Purchased Armor and the Problem of Scale

Fettered

Hunter
One of the things that I have seen written on these boards and happen to agree with is that one of the key things that can make or break a Fett costume is getting the scale of all the pieces and parts right. 1:1 parts would look just as silly on someone 6'7" as they would someone 5' tall. Both of those instances require armor that is far outside of the range in which 1:1 replica armor will look good.

Now, I have seen some pretty fantastic hand-made armor on here, so I'm not discounting that in any way. However, people like FettPride, Redkraytdragon, and BobaMaker (not trying to slight any other armorers, they just come to mind first) have put a good deal of time and effort into making some of the most accurate armor that we have ever seen. But in that pursuit of accuracy it is, by necessity, 1:1 armor.

I have read many various and sometimes conflicting "facts" and theories about the height of Boba Fett, the height of Jeremy Bulloch, how much he may have shrunk since Empire was shot and so on and so forth. For Mr. Bulloch I think I've seen everything from 5'9" to 6'1"

With that in mind, I am wondering what people think about the height range wherein purchased 1:1 armor will look good. If you can provide full photos in said armor with heights/weights would be awesome, too.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Width is pretty important too, especially chest width and the mid-section more so i think than height. For height though I've seen 5'7 to 6'2 looking decent it just comes to width really then in my opinion. Fett is definitely a thinner guy suit though, Bulloch was only 145 pounds in Empire at around 6ft and 5'9 or 6'1 thats not going to make a difference in how the suit is worn. So many little factors that can make or break it honestly. I wish it was more like stormtrooper armor lol.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Width is pretty important too, especially chest width and the mid-section more so i think than height.

Yep, other more experienced folks might chime in here, but I agree with what sleepalot said. I'm 5'7"-ish, and imho, my BM armor fits pretty well in comparison to my height (you can see in my profile pic or in a build thread I have going under the "Costume" forum).
 
Width is pretty important too, especially chest width and the mid-section more so i think than height. For height though I've seen 5'7 to 6'2 looking decent it just comes to width really then in my opinion. Fett is definitely a thinner guy suit though, Bulloch was only 145 pounds in Empire at around 6ft and 5'9 or 6'1 thats not going to make a difference in how the suit is worn. So many little factors that can make or break it honestly.

I totally agree. So many little things that you can't even always put your finger on can have such a big impact on the overall look.

Yep, other more experienced folks might chime in here, but I agree with what sleepalot said. I'm 5'7"-ish, and imho, my BM armor fits pretty well in comparison to my height (you can see in my profile pic or in a build thread I have going under the "Costume" forum).

Thanks I forgot about BobaMaker's armor. I will add it above. Would you say you're shoulders/chest are average width?
 
Ya I agree your BM armor fits well with your build Roninson. I don't know if this will help you Fettered but BM's collar piece I recently asked about was 13" across. So that could help give you a better perspective on width size.
 
Cant say about boba maker as i havent worked with it in person, but FP armor is scaled up a little to fit a wider range of people. IOA (redKraytDragon) armor is much larger. He used the large templates to make his. Both are excellent but are very different in size. Neither is actually 1:1 scale. As my 501st garrisons GML, I recommend IOA for anyone over 6'

I think Jeremy was about 5'11"- 6' during filming of ESB, which is estimated from what ive heard and comparison shots of Fett next to Vader, but we definately know he was very very slender. I am 5'8" but am a little stocky at the moment, and i think FP v3 armor fits me in a very similar way that the armor fit jeremy. It may be one of the reasons everyone says my gear looks good. (not trying to blow up my head, just sayin what people have told me) FP's upcoming V4 armor will be movie sized from what i heard. A true 1:1 scale. Once that comes out, we'd probably be able to better tell what height/build really works the best with actual movie sized armor.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This is a very interesting discussion and something that I have recently over the period of the last year given a lot of thought to. After doing more research and looking at more pictures (now that I've been able to hone my eye a little more and have a better understanding of the way the armor sits on the body) I can see where I didn't quite hit the mark with most of my pieces. My armor is quite large and better suited for folks 6' and up like DVH stated, but I wear it myself and am 5'10 at around 160lbs, so placement is important too.
I'm fairly happy with my initial sculpt for a sophomore (if you will) attempt, but I can see a lot of things with my armor kit (in particular the chest, back, kidney and shoulders) that can stand to have room for improvement and I know now that I can do it better. That being said, I'll be tackling some of these pieces hopefully over the winter and scaling them down a bit as well to get them closer on accuracy.
Great discussion here though and it's always important for me to hear what people are experiencing with working out the bugs on making stuff work for them.
 
I wish I would have thought about this topic before I paid for my BM armor. Had I known I would have gotten everything from RKD since I'm 6"4. Oh well, maybe I'll sell it when I get it next February.
 
Oops! I made some assumptions that are clearly incorrect with regard to the size of the various Fett armors out there and I am really glad you guys are setting things straight! My apologies for these assumptions!

RKD--very cool that you and FP are both, while quite happy with your products still pushing to refine and offer even more!

As a point of interest I started thinking about this kind of thing in a very self-interested way (i.e. what armor would fit me that would be better than what I could reasonably make), but I think it evolved into an intellectual curiosity long before I posted--hence the broader approach. That is to say, my curiosity went beyond "I am 5'7" and 145 lbs. What armor should I buy." Though that was likely my initial thought at one point in time. :rolleyes

- - - Updated - - -

Ya I agree your BM armor fits well with your build Roninson. I don't know if this will help you Fettered but BM's collar piece I recently asked about was 13" across. So that could help give you a better perspective on width size.

Thanks sleepalot. That actually will help. Or at the very least give me a project to look at tomorrow. ;)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
This is an issue that the Mercs faces a bit when approving canon characters in particular. For example, an applicant can have all FP gear, have spent the thousands on everything being as screen accurate as possible... and be too different a body shape for them to look like Boba while wearing their screen accurate Boba costume. It's kinda tragic in that light - the effort has gone in, the time and the money, but it still doesn't look like Boba because the parts are scaled wrongly to their body. That is, of course, where scratch building comes in - but then you sacrifice the "screen accurate" in favor of "accurate to my frame". Depends what you want to go for.

I wear RKD plates and I'm about 5'9" and average build. The plates sit a little large on me, but I get away with that because a) I'm not wearing a canon costume and b) I've reshaped them with a heatgun to fit my body better. They ended up looking like shorter Jango plates than Boba plates, because that's what fit my body type better.
 
That is exactly what I wanted to say originally, only you said it much more clearly! With my smaller frame I really hesitate to buy the armor I would otherwise jump on for costuming. The overall look definitely needs to be there or it isn't accurate overall no matter what the pieces are.
 
Well I'll add in what I know. I was the Entertainment Weekly Fett and got to spend about an hour and a half in a closed, private space with Jeremy, Dickie and Dan for the shoot. Jeremy is about my height..perhaps a inch taller, tops. Dickie on the other hand is much shorter, as is Dan (who isn't relevant to this discussion)...so I have no idea how he wore the ROTJ Fett. If you watch the sail barge fight, the pants do look pretty baggy on the bottom. Anyways, Jeremy is about my build now, but I can see how he would be at a lower weight, he does not have the chest I have.

For my Fett I scratch built the WOF templates from a large, so they are the same basically as IOA's (RedKryatDargon's). The larges use to look good on me, but since I trimmed up a little bit and work out alot less, the plates seem really wide on me in some pictures. Since mine are magnetically attached, I was able to pop mine off and measure it up against the torso at the TDH booth at C6. The larges are bigger than those FP v.3 (I believe thats what they were) and even more so it seemed when I got to peek at the new V4. I can't say anything about BM stuff, but if WickedBeard is still making stuff, his shoulder plates are basically at the WOF Large template size.

So I think the WOF mediums are about the 1:1 for screen accurate stuff and WB & IOA are Large. So my advice to anyone picking a maker is to print out the WOF templates and make a paper or cardboard set to use as a sizing gauge. If your ambitious, make em out of cheap sintra, that way not only is the overall shape right, but the curvature matches your body. You can't beat IOA's back or cod though. His knees are a bit big for my tastes though...even though that's what I troop.
 
This thread is more than 11 years old.

Your message may be considered spam for the following reasons:

  1. This thread hasn't been active in some time. A new post in this thread might not contribute constructively to this discussion after so long.
If you wish to reply despite these issues, check the box below before replying.
Be aware that malicious compliance may result in more severe penalties.
Back
Top