camprandall

The fitting tonight went well! I definitely have to adjust a few things strapping wise, but I was very happy that all the armor met up where I hoped so no more armor changes. Whew!

Test fitting everything but the tanks tonight!

It's a little frustrating, but it's doing good! I'm still too hesitant to cram my left hand through that forearm though.

Yeah, my plan is to get the harness fitting just how I like and then attach the back plate to fit on it where I want. It will likely pull the chest plate back just a touch, but the harness isn't very thick. I'm thinking the belt brace is significant to help there from being too much weight pulling on the harness too, but that is a bit of a mystery until the tanks arrive. Cool. I didn't attempt that - partly because the chest feels a little too long already for me, but we'll see how it comes out. The fitting of this costume has been half the work and has required a ton of tweaking so who knows. Thanks Todd! I'm excited to wear this thing soon, but you can't go wrong building a droid with your kid either. I look forward to those days as my boys are 5 months, 3 years and 4 years.

Ok, so that was a fun weekend. So as I mentioned, I just wasn't crazy about the fit after a quick test fitting, generally feeling like everything was too big. There's not a ton to do other than cut things down so I did the following over the weekend. Cut the shoulder bells down by 1/2 inch Cut the belt armor down by 3/4 inch Cut the waist armor down by 3/4 inch That in turn caused a lot of other work because I had to rip out my butt plate snaps and repaint the belt and ab armor. I definitely think it was worth it though, although I can't quite try the suit on yet as the paint is curing. I also decided to just glue the butt plate and cod piece onto the armor because I really have no need for it to be adjustable and it helps a lot with the problem I've had where the curve of the cod and butt don't quite fit the belt armor. This forces it into the proper position and shape, which will also shorted suit up time. While I was at it, I also shortened the cod a bit and squared off the sides a little to look more like the screen prop. The other thing I did a lot this weekend was attempt multiple methods of attaching the chest to the back. I have decided that I'm going to mount my back plate to the harness and then attach the chest after the harness is snugly fit. This means I needed a reliable way to attach the chest that a handler could manage. I failed to get a magnet system working - well, it actually worked but I worried the tension from the arms being snapped would cause problems - and landed on this mechanism. It's essentially a tongue and groove system with a velcro strap to pull it tight. It works pretty well and I think a handler could do it without any problems.

Looks great!

Holy crap, the helmet is done! So it turns out that a little acetone on some q-tips cleaned up my rough spots beautifully! I'm so relieved this thing is ready to go. The only other stresser left is mounting that pack, which should come in about two weeks. Helmet after masking and detailing and without any cleanup. Helmet tonight after some acetone and q-tips. The little abs stack I shaped to act as a glue point for the visor.

Where did you find 1/16"? I was trying to find that myself.

Good idea with the acrylic. I might try one more thing - essentially taping over the black and re-spraying the white - and if that doesn't work I might try what you did.

Ok, so the masking just wasn't good enough. I tried to correct it by hand but there are just too many thin lines to get clean and painting white around it just makes for an uneven surface. How did you guys paint the black lines?

That's great that it worked for you! I had to play with it a bit to keep it solid while wearing it. Are you using velcro straps or something to hold it closed? Have you walked around in it yet? Thanks for sharing!

No kidding. I'm going to have to go over all the stripes with a fine brush afterwards, but it will be alright. Yeah, that thrower is a beast. Maybe we could attach some spider wire fishing line between the tanks and the thrower and people won't know we're dangling it over the shoulder. I look forward to seeing your progress!

Taping the face. There will be a lot of cleanup detail painting to do after taking this off, but it's a much better starting point that free-handing the whole thing. Great idea! (whosever it was).

Awesome!

I just velcro'd the wings for now, but I suspect I'll glue them. I'm not 100% of the placement and shape of them as of yet. Thanks! It's annoying to get stalled on building this late in the game, but probably a week from today I'll be good to go.

Yeah, that's it. I'm not sure what the length should exactly, but I mirrored the approach with abs.

Thanks, I've been looking for this shot. The FO TK had an aluminum bar that the shoulders rested on. This one clearly does the same.

Oh, and I'm also pretty sure the straps go through the return edge on the shoulder to keep it higher. That's what I'm going to do.

Yeah, not exactly sure, but I'm wondering about a curved piece mounted to a short stack so that it sits curved on the shoulder. I'm just making this crap up since I don't actually know how it works. It's kinda liberating! What isn't liberating is cutting open your thumb opening a kids toy and ending up with stitches. Yeah, I won't be done with this in two days like I planned.

Wow, that's a great pic! I'd been told this flamethrower was actually functional for the movie and you can believe it with this one. Yeah, looking around it's obviously lifted because there's a gap. That sounds like the trick. Not sure if padding is the approach I'll take or maybe some curved abs that snaps into the shoulder harness straps or something so it doesn't move around.

Hey gang! So I'm hitting that fun part of the build which is how to make everything fit well. Per usual, it's always more awkward than it seems like it's going to be at first. Here are my notes/questions after throwing the upper body on for the first time. * The torso wants to slide left or right over my shoulders. I know I don't have it strapped to the back yet, but it still is going to need some way to stay in place when I move around since it's really only resting on a couple return edges. It also just feels really big because it seems both too close to the helmet and too far down the body. Not much I can do about that. * The shoulder bells I think are just too big or too long. They drop lower than they should and are much bigger than my ANOVOS FO TK. I think I'm going to cut the bottom edge down by a half inch. * The shoulder bells also need a little abs shelf to keep them more elevated. I didn't need this with the FO TK because the shoulder gaskets filled everything out. Here, they dangle a bit. * The mid-section is tricky because I again feel like everything is too big. Looking at photos, I suspect that the belt armor and waist armor are both taller - unless these dues were 6' 4" or something - and the cod piece also seems smaller. I may cut some of these pieces down more. * The chest flaps I think may also be too big. I'm not tall (5' 10"), but everything is jamming together much more tightly than I think it should. I'll likely cut down the height a bit on these. * I'm not sure how to attach the arms. I'm thinking now of snapping them to the shoulder bells, but not sure if that's the kind of tension I want. I need to figure out how to keep them from sliding. Progress!

I'm going to attach those tomorrow. I think I'm strapping the bell to the bicep and to the yoke. We'll see how it works. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Let's do it! We'll, I've got to finish the pack and helmet first of course.

That's interesting because mine came with the flaps. They're not super accurate in shape though as I've had to cut and alter them. Nice work!

Thanks! It's an interesting idea, but a little fussy. I had to tweak it a good bit to get it to stay nice and locked where I'm not afraid of it coming apart, particularly at the ankle. I think it'll work though. Repainted my 7 pieces with crackling this morning and thankfully only two saw some recurrence, although much less. Now everything is great except for a tiny bit to sand/polish on the cod and a bigger area that I again have to sand and repaint on the butt plate. I also built the belt and attached the cod and butt plate to the belt armor last night. I did it the same as my FO TK, using chicago screws to mount the boxes to the belt and using rivets at each end of the belt to help hold the rubber to the canvas. The buckle connection will hide behind the pouch but I have to sew bigger elastic loops to it first as the one it came with only fits the belt, not the buckle. Also, I used velcro for the cod, but I may add a couple of snaps for security. I used little glued shims to attach the box covers so that they're not only relying on glue to hold them on. Getting close!