First timer! Looking to buy 100% of my costume.

So between working 12 hours a day on 2nd shift and kids activotes I decided to save myself the hassle and buy 100% all of my costume/armor, this is a lot to take in! Was wondering where should I start? With what vendor? What should my first purchase be? I would like to have this costume by next April for comic con!
P.S. hope I'm in the right section

I recommend Red Krait Dragon's armor. He has different sizes and he sells gauntlets too. Depending on your body size, you might want to do some research on helmets. I would recommend Animefan, Darth Voorhees, Wasteland, ToEleven for helmets. Arkady for soft parts like flight suit, vest, pockets, neck seal. Woodman for capes, girth belt, wookie braids. Deltamike for ammo belt. MAn of War for boots. Jetpack either MOW or DVH. Blasters and such go with JBDubz/Stormrider or Sidewinder. Paint commissions, well, there are a lot of great painters on here. For armor I'd hit up Lou/Darth Voorhees. Helmet: Superjedi, Major, Fett4real, ToEleven, AFFO$.
Good luck!

mainst69 said:

I recommend Red Krait Dragon's armor. He has different sizes and he sells gauntlets too. Depending on your body size, you might want to do some research on helmets. I would recommend Animefan, Darth Voorhees, Wasteland, ToEleven for helmets. Arkady for soft parts like flight suit, vest, pockets, neck seal. Woodman for capes, girth belt, wookie braids. Deltamike for ammo belt. MAn of War for boots. Jetpack either MOW or DVH. Blasters and such go with JBDubz/Stormrider or Sidewinder. Paint commissions, well, there are a lot of great painters on here. For armor I'd hit up Lou/Darth Voorhees. Helmet: Superjedi, Major, Fett4real, ToEleven, AFFO$.
Good luck!

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Excellent advice!

I would also recommend checking the cargo hold. Full suits tend to come up every now and again. Plus, between vendors' schedules and lead times you may not have everything ready for April. This suit typically takes a couple years to nail down if you're looking for primo accuracy.

I've seen super rapid builds before so April is achievable although you may have to make some compromises because if that timeline is firm you may have to take what is available rather than strictly what you want. Your main issue might be getting stuff painted; if you have kids and are working 12 hour days you'll struggle to find the time to paint it yourself. Commission work is great but tends to work on a first come first served basis and the best guys seem to have no shortage of work. The names posted above are a fair selection of some of the talent in painters and producers. The only producer i can think of that makes and paints entire suits is Bobamaker but that won't be cheap and if it is ready for April it will be April 2018.

I painted all of @Wastelands armor inside a month and a half....its super possible to do an ESB setup...even ROTJ. But getting certain things like flightsuit (maybe Man of War) might take longer if you want it to fit like it should etc....boots if theyre not in stock...etc. Id add Woodman on the list for RS Props armor hes got it in stock and ready to roll all the time.

Factors like location in the world and cost may need to be considered . If you live in the Us you will be fine but elsewhere items can take a while to arrive. Cost wise you may have to pay more for a quick build

A month and a half! Crikey. That is quick.

For the " where should I start " part of your question, I would say with a realistic budget and decide from there. Buying a suit already done in the Cargo Hold will be the quickest way since they do seem to come up on a somewhat regular basis depending on your size. You would also need to pick which version you would want to do.

The rest of the advice here is pretty much what i would offer.

intwenothor said:

A month and a half! Crikey. That is quick.

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I took a week off regular work to get a lot of the work done. With all the parts in hand also. Worked on every piece at the same time pretty much. If you can get all the pieces or even most of them you can finish for April. If you're painting yourself you might hit bumps in the road being you've never painted a Fett before but you might not. Read up on everything you can now and go from there. Hope you have deep pockets.


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Hahaha. Eight years and it's still just a pile of parts. I'm ashamed.

intwenothor said:

Hahaha. Eight years and it's still just a pile of parts. I'm ashamed.

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Well, if you're going for the ultimate edition Fett with all out accuracy regarding found parts, exact paints/colors, and the attention to detail you're known for, that can be quite the scavenger hunt. So maybe 8 years isn't so bad.

Trying to "be there for ya" bro!

I'm not trying to derail the OP post, but I feel this next sentiment is very relevant. I'm approaching my build with a looming deadline involved also. So there are things that I'm making concessions for due to budget and time constraints. I'm scratch building things within my skill set, and trading for/buying the other things. So I might have a resin rocket that I bought second hand off the cargo hold that has some pitting and air holes that look like the surface of the moon, but I can always swap that out with a nicer one later. So plan your build with things that are important to you first. Your helmet is always going to be the focal point. Get a good one from some of the above mentioned makers. If painting is something you can do, there is a wealth of information on this site on how it's done. If not, you'll be looking at commission work. Look in the helmet paint up threads, see whose doing what (ESB or ROTJ) for whom. Pay attention to how frequently they update their thread progress. Personally, I love to read those guys paint-ups. Plus, I think it has the added advantage of holding the painter accountable. I don't mean that in any bad way, it just let's their client know progress updates that you can see.
Also, try to diversify. Example: I can't personally afford the kind of money that a pair of gloves costs. That's not to say I don't understand how labor intensive they are to build/sew. Still can't afford it. I CAN afford some free tackle twill from my vest supplier (thanks Carole!) and a $3 pair of cotton parade gloves and do the research to find patterns (found on this site) and get them to a friend at work who happens to be into sewing and other grandmotherly type activities! So while I'm building a jetpack, I've got someone else sewing gloves freeing me up to calculate how much thrust I need to get my fat ***** offf the ground! LOL Throw in a little RIT dye from walmart and bam, instant gloves.
The thing that I try to keep in mind on this is simple, it's a costume. I'm not building a real life working Boba Fett, complete with Slave 1 and putting Dog, The Bounty Hunter out of business with my bad assery. There are great vendor/makers on here that put out a really great product. They in turn get good (and just deserved) reviews and for lack of a better word, they achieve "name brand" status. People will post up their progress threads with their build and show off their new acquisitions. "Check out the new Blah Blah I got from ReallyCOOLDude". Gobs of photos follow and ReallyCOOLDude's blah blah is the thing to get. Then you have someone like me, and there are a few of us on here that go, "Hey I can build that with a 2X4 and some Bondo!". Instant Blah Blah. All I'm saying is do what you can. Do the research. Learn a skill. Achieve satisfaction. For example, let's look at the girth belt. With some black nylon strapping that can be purchased really cheap at Walmart or elsewhere (or repurposed off a backpack perhaps), a Mohair Girth from Victory Canter (under $25), and some dye from Lowes, in 45 minutes you have a girth belt. At less than half the cost of a ready made one. Now if you're like me, you'll get the wrong dye and screw it up only to have to redo it again!!!

Anyway, I'll get down off my soapbox now. Good luck to you. We're a pretty supportive bunch here so keep us posted with progress and/or questions.

Well, what's happened is that I keep upgrading before I get anywhere. My first SW build was a stormtrooper using the old FX armour and pretty much a straight up use of that material. It looked okay but we all know that the FX armour isn't right. Then I did a ROTS vader using the MR lid as a starter. In terms of overall accuracy it was a big step up but still not there. With this Fett build I started with full on accuracy intentions but even so I hadn't done anywhere near enough research when I made some early decisions; a recent post on a gloves thread reminded me of this.

I had a pair of BM gloves and they were perfectly serviceable but they weren't quite right so I changed to some Mike M. gloves. The cape is now, I believe, now onto the fourth version and that applies to most parts where, for a number of reasons, I keep making incremental steps to improve as either newer discoveries or better items are offered. Same with the helmet and all sorts of other parts. In fact the known found parts are actually the easiest decisions to make because they can't be bettered and the real difficulties there lie with finding them and paying for them.

01Hawk said:

For the " where should I start " part of your question, I would say with a realistic budget and decide from there. Buying a suit already done in the Cargo Hold will be the quickest way since they do seem to come up on a somewhat regular basis depending on your size. You would also need to pick which version you would want to do.

The rest of the advice here is pretty much what i would offer.

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The problem with cargo hold sales is many would not be approvable without significant changes done. The CRL has changed significantly in the last 2 years, one such example is the return edge requirement on the armor. Equally important is the size of the individual selling the armor compared to you. If your waist is 36 inches and the sellers is 30 inches you will probably have issues. Height, head, and chest size are also important considerations.

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As @mainst69 said, if April is your deadline you might want to make or do as much as you can yourself. Some vendors (with good reason-no blaming) have long lead times. For example, Animefan's helmet had a lead time of three months and that's with no paint. So I decided to build my own and paint it myself and was able to finish it in less than two months.

You also might want to forgo the weapons at first and just concentrate on the costume as completing a rifle can take another 4 months.

and of course, making your own does saves money.

What's your height and build?


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Malkavian said:

As @mainst69 said, if April is your deadline you might want to make or do as much as you can yourself. Some vendors (with good reason-no blaming) have long lead times. For example, Animefan's helmet had a lead time of three months and that's with no paint. So I decided to build my own and paint it myself and was able to finish it in less than two months.

You also might want to forgo the weapons at first and just concentrate on the costume as completing a rifle can take another 4 months.

and of course, making your own does saves money.

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realistically those lead times can be up to a month longer than quoted. However, I can say Animefan has great communication, and his helmets are very nice.

1) what version do you want?
2) do you want a merc/501st approval or just for comic cons/fun ( which there is nothing wrong with)
3) how much do you want to spend.

Don't feel bad. I'm right there with ya brother!