Boushh New Boushh costume WIP - Finished helmet pics added

Clothears

New Hunter
I have been trooping as Boushh since 2006 and my research on the costume has never stopped, I don't think a day has passed in my house without Boushh being mentioned. A while back my Boushh costume was used in the Simon Pegg film ‘Paul’ so I decided it was time to retire it and start work on a new upgraded costume (my original has now been boxed away). Since making my last costume I have obviously found out a lot more about the screen used costume and saw the original in London, this time I will be going all out on accuracy and though, maybe not as practical, I will still try to make allowances for comfort where I can.
Firstly I worked on the tunic, I sourced a new pig skin with more texture and made the pattern more accurate. The front is self faced and the overall fit is much better.
Next came the under tunic. There is quite a bit of difference between this under tunic and my last one. This time the body of the tunic is made from a caramel brown sateen cotton which is overlocked at the hem and the suede collar is top stitched to the cotton. The tunic now has a brown zip up the back and the sleeve ends are lined with leather. The sleeves are still long enough to gather, have the tree spikes and the thumb slots. Above the wrist there are the opening slots in the seam, these are held closed with large stitching and a fastener. The sleeves are also now lined with black satin.
The cummerbund was the next piece I made. It is piped suede and then unlike my last cummerbund it is lined with suede, this makes it a little more expensive to make but finishes it off nicely. At the back the cummerbund laces with black cotton tape and has a wrap over cover to hide the lacing. At the top of the cover a hole has been cut into the suede. I have yet to discover why but I have put it there for accuracy.
The trousers are similar to the old pair but have more detail in the pleated knee sections. The trousers have been made from a new leather which I then spent a whole week dying to the correct colour and weathering. This took hours of painting, sanding, re-painting, weathering, sanding, finishing… extremely time consuming but I had to keep going until I achieved the correct look. Lots of studying the original costume to get the marks in the right places.
I purchased gloves made from a suede that matched quite well but they are fleeced lined which created difficulty when dressing. I have had to remove the lining and put a cuff on the wrist which makes it easier to fit them comfortably under the under tunic.
The boot covers have been completely re-patterned. The striped detail is more accurate and the back fastening has been completely upgraded. The boot covers now wrap around the boot and velcro at the back to an underpad. They also have the vintage hook and bar fasteners and the ski clasps. The boot covers have the suede stirrup that feeds under the boot. I am still on the look out for accurate boots. Across the front of the cover is the strap which again has been completely re-patterned. This has been scaled from the tie fighter model part on the new boot discs we have made. The strap is piped up to the boot disc and then stops. The edge of the strap is also piped. The discs are removable again in case I damage them. This time we have strengthened the attachments so they pull tight against the strap.
Whilst I have been working on the soft parts my partner Jude has been busy making progress on all the new hard parts. Using sourced correct model parts he has scaled up and is sculpting new boot discs, new bandoleer and will be working on a new helmet sculpt soon.
Jude has also been working on my armour. We built a basic mould which he then covered in body filler and sanded to shape, creating all the little imperfections for the mould to pick up. The new armour is being made form polyurethane rubber / resin so it has great shape but it also flexible and will not crush me when I am wearing it. Once it is all painted up and weathered I will then line it with the suede around the neck.
It has been an extremely challenging upgrade to build and we still have a way to go. I have attached lots of photo’s of the work so far so please enjoy.

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more progress soon.
 
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Oh wow this is great. I have to make one of these as well. I have a helmet I have to build and paint first though. this will be helpfull. Nice work
 
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Lookin' good Alison, although I thought the old one was pretty awesome. I guess now you'll be upstaging Jude's Sith Anakin? ;P
 
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Since my last post we have made a bit of progress. The armour and tanks are now complete. We moulded the armour from a 50/50 PU rubber and resin with a brown colour pigment. The mould was made to have imperfections in it, as the screen worn armour is very rough. It is very flexible yet holds it's shape nicely and retains the sharp edges and fiberglass look that we would have lost had we gone with vac formed armour. Once the armour was moulded we trimmed it down and weathered it. Around the collar of the armour I have made the suede/foam padding and finished with the rough black stitching like the original. Also inside the armour is the velcro for attaching the leather tank strap, which runs from the two press studs at the top all the way down and attaches to the velcro inside the armour, we are pretty confident that this is how the original works. There is also velcro inside the front for the chest com link.

Jude has made the new set of tanks from pipe (took ages to find the correct diameter pipes) and cast resin parts with added glass bubbles to keep the weight to a minimum. Most of the parts are cast in white resin like the original with the exception of the handle which is cast in green, we had a stroke of luck finding the handle, we were guessing that it was probably a draw handle from the 80's (judging buy the green plastic that it appears to be made from) but we couldn't find any new handles that were the correct diameter, then Jude remembered an old 80's lightbox that he has at work - it had the same kind of handle and was the perfect diameter. Jude spent time making the pieces and greeblies so that once cast they would slot into the pipes and follow their contours so they are a nice snug fit. Once the main body of the tanks were built he filled them with expanding foam to stop them from flexing and also to hold the greeblies safely in place. Then it was onto the paint job hours where spent in front of the computer choosing colours and replicating as many scratches as possible. The tanks are attached to a backing board which then fastens to a leather strap which in turn fastens to the armour. The leather was dyed and weathered. If it looks as though he has done half a job of spraying the tanks this is because he has replicated the originals. It is as though they only painted what could be seen. The back, bottom and backing board were all left primer grey. I am really pleased with the tanks, i think these are my favourite part of the costume.

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and these pics show just how flexible it is
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and this shows a side by side comparison of the main greeblies
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WOW! Love it! keep it coming!

Pretty cool that was your armor that Kristen Wigg was wearing in "Paul" i love that movie!
 
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Well it's been a while since my last post, but we finally have the bandoleer completed. This part has been in progress for a long time just due to all the model pieces that were required (and the fact that the work on our Boba flightsuit and vest have been eating into our time) but Jude and I are both really happy with how it turned out. The parts are cast from the yellowish/cream coloured PU resin rather than white, you can see on the exhibition pics that the original are also this colour, a couple of the pieces had to be made since we couldn't identify the original model parts and we originally bought 2" silver webbing but after some more research decided that it was slightly too wide and so ended up with 1.75" but it's been worth the effort.

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Thanks for all the kind comments guys, here's a little more progress for you.

We have just finished the sculpt for our Boushh helmet, Jude's been working on this for months, sculpting, measuring, scaling from the model parts, then photographing and overlaying. The helmet has got so many angles and curves, it's been a real challenge but we are pretty happy with the end result. We have now handed this over to RS Propmasters to help us out with the moulds for the vac forming (we are confident that is how the original was done) so our next steps are first moulds, more cleaning up and then onto test pulls and making sure everything fits together well.

We will keep the thread updated as we progress.

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Nice work.
Loving the look of the chest armour and tanks.
We got all our soft parts off you a couple of years ago and now wouldn't mind upgrading the chest armour and tanks so that it is more comfortable for the wife on long troops.
 
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Allison's work is the best!!

- - - Updated - - -

oh, and can't wait to see the finished helmet
 
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Here are some images of our first test pull for the new Clothears Boushh helmet. Still needs work before the next test but overall we are very pleased. Thanks to RS Propmasters for helping out with the Vac forming. We are making a few tweaks at the moment but the second test pull should be ready soon.

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