Blue Hatter

Thanks! I’m really looking forward to getting the costume completed. Getting the house together just took much longer than I had hoped, but I can finally see the finish line…

Hello! I’m still here, just got sidetracked with not-so-fun housing stuff. Since I moved, I no longer have a dedicated crafting room, so I had to set it up in my garage, and organizing the garage largely by myself was an enormous project. 😅 But thankfully I’m finally almost done getting the garage together, I just need to set up the air conditioner and get my painting booth going again, so I can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel there. And then I can finally do the last few minor things to finishing the armor. The outfit is like 90% done.

Thought I’d pop in and give an update. I am still working on the armor, and am working to get it all finished up. Now that things are finally beginning to sort of settle down and my house is kind-of-sort-of together, I’m hoping to get back to work on it. The “break” has given me time to look at some things and redo a few problem parts. For one, I’m completely remaking all of the lights so that they’re easier to manage and also won’t need so many batteries. The lights on the knees also had the problem that sometimes the battery compartment would wiggle loose when I walk, and I’d have to twist it back together, but I won’t have that problem anymore. Now the lights will be wired together and have a battery box hidden beneath the armor. This also means I can get rid of the seams that were on the knee and chest “bolts” as I’ll no longer have to unscrew the two halves to put the batteries in. I also had a delay on finishing the armor because, well, I’ve actually been losing a bit of weight. So hopefully I might, with some luck, be able to trim the armor extensions down a little bit… Maybe… :)

Believe it or not, I am still working on this. I had a few repairs to do from the move, and I’ve been sick which has slowed down my getting everything unpacked (which includes my crafting stuff). So I’m still here, still trying to get this completed…

Would that be something like webbing going from the front armor to the back armor, and webbing with Velcro going onto the shoulder bells, with the Velcro then fastening to somewhere around the middle between the front and back armor?

So I’m still fighting with the dang rigging. The chest keeps wanting to float up and I can not figure out why. The shoulders of the chest then overlap the shoulders of the back and it looks like it’s sitting too high. I think I might have to go back to how I had it before where the chest was attached to the back by webbing and just hung from it. Right now I have it where the straps on the back armor are kind of like a backpack that attaches to the vest, and the chest attaches to straps from the back that go over my shoulders... But that ain’t working. I’m also going to have to get rid of the shoulder buckles, they’re making the chest and back armor float up even more because of the thickness of the buckles... I’m not sure yet how I’m going to get the shoulder bells attached but still make them detachable for storage without buckles, because the snaps from before didn’t work either. Bleh. But I guess one problem at a time... The more I work with the armor I noticed that the plastic shoulder straps are starting to come unglued from being knocked around as I try different ways of attaching the armor and then dressing in it... I was wondering, would it be a big issue if I put a rivet in them to keep them down well (and I’d paint the rivet head to match the shoulder straps, of course) and then maybe just Photoshop them out for the CRL pictures?

Yeah, I’m still fighting with the rigging. It’s been more of a challenge than I ever thought it would be...

That looks awesome. I need that helmet!

The soles look like a fairly light or medium gray to me, definitely not the gray-blue of the armor. See the area outline the shoe near the center of the image? That's the color of the sides of the rubber sole on the game model. The footprint on the upper left side is the bottom of the rubber sole. And on this side image you can more easily see the difference between the gray-blue shoe and the medium gray sole. [img]https://i.ibb.co/wMRZ5tm/P0-Trooper07.jpg[/img]

The boot and armor descriptions sound fine to me. Will the sole color (gray) be required or will either black or gray be acceptable? It's a fairly small detail so I don't think that it'll make much of a difference one way or the other, but I thought that I'd bring it up anyway.

Sounds fine to me.

To me it looks like an armored covering, not part of the shoe. Not only is the line around the edge thicker but it is also feathered, which makes it look like a shadow, which would indicate that there is a separation between the shoe and the top covering. If it was part of the shoe there wouldn’t be so much of a shadow. Also, the black bars would make more sense on armor than on fabric... or at least those bars would be easier to replicate on something like plastic. With fabric the edges around those bars would fray unless they’re folded under and stitched, which would be hard to do for something that small. Unless the bars were painted on flat, I suppose. Also, the fact that the covering doesn’t go all the way around the foot or disappear under (be tucked into) the bottom of the calf armor, but rather ends near the ankle-ish, makes me think it would be something hard like armor.

Yup! Sounds good to me!

The satin slate blue spray paint seems like it looks pretty nice. Man, I wish I would have found that before I painted everything. Would have saved me a bunch of steps! I got my color pretty similar to that... after using a bunch of different spray paints to alter the color. x.x

There's really no way to tell if there are supposed to be clips on the detonator or not. I mean, on the model the detonator isn't even fully modeled, it's just a half cylinder D-shape protruding out of the lower back. But seeing as it looks pretty much like a stormtrooper detonator I had assumed that it would have clips on it, but I don't imagine it being a big deal one way or the other. That said, riveting it onto the belt would probably be easier than using magnets. It might not stay in place with magnets and might fall off. With rivets it ain't goin' nowhere. ...But I used clips...

No complaints from me about the detonator.

Much better!

This is sounding pretty good to me so far except for a little grammar issue. Maybe I'm just being too picky here (and if so I apologize) but the usage of "raised indents" creates an oxymoron. By definition indents aren't raised, they're indented, pushed in... So it's essentially saying something like "raised lowered". Though I do know why it was used, describing things like that can be tricky, I've run into that numerous times myself. I suppose you could replace "raised indents" with "outdented" but that's not a very attractive word. Neither is "protruding"... But there must be an easy way to explain that without creating an oxymoron. Hmm... Thinking, thinking... What about just "small boxes" or something like that? That's essentially what they look like, anyway. Or "raised rectangular boxes", being a bit more precise...

That is definitely much less confusing. That's also how I had to make my codpiece, heh. It was one piece with the abdomen originally, but the armor actually wasn't tall enough for me, so I had to cut it separate and lower it about two inches. ?

Sounds good to me. The only thing I notice is the first bullet... Isn't that essentially saying the same thing for the two points? "The codpiece may be one piece" or "part of the abdomen armor". Is that "one piece" as in one piece as part of the abdomen armor? Or one piece by itself? If the latter it might make more sense to say "the codpiece may be a separate individual piece or part of the abdomen armor".

I never thought about connecting the sides of the armor together with material instead of straps. I might have to try that, that might work better on my suit...

It's sounding good to me. One thing I don't see (though I might be overlooking it) is the black part on the top of the jump pack tank thing. I'm assuming it's supposed to be like an air intake or something. The game model just has it flat and black without any dimension, but I think it's supposed to look recessed.

Yup. Reference-wise I don't imagine many changes, I tried to adhere as closely to references as possible, albeit taking a few creative liberties when I couldn't make out details, or having to adjust something to make it actually possible to be worn by a human body (like the belt, which is just one solid piece on the game texture with no separation or seam and looks to be entirely solid plastic, which isn't really possible in reality-- or having to add something under the shoulder armor for them to attach to, while the game model just has them magically floating in the air). And I think I took care of the rivet above the pack greeblie. I'm just finishing the last bit of painting on it.

I suppose that I could try that. It's going to be tough adding the texture back to that place, as that black tank has a bumpy texture applied to it using textured spray paint. I don't want to have to repaint the entire tank so matching the texture is going to be tough. With some luck maybe that spot will be small enough that a difference in texture wont be noticed too much, and I might be able to hide some of it with weathering. I'll have to think it over... Whatever I do it's going to be a bit of work...

It is plastic but I don’t think that I could fit a file in to sand it, it’s a fairly a small space. I would also have to repaint that area, which isn’t the end of the world but would be a bit of a challenge. Hmm...