TeaJay

Everything is still drying, so this isn't the final color; but I have to say SW6994 is looking great. This is two/three-ish coats on the exterior and one coat on the interior of the armor, which took almost 2 of my 4 cans. I will have to go back and repaint all the silver components except for the the two panels on the backplate (which will likely need just a few minor touch ups. I'll also need to paint the red on the indented elongated oval on the lower portion of the chestplate. Strapping is also near completion, adjustments have been made for fitting purposes. Should hopefully have photos within the next couple days. For the already painted back panels, I taped them off using thin painters tape to get the corners nice and even... then layered larger tape over it. Here's everything sprawled out drying and pushing the fumes out of our basement. I'll get some additional photos once everything is dry and can do a quick video of the strapping setup Kevin has created for this Imperial Surplus kit.

I'll make a video at some point discussing Kevin's strapping system for this kit and what I did with his older kit and other kits.

The weather was just warm enough for me to spray paint outside. Here's is the dark metallic gunmetal gray added to Philo aluminum boxes: Still drying... but here's the contrast to the shininess of the belt buckle. Much better than without paint. I was also able to put a primer coat on some of the armor. I decided to put a separate primer on since the custom paint that I ordered had no mention of primer mixed with the paint.

I guess I took that for granted since my Imperial Surplus kit has that stepped ledge. Not a bad idea to denote it in L2. Thoughts from others?

Hi all! My name is T.J. Jones, I've been a member of the legion since 2016 with a handful of approved costumes. I helped revise/update the KOTOR II Darth Nihilus CRL and many of the current photos are from my build. Check out my crazy comparison build thread about Nihilus if you're interested: https://www.theflagshipeclipse.com/forums/index.php?/topic/3175-kotor-ii-nihilus-build-and-game-vs-current-092019-crl-comparison/ I have since sold that costume due to how I recently started wearing prescription glasses and that didn't make it easy to wear the Nihilus. A handful of folks probably recognize my username from helping with building out the CRL for the Imperial Army Trooper from Andor. I wanted to post a build thread; not overly detailed as the majority of the build is complete. I have captured some progress photos, but didn't want to go into a ton of details as we cover lots of those details in the CRL discussion thread. The plan for this build like many of my other builds is to obtain a higher tier approval, in this case everything is being built with L2 in mind. High level here's the list of parts needed for the costume and where I'm sourcing parts: Armor - Imperial Surplus Soft parts (also hat w/Rogue One greeblie) - ImperialBoots Rogue One style belt boxes - PhiloProps Rogue One style code disks - PhiloProps Officer belt with top and bottom lines (more common in HD era films [Rogue One, Mando, Andor, etc.] - WampaWear Mid-calf Jack Boots - Already owned from Military surplus Gloves (smooth; no details) -- Actual brand used onscreen -- Dent's Gloves - Daniel If you haven't checked out my Rit Dye testing thread check that out here: https://forum.specops501st.com/topic/8801-dye-testing-rit-brand-aldhani-soft-goods/ For the time being I do not plan on adding the black and white stripe to the left shoulder bell. Once completed, I can post up photos for feedback and can also provide individual photos of armor parts, etc. as needed for CRL purposes if the detachment staff wishes. I know that a few others are actively building this costume as well, but there are 4 variations, so I think there will be the need for plenty of us to get involved with CRL photos. Here's a dump of progress photos: Imperial Surplus Inventory Check Photo -- I definitely love Kevin's new kits and strapping system The custom paint that I had ordered from MyPerfectColor.com -- I ordered custom Greenblack SW6994 spray paint to color match what we believe in the CRL development thread should work for the armor -- "...shall be painted a very dark grey. Greenish undertones in certain lighting conditions is acceptable. An acceptable range of colors include RLM 70 to Sherwin Williams SW6994 Greenblack" Dyeing process: Pre-Dye Dyeing Action Shot Soaked and hang drying Soaked and hang drying up close After drying and after running it through a hot wash and hot dry cycle I haven't been documenting this build as much as I normally do. I've been juggling this as well as home repairs, so I haven't been taking a ton of progress photos. The bulk of the armor is completed, the backplate being the most tedious of the process. Here's a couple progress shots. I've prepped everything for paint... gluing is about wrapped up. Have biceps and greeblies to glue... still have some minor strapping work to do. Sprayed a metallic silver on the greeblies... the color from the spray can has some metal flecks in it that I do not like. I will be hand painting with a metallic silver enamel model paint to make the finish more accurate to the extras, not the main cast. Yucky Silver color that is incorrect. This was redone with a different Metallic silver. Left side is the bad color silver, right is the color we are looking for. A line a black will be added into the upper thin recessed area to add a bit more depth to the buckle as noted in the CRL writeup. I wanted to see how much of it is truly visible once attached the the chest, then fine tune it. Did some accent painting first because I spilled the majority of my silver paint right before bed last night so I had to use it immediately. I will tape it off when painting the rest of the costume and will likely have to go back and touch up the silver again after the bulk is painted. Gotta have a dirty mirror to take your build thread photos, right? haha Just a photo of things coming along, aluminum components just finished gluing on the underside of the shoulder straps. Again, highly recommend Imperial Surplus' kit. More to come!

Hey all, finally getting back to this while dealing with home repairs... here's a photo of the swatches that I dyed in outdoor full cloud coverage around 4:30pm ET, sun setting in the next hour +-ish. It's important to note that the swatches all only had one rinse after the dyeing process. I ended up going with the Olive Green formula from RIT and then washed my uniform in hot water twice to lighten the color. So what you see here you can lighten up just a tad if you pick any of these colors. I'm still in strong favor of Olive Green. I would take photos of my uniform laying out but it is currently buried in our guest bedroom along with all our legion costumes while the closet that is normally in is undergoing repairs from our pipe burst back in December.

The armor should be pretty well nailed down. If things are looking good for this blaster, it's likely time to move onto other optional accessories such as the blaster pistol and its holster. What do you think @Blackwatch?

Sounds good. I see the hint of green in the image you just posted. Its definitely is in the color spectrum that should be accepted for approval. Looking forward to your photos! Did you end up doing Rit dye mixtures to make the olive green or go with something premade like Dylon?

Looking forward to see the uniform post dye dry. I washed mine a few times to lighten the color. The armor feels pretty close, your results seem a bit dark gray more than than green black, but that is technically in spec for the range of color we are looking for, but on the lighter side. I wish it was just a shade darker. This is a dark indoor scene, but here you can see the black of the rank denotation on the shoulder being almost the same color as the overall color. It could simply be the lighting though... Here's the outdoor scene, still showing the dark color consistency I stared at the color table for Montana Gold, along with their other series of paints, color matchers, model paints, etc. for hours when looking at options that didn't require a custom made spray paint and this color along with G1180 MILITARY GREEN may be worth testing in person. I felt STEALTH was too light and COKE was too dark and that ended my efforts on relying on Montana paints. What are your thoughts on MILITARY GREEN? May also not be a good fit but I couldn't test it as I couldn't find it locally and went the custom color match route with SW6994 in spray form. Should be ready to paint within the next two weeks for further comparison.

Hey all, I've been working on my armor in the evenings when time allows. I'm pretty far along, majority of backplate (most time consuming because of all the details) is completed, sides attached, working on shoulder bells, saving biceps for last so I can nail down the fitting with the soft goods. Leaving off all the silver greeblies to be painted separately then glued on after the armor is painted. Sanding everything to prep for paint when not assembling. My plan is to have everything ready to be painted for an armor party that our garrison has at the end of the month. Build has been with L2 in mind during the process. Provide an update in the coming weeks.

From what I recall all E10.5 style rifles had slings. Other firearms and accessories that not everyone had on their person will be the blaster pistol and the holster for it.

This exact thing happened to me the other night. Nothing a little bit of ABS paste won't fix. I had one side get a small slice from the blade about 1/4 inch, will be an easy fix.

I'm still dealing with my house repair drama, but last night I spent 2 hours cutting out most of my hard armor kit. All of the major excess plastic is off of it. Still a while to go. I have all the soft goods on-hand from Imperial Boots, I have the grooved belt with R1 era code disk, r1 era belt boxes, dents gloves, and black jackboots that I could take pictures of at some point. I'm doing the soft cap version with the armor. My armor kit is from Imperial Surplus. I really love the improvements to Kevin's kits recently for the Solo/R1/Mando era work. I've got a lot of trimming, sanding, gluing, painting, ahead of me... I can try to get all the soft part photos taken and do the work to make the backgrounds transparent if that is still needed. My beltboxes are metal and they need to be painted. I have the paint for them but its too cold right now for spray paint and I have no garage.

Looks great to me. Glad we got all this hard work nailed down. Sorry for my absence of late. Our house had another major multi-pipe burst from the cold. Damaging multiple rooms, so my focus has unfortunately shifted to home repairs, hiring contractors, and dealing with the insurance company. I have all my armor now for this build and was hoping to help with CRL photos, but not sure when I will get time to start the build. Looking forward to next steps news! Keep us posted!

Looking forward to photos when all is dry! Dylon will be a great option for those who do not want to mess with Rit formulas/recipes. It has more of a lighter color than my green, but I like the look of this color. It still fits many of the on-screen troopers. --- Also, I haven't forgotten about taking photos of the swatch samples outdoors, it's just been insanely cold -2F/-16C outside yesterday and slowly starting to warm up to 7F/-13.8C today... warmer weather is supposed to be here by Wednesday.

Thank you! For those of you planning to use my Olive Green dye process, I'd recommend starting with a little less dye rather than 3/4 cup of each dye needed, start at 1/2 cup each and if you do not like how light it is, use additional dye. I'm happy with my outcome but the color is a bit more vibrant than I'd like, so I'm currently washing it with some oxy-clean and detergent in hot water to pull out more of the dye to dull it some. Here are my results after the 2nd wash, this is the first wash that was in the machine rather than just doing a hand wash. I'm very happy with this color now... again photo vs in-person is always a tad different, but that 2nd wash with the machine did the trick! It still need ironed to give it a tidier look --

Check out how adjusting lighting in the same room can change the color of the hat. It is still slightly damp, but wearing it, look how green it is with a mix of natural and warm tone lights on at the same time versus up close with just the natural toned lighting. --- Darker in one, lighter in the other, all by just changing lighting in the same room. First one is too green in my opinion for most troopers except for the wet ones, maybe because the hat is still a tad damp. --- Apparently selfie camera had contrast filter on, whoops. Here's update directly under a natural tone light. Maybe too much direct light? Updated:

Well, I ended up going ahead and dyeing my unform... I really think the Olive Green is a great dye option, so that is what I went with. I can answer questions a little more thoroughly when it isn't so late, but I wanted to toss up some photos. Note that the fabric is still very wet and looks darker than it will be after it finishes hang drying. High level notes: After weighing my fabric it was a little over 3 lbs. (ImperialBoots - Medium Pants, Large Shirt, Standard Size Hat) - based on the weight, I went with 9 gallons of water and 3/4 cups of each dye that makes up Olive Green. I added 1 cup of salt, and 1 teaspoon of Dawn Dish liquid (Rit claims it helps even out the dye as it is absorbed). -- Also, sorry for this not being in metric for those of you who use it. Honestly, metric is so much easier to understand, but my apologies for not using it. I let my uniform soak in 140+ degree F dye-water for 40 minutes, stirring non-stop for the first 10 minutes and about 30-60 seconds every 5 minutes until reaching 40 minutes in total. I then squeezed out as much excess dye as I could, cleaned out my dye container and prepped new hot water (9 gallons again) to use the Rit Dye Fixative. I added 1.5 cups of the fixative into the 9 gallons of water and stirred thoroughly. Once mixed, I placed the still damp / rung out clothing back into the container. I stirred slowly and continuously for 20 minutes (yea, it will make your arm feel tired after a while). There will be some bleeding of the dye into the water, Rit's website says this is normal. After 20 minutes, I squeezed out as much excess water as possible and rinsed in cold water until I could see clear water when I would squeeze all parts of each garment. After cold rinse, I hand washed with laundry detergent to continue to remove any excess dye that did not adhere to the fabric. The detergent bath and hand wash did result in more dye coming out into the water, not much but some. After the hand wash, I rinsed everything once more in warm water until the soap suds and dye tent was no longer in the water as I squeezed each garment. I left it all to hang dry over night before doing any additional drying... To be continued.

Pants/trouser details look good to me. May not be a good time to hop back go the hat, but noticed this level 2 line item that may need to be removed because of how varied the rear flap height is on many troopers including hero characters. Rear flap is slightly lower than the crown heigh (lees than 4")

Pants/trouser details look good to me. May not be a good time to hop back go the hat, but noticed this level 2 line item that may need to be removed because of how varied the rear flap height is on many troopers including hero characters. Rear flap is slightly lower than the crown heigh (lees than 4") Here is a photo of the main four: Skeen's in very high up in the rear, Nemik and Andor's are similar height, and Tamaryn's is the lowest. Here's the soldiers (extras) playing games before the heist kicks off: My thoughts would be to remove this line from the L2 requirements for the soft cap due to this much variety on-screen.

Great BTS shots. Taramyn's costume has always stood out to us as the most unique for the hero characters as his uniform is much more tan than any of the others in Andor's crew. Skeen's costume is also one that was a bit more on the tan side depending on which part of his uniform you're looking at. I really like your first photo showing the additional fabric on the upper thighs to just below the knee. This is an excellent image! The top of the additional fabric on the leg is wider at the top and narrows some when it reaches below the knee... looks extremely close to the ImperialBoots trousers, nice.

For the trousers/pants a few important things to note are the front seams that contain an extra layer, maybe even two layers around the upper thigh down to the knee as seen here: It's important to note that this additional fabric section does not meet with/connect to the seam line along the length of the inner or out leg. Also in the photo of Nemik above, you can see what appears to be two separate seams at the top leg, which could denote two layers of fabric in addition to the base layer that surrounds the leg. This is what Vincent at ImperialBoots has added to his trousers. I revisited episode 5 some more to see if I could find belt loops on the upper part of the trousers and I could not find a scene where you can see under the tunic. Likely best to not specify in the CRL for belt loops, etc.

As I noted in this post, I feel like there are reasons both in universe and for legion purposes - I see both sides to the debate, but my opinion falls on the separate CRLs approach. If the 3 variations 1 CRL concept were accepted, shouldn't TIE Reserves also just be TIE Pilots as one CRL? The differentiator is the plastic armor vs strictly soft cloth.

Do you view the soft cloth only as a completely different CRL from your above statement? I agree with you that there should be 2 versions for this specific CRL - one with soft cap and one with helmet, both having the upper torso armor cluster. I think the strictly soft cloth only version should be a separate CRL. --- To elaborate briefly: This costume should be considered like the TIE Reserve concept (CRL 1): and these two variations of the armored trooper is like the TIE Pilot concept due to the upper torso armor cluster being present (CRL 2): Softcap: Helmeted:

Here are the Spanish Olive results! Quick note: This piece of fabric is a bit smaller than the others, so that may play a minor factor in absorbency. However, I made sure the dye was thoroughly stirred before the fabric swatch went in. I also tried to add a little bit of shadow on the lower section of the fabrics using my phone when I took the photo to see if there was any noticeable difference. Comparison of Olive Green, Spanish Olive, and Rain Forest Cover: Spanish Olive should technically be a little bit darker since it uses a Charcoal Gray rather than Pearl Gray (seen in the Olive Green). Olive Green appears to be darker in my results, which technically shouldn't be the case... is it the smaller fabric swatch? All other variables have been consistent in testing (water amount/temp, salt amount, stirring, rinsing, and drying techniques). I was able to squeeze more dye out than expected with this smaller fabric when rinsing... Rain Forest Cover shows how much more lively the green is compared to the other two that contain grays. Comparison of Olive Green, Spanish Olive, and Olive Green + Tan: Spanish Olive and Olive Green still looking similar. The Olive Green + Tan stands out in these three samples. Spanish Olive seems like another solid option for our troopers to choose from, in my opinion. Maybe some more testing can be done by Simon and Jason. At this point in time, I would rank my top three as: Olive Green, Spanish Olive, and Rain Forest Cover. I will hold off on dying my uniform while others continue with testing. I missed the opportunity to take outdoor photos today.