me know your thoughts so I don't paint up all my armor, then find out someone has a better idea for the coloring. -iz

Working on it! Got my 2 helmets and a couple presents from Scootch to help me finish the armor part of the costume (Scootch rocks!) I'm running out to sand and paint when I can get away from work. Just doing computer stuff today. I'll have to trim tonight. Have a friend coming over to work on his white armor anyway. (I keep telling him to paint it, but he's not biting. So a view of the awesomeness that arrived today: Back to work! -iz

So it was a nice day today and I got things primed. Now I'm up late doing the work I should have done when I was priming and sanding. Guess I better go grab some gold paint tomorrow! Still would like to hear some opinions if anyone has any about the paint. ...Yes that's my trimmed and primed chest armor for my Shadow Guard in the middle there. -iz

Use your imagination for this you have to turn the black to gold and the blue to black. I used straight lines for the arms the first time but on the Asymmetrical armor I just couldn't get it to look right, so I'm going with lines that get slightly bigger as they go up. There really isn't a definitive marking width for these guys anyway. The SWG game has them even, but they have total symmetrical armor. the pictures for them seem to have the whole top or most of the top of the gold striped armor covered, so I'm using that as my excuse.

I posted this in the other thread, but it was rather unorganized. My basic plan is to create a Novatrooper by just changing some extra parts on my current Stealthy. The fact the the Stealth CRL and the working Nova CRL both call for glossy armor helps. It has been pointed out before that all Rebellion era troopers had glossy armor, so it fits. I'm hoping I only need to swap out 20-30% of the armor to make this work. I'm going to go for the Elite Novatrooper, as the SWG TCG refers to it. Anyone see anything I'm forgetting? I had a few parts left over, when the guy I got my armor from sold me a bunch of spare parts he had sitting around: Forearms, Handplates and Biceps. I'm grabbing one of the buckets from Scootch, kneeplate, and we're talking about getting some extra shoulder bells pulled. I just need to decide on paint and am open to suggestions for that. Should I just grab a rustoleum gold gloss if i can find it? Or are we actually looking for a shade of yellow. I like the actual gold idea. A gold chrome would rock, but would be pricey. So I'm probably just down to the Backpack and the Pauldron. I'm open to suggestions to point me in the right direction on those. -iz

Figured I'd actually start a creation topic for anyone who is going to work on this. I'll be posting my project here as well. I thought it would be nice to gather the references and CRL in one place right at the beginning as well. Here's our "working" CRL

I'm going to be bringing my posts over here from the old boards that show how I painted and put together my Elite Novatrooper and Novatrooper armor. I figured it might be a good reference for any others who are aiming to have a Novatrooper; Especially if they're trying to make parts interchangeable with an existing TX suit. I just moved over the posts with some sort of explanation picture, so some of the text may not make sense. I was just copy and pasting the parts of the thread over here. -iz

SW.com Databank: Dark Horse comic Heir to the Empire WotC SW RPG: Rebellion Era Campaign Guide X-Wing: Alliance

Star Wars Galaxies Video Game: Shadow Scout LFL Art References: X-WING Rogue Leader Star Wars Galaxies TCG: Threat of the Conqueror Darth Vader #17 Action Figure References From the General Weir 2-pack - provided by Shadow Additional Images from Worthpoint: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/star-wars-comic-pack-storm-commando-1816043515 Micro Machines Titanium Series - provided by 762s 3 3/4" Figure - provided by 762s Black Series 6" Figure (Provided by 762s)

Gentle Giant Magmatrooper Statue: Lumiya: Dark Star of the Empire/Star Wars Galaxy #3: Black Series Figure:

Art References; Star Wars Adventures Crimson Empire Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Star Wars Shop Trading Card Star Wars Galaxies TCG Gentle Giant Statues & Busts: Master Replicas Mini Helmet: Action Figure Supporting References: Star wars Unleashed Figure: 3/4" Hasbro Figure: Real Action Hero Figure: Side Show Collectibles 12 inch FIgure Hasbro Black Series: Shadow Squadron Hasbro Vintage Collection