Blue Hatter

Aside from needing to sew the loops on the thigh armor straps that slip onto the belt I think I've got everything done for this costume. Gonna try to get some pictures up shortly.

I have finally completed the arc caster. It took me almost a year to do it but it's finally done, and I definitely learned some stuff from it. Because I couldn't find any pictures that showed the arc caster very clearly I did have to take a few creative liberties and I also tried to imagine what it might look like if it were a real prop in a Star Wars movie... So using my imagination and the best references that I could find (which I could only find two) I came up with what you see below. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It began life as a white and orange Rubies Stormtrooper Blaster that I cut up and modified, and I made all of the greeblies and various other details for it-- I even made the sound effect for it. The game model showed that it as essentially a ROTJ E-11 blaster with the greeblies mirrored to the right side so that's what I went with, while also trying to add some extra detail and make it look more "real", so to speak. As real as a blaster with a corkscrew on the end that shoots out lightning can be. Because I had to do some of my own interpretations and take some liberties I understand that my arc caster may not be something that can be accepted in the 501st but that's okay, it's just something that I wanted to have fun with and be creative.

For only three years of experience that's mighty impressive! I have to admit that I don't understand a lot of your terms, heh heh... I only know the basics of 3D modeling (I do a bit of 3D modeling for The Sims 2, but the models are not overly detailed or complicated and mostly rely on texture images to give them their depth and detail). I'm also not an expert when it comes to 3D printing... But from what I've seen so far, if there are no backfaces then the slicing program will assume that the object is solid... Like a helmet, for example, if it has no backfaces on the interior, if I closed up the bottom with even just a cylinder (something that would be easy to cut away) the slicer program will have the helmet print as a solid object. Of course that's not ideal for a helmet because it would require a ton of infill and filament and would take forever to print, so something big like a helmet would be cut into various smaller chunks that would be glued together after printing. There would have to be some kind of interior, though, some kind of shell on the inside of the helmet model, or the layers would end up paper thin. How exactly those interior layers would be added I have no idea. But yeah, printing it as a miniature would probably work. The various parts could just be filled at the bottom, like I mentioned, and they would print as solid pieces. Examples of my very basic knowledge of 3D modeling... ?

That really looks awesome. You did a great job on the model! You should certainly be proud of it! And I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thought that these troopers looked better with some weathering. Do you work in 3D modeling or something? I'm jealous of your skills! I took a couple years of game art and design at the Art Institute a few years ago, which included classes on 3D modeling (mostly in Maya) but I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Yeesh. Maya is one confusing program! I have a 3D printer and I'd be happy to try printing some smaller parts if you'd like. My printer isn't very big so I probably couldn't print a helmet or jetpack-- well, I could if it was cut into small pieces, I suppose-- but handplates, shoe armor, greeblies, whatever, I can give a go.

Thanks! I finished the "bolts" as well, even after remaking one of them a third time after accidentally gluing the two halves of it together and being unable to get them apart again. Heh, the light in that one is still on, the light slowly dying, I can't get it apart to get the batteries out... Oops. >>;;

Thanks!

At last the helmet is finally done! Well, except for a little bit of interior work, I still need to put the fans in and maybe a little bit more foam to get the helmet to sit a little bit higher on my head, but aside from that it's done. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I think that the weathering really helps bring it to life. Lights off... Lights on... I also finished up the jetpack! The brown spots are suppose to look like rust but unfortunately they ended up looking more like spots of mud. I'm not sure why.

Dang, that is really impressive. Nice job!

I’ve been trying. The bolts are done being printed, I’ve sanded them and have started painting them. Shouldn’t take me long to finish them. The police found my car, too, though it’s been fairly trashed. It’s at a mechanic now. Was given a 2020 Mini Cooper Countryman as a rental and this car is nice. I want to keep it... :P

Thanks. Yeah, I hope that it's found, too, and in working order. I really can't afford another car right now, especially with me getting ready to move. It wasn't any sort of fancy car but it ran and I just needed it to last me until I move and then I figured I'd get something afterwards. Ugh, I just can't abide by thieves. But I did force myself to do some work at least to try to take my mind off of it. I finished the models for the bolts and have started printing them. I have two sets printed so far, just need to do one more. I somehow made the space for the lights a smidge too tiny but that's an easy enough fix with a few minutes with my Dremel. And then I went and took out some frustrations in a few matches of Mobile Suit Gundam: Battle Operation 2 on my PS4, heh heh.

Hah, that's true. I was hoping to get a more done this weekend but with the good news comes the bad... My car was stolen early this Saturday morning and it's the only one I have, and that's been really depressing and draining and... ugh. I haven't had much energy to do much of anything since. I also needed to pick up some glue and another can of silver paint, but without my car... Bleh...

Ah, I see. True dat.

Ooh, I see! Why not make the base armor and the armor that goes over it one piece? That might make movement easier as you'd only have the one piece to worry about. If the base armor is "lower" than the armor over it it would still have the same layered look... It just wouldn't technically be layered. Would be less armor to have to wear, too. That's how my armor is. It looks like it's layered but it really isn't, it's all just one piece with the base armor being slightly thinner than the over armor, so there's a ridge between the two, giving it a layered look. I also did a bit of air brushing to gave it more of a shadow just to make the layering look more... err... layered.

So everything is finally painted and weathered and I've started the final assembly-- as in, adding the rubber parts to the helmet, the aerators to the helmet, putting on the shoulder straps and so on. I haven't started the strap rig yet. Hopefully I'll get a chance to snap some pictures over the weekend. I've decided to remake the chest and knee bolts, I've thought of a different way to secure the lights in them without having to add the ring that's visible on the front of old bolts. Hopefully it'll work. Thankfully the bolts weren't that hard to make, just a bunch of hours of 3D printing, then sanding and hitting them with silver paint and polishing them, and then gluing in the lights. It's kind of a pain going back and remaking them but the ring I put on the front has been bothering me as it's not so accurate so I think I'll be happier in the end. ...I just keep giving myself more work to do.

Those models are looking really nice! Awesome job! The armor definitely isn't made to be easy to move in... But the developers didn't have to worry about that. Things could always be tweaked a little to make movement easier. What do you mean by the "base chest plate"? Is that the part over the stomach with the two vertical stripes and black dots?

I think that they're looking good! Nice job! Though I think that the texture for your game model may be applied to the model a bit screwy, the tube vents aren't in a wavy pattern like that from what I've seen, they're more of a straight line, just an angled straight line. The texture might not be properly aligned with the mesh. (Though admittedly the mesh itself is kind of wonky so there are some weird texture distortions even with the texture properly aligned.) On a side note, one thing I think is kind of funny is that on the texture the OII greeblies on the back armor are reversed, making them IIO. But on the model that section is flipped to be back to OII, except that the shading on them is wrong as they're reversed. Crazy artists.

I definitely think that's looking much better! Nice job! The chest, stomach (and lower back?) and cod piece definitely look to be of the standard clone trooper variety... The chest might be a little wider but it's hard to say for certain. The back armor is closer to the stormtrooper variety and does have the OII greeblies on the back, though they can't be seen unless you have the model and remove the jetpack. But you've got that already. I don't think that Rogue One necessarily retcons the stormtrooper armor, just kind of... hopes you forget about the others? Or something? I guess it's like these are the hi-def versions of the armor... Or like the original Star Wars is all low-def so you can't make out the details, and Rogue One is hi-def, allowing you to see all of the little details and stuff that you couldn't (supposedly) see before. At least that's how I think of it. Sort of. Hah. It's even more confusing for the X-wing pilots that look almost nothing like the OT X-wing pilots. x.x

That's looking awesome! A few small things that I noticed... The "vents" on the lower portions of the helmet are the traditional C-shaped stormtrooper helmet vents, not the straight ones like in Rogue One. I can't tell if they're indented to not, the texture image isn't clear enough, but the vents on the back of the head and the cheeks are definitely indented. I think you also have the vents going too far back, they may need to be a little thinner or moved in closer together. The vents on the side of upper parts of the jetpack, in the ring, are just straight, even vents. I think that there are six slats, if I remember right, but I'd need to recount to be sure. The dark parts of the chest and thigh armor are layered beneath the lighter color armor, as if the armor is two "layers" thick. It looks like the shoulder straps on your version are more of the Rogue One style, but they should be the standard OT stormtrooper shoulder straps with no buckle on the back.

Thanks. I do like the color better now. The color is a fair bit darker than the pictures show, though, especially the navy color. The crap lightning just washed the color out.

Here are a few other pictures for the heck of it. I apologize that the color is so washed out, I took these pictures at night which was a really bad idea, and in crappy lighting at that, so they look much brighter than the really are. I need to go outside and get some better pictures... as soon as it stops raining. Will it ever stop raining?

Sure. Here's a picture of the shoe and what I'm talking about. (I haven't cleaned off the paint from the rubber sole yet so ignore that bit of mess.) I have snaps where the black ankle elastic is and the armor snaps onto there, but the toe part of it doesn't want to stay in place. I had thought of magnets but I'm not sure how I would attach them securely, as the boots are painted I can't glue the magnets onto the top of the boots or it'll just rip the paint off. One possibility I thought of was a strap made of clear vinyl that could go around the bottom of my foot, though I'm kind of keeping that as a last resort as I don't think it would look the best. I did pick up a package of metal picture frame hangars, one set kind of looks like a spike that grabs onto the wire of a picture frame and another set that's kind of a saw-toothed bar. I thought that I could attach one hook to the bottom of the armor and the other hook to the top of the boot and they would, in theory, be able to hook together. But I haven't figured out a way to attach them yet. I might be able to sew one onto the boot if I poke a couple holes in top of the foot of the boot or maybe use some small nuts and bolts, but for the armor I haven't figured out a good way to attach the hook because you'd see a screw if I used that, same with a rivet, and I don't think that glue would hold it. So, yeah, that's been a pain.

Greetings! I’m still chugging away on it. It’s taking me longer than I thought it would, heh. But I have all of the armor painted and clear coated and am doing the final weathering now, and I’m hoping to have at least the helmet finished over the weekend. Things are progressing. Right now my biggest challenge is figuring out a way to keep the shoe armor down without using straps. It keeps wanting to pop up when I walk and Velcro and snaps aren’t strong enough. So I’ve been brainstorming that for a while. It’s tough because whatever I use to strap the armor down has to be hidden yet strong enough to stay in place and not let the armor pop up as my foot moves. I have the armor fastened to the shoe at my around ankle, it’s the toe end that I need to secure down...

FYI, in case anyone is interested, the Disney Store has their own version of the Sith Trooper blaster, and not the standard F-11D repainted like the Hasbro one, it's actually the uzi-looking one that the Sith Troopers are shown with. It's a little on the small size, small enough that it's hard to even get your finger through the trigger guard, but the details look pretty spot-on. Painted up it might make for a pretty good stand-in until you can get yourself a full-scale replica. I didn't pick one up when I saw them on Friday but I'm heading back over to the mall on Sunday and I might pick one up then if I can swing it. They're $35, if I remember right. They have lights and sounds.

That's looking awesome! Seeing out of that helmet is going to be real fun, though.

Roger roger. I won’t add the pinstripe then. :)