Big project! I'm crazy!

LadyMdeJ

New Hunter
I'm Maura and this I guess would be my actual intro post. :)

How big of a project?

My Beloved is deployed right now and will be missing his birthday. I started out planning to make him a Jango helmet cake (still plan to) and realized while downloading the helmet templates, that this was the perfect time to finally get off my hindquarters and make the costume I had promised him 6 years ago when we met :) Anyway, he asked if we could go to ComicCon this year, so that's my deadline!

I think I'm supposed to be making armor for both of us. :eek: So, he wants an original variant (this releives a little of the stress, since non-canon stuff allows more creativity), and I'd want to do the same because I always had to go off on my own when I was doing cosplay before. He is still trying to make up his mind about colors, and I'm not sure exactly how I want mine either. So, until he gets back, I'm going to be concentrating on the nuts and bolts and collecting accessory materials (like a pile of toy guns for weapon parts).

I have some experience with propmaking (budget and not-so-budget) and I've been costuming for the better part of my life, so I'm not totally inexperienced. He's a mad collector of Fett stuff, so we have piles of scale-model reference and I've been downloading all the templates and visual reference I can get my hands on. I've also been skimming the forums here for a while, just never got round to signing up until I was really ready to work on it. Which would be now.

I'm understandably nervous (about the deadline), but he's totally on board with me doing this and has promised lots of baby-watching so I have time to work on the fiddly stuff once he's home (soon!). He wants to do a lot of the painting and weapons mods, at least for his.

Why nervous? The last cosplay stuff I did was 4 years ago, a Captain Jack wig as a gift commision, and a baby Hellboy outfit with a soft stone hand for our firstborn. I'm feeling a little out of practice.

Wish me luck? ;) I'd like to have time to make a costume for Things One and Two as well, but I think that might be asking for too much.

ETA: I'm planning on scratchbuilding everything. See? CRAZY.
 
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Maura,

Sound wonderful, but yes, the timeline would intimidate me. :eek:

Tom, NovallTalon, can probably give you tips should you need it, along with everyone here.
I have never touched prop making,
KUDOS to you for sewing and prop making. (y)

You may be making yourself a legacy here!! If you can, post "in progess" pics. We would all love to see them. If I can help at all with soft parts, but it sounds like you have it covered, with all your experience :D, just let me know.

Yes, you will be cutting out your own little legacy here, I have foreseen it.
 
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Okay, so far, we have:

  • Boots for me
  • Boots for him
  • Sintra on its way
  • A large pile of toy guns and other stuff for weapons mods
  • Skate helmets for building helmets
  • A large amount of adhesive options
  • Webbing, buckles, velcro, etc.
  • belt pouches (ordered those since it would actually have cost more to make them compared to the source)
  • a couple fo other things I can't remember right now
  • help from Ladysewforus!
  • beer

:D
 
More pieces and parts collected. i went and played at the hardware store today.

Some tubing, some dartlike objects (spikes for plant misting tubes), some widgets. More glue, bondo, a different fiberglass kit, some tubing, uh, more widgets. Picked up a bunch of e-clips. Don't know what they are for yet.

Still to go: trip to Fry's for more materials. Planning to use woven tubing, which will go over the plastic tubing (plastic tubing will provide shape on non-wired lines) or the wires for various things. need soldering tool. Pricing headsets and small radios.

Need to buy materials for vests.

Have hotknife ... somewhere. Bought a bunch of cheap putty spreaders to cut into shaping tools. I'm sure there's more. Has this only been a week? :p
 
You should pic up some handy pail (plastic paint pots ) 4lt and 15lt, the 15 for the more ridgid parts of the helmet the lower back the vizer the lower and cheaks be care full with the templates dont get me wrong there briliant just instead of cutting the vizer the side burns and the horizontal rim around the back into seaprate peices thay can all be made with one peice, keep the T part in the vizer untill panting itll make it easyer, use the 4lt for the cheak bone section more flexable atatch the hole thing with hot glue gun, make shore you make the corect measurement adjustments to fit your helmet.
I hope this helps and im sure you could have worked this stuf out, just it took me a few goes to get it right
 
Update: I've finished my vest and roughed out my fitted chest armor (still working on the armor). Helmets are still in bits.

This is condensed from several threads over at Mercs, just posting here as an update for people that aren't over there that might be curious.

Fitting the vest:
Picture%20301.jpg


Finished vest on the dummy:
Picture%20305.jpg
Picture%20304.jpg


And on me:
Picture%20310.jpg

It actually squashes my bust somewhat, so as you can see I have no choice but to make custom plates. 8)

Chest armor templates desperately need fitting (they are flat, I'm very much a girl ;) ):
IMG_0032.jpg

Fitted template, flattened out:
IMG_0058-1.jpg

Basically what I did was figure out where to dart the material to get it to fit. As for dart palcement, I placed them where they would provide the best shaping without creating a weak or difficult to shape point I put them at the center top, bottom and along the inside edge where I had lengthened it (below the inset center plate). I also did not cut tham as deep as sewn darts might go for structural reasons, leaving a kind of teardrop "safe zone" over the nip. I was going for a kind of hybrid of male and female chest plate shapes. Personal taste.

I first took my expanded WoF chest templates (they are printed at "large" size on cardstock, so the stiffness was helpful, and I started out by adding about 2" to the bottom and outside edges), pinned them in place on my dummy, over the vest, keeping the center edges aligned properly, and marked and cut two or three major dart points, as if I was making up a pattern for a sewn item. I pretty quickly figured out that I needed 4 dart points because of my projections

I used a LOT of masking tape in this process. I taped up the misplaced dart, added 2 more, and fiddled around with a rough fit, taping them temporarily as I worked until I had a good approximation. I wasn't worried about the upper, lower and outer edges yet, I just wanted to get a decent fit. Without removing the tape, I cut out the excess card on each dart (just cut along your cut line on one side, but go through both layers, easy!) after getting the fit just right, then taped it again.

Next, i took some scrap card and fixed the lines of the top, outside and bottom edges, adding in where I wanted to add, extending the bottom as I wanted, etc. I wanted especially to make sure to keep the original outside edge shape. This is kind of fiddly, so you'll have to figure it out for yourself as you go, it's like sculpting almost. The big thing is to try to keep the added card kind of in line with the original card so your template isn't curving anywhere when you flatten it out. Use lots of masking tape

Finally, I cut the dart lines agian, flatten, traced onto sintra, and cut them out. Dip and form, dip and form, etc :)

If you have boobs of differing sizes, you'll have to fit both of them, but it you're pretty symmetrical, you only need one. Fortunately I'm pretty symmetrical and I only needed the second template on the dummy to keep track of the spacing of the plates while I fitted it. ;)

Formed sintra before trimming/sanding/filling/priming:
Img_0059.jpg

Those plates are just kind of held up with dress makers pins around the edges, which is why the untrimmed belly plate looks cockeyed. It's actually kind of hanging off, really it is quite symmetrical :)

The collar plate has been trimmed and looks better. The ink marks are trimlines.

Expect another bulk-update soon. Next update should have helmets (both) and Deployed Beloved's armor. Possibly also flightsuits.
 
WOW, very nice start!

i wish my wife would do the same...lol, well i can't lie she's willing to sew but thats about it.

good luck on the deadline.

keep the pics coming.
 
This is great! I love you're idea for your chest armor and the vest looks perfect. I'm totally excited to see the results, cheers!
 
Sorry it took me so long, but we were trying to get stuff done before SDCC :)

Since cameras were not compatible with props + armor + baby - we have a nice big professional camera, of course, a fat lot of good that did us :lol: - we didn't get any pics of us of our own. Here's links to the only pics I've been able to find of us so far:

me with my rangefinder off because of Thing Two up in the baby carrier
Beloved, me and Thing Two on the photography stage closeup group shot, full shot, and me and Thing Two. Of course I'm having an armor failure during the whole shoot! :angry I need to install snaps.

If I can get better/more pics of us, I'll post them. I jsut didn't want to leave everyone hanging! :)
 
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