Resculpting my Fett armor

holy **** this is one awesome thread great work man when i am ready to either build or purchase these pieces maybe next year ill have to order from you.
 
Ok remember how I said that I still wasn't done with this armor and was going to go back and revisit it (for a third and FINAL time)? Well it has begun.
Armed with more knowledge and sculpting experience, more reference material and most importantly Rafal's incredible templates and knowledge, I have decided to tackle this one last time (cause I really am getting sick of it lol...but I like to screw stuff up 3 or 4 times before I get it right...you know, just to be sure)
Before I begin, I want to reiterate just how instrumental RF's templates were in the creation of this new armor. Without them, this new kit would not look the way it does/will. The way I see it, he is just as much the architect of this V3 as much as I am. Many of you may not truly realize (and I didn't until I recently started sculpting this new kit) how difficult a thing it is to take 2D pics and make accurately scaled templates out of them to be able to use for 3D creation. I sculpted this stuff using his templates and my mind is still blown by how he did it (and accurately I might add). Again, my hat's off to you Rafal, you sir are true asset to this community and your hard work has paid off greatly for all of us. I can't thank you enough.
I would also like to give a special nod to Fett4real for putting up with my incessant texts and questions about dents, etc. My hat's off to you as well Dom. You, sir, are a wealth of knowledge and I thank you for your help (you're not a bad painter either :p), you are also a great asset to this community and my hat's off to you as well.

I suppose that's enough babble, let's get on to what we're really here for...pics!
One more quick thing before I begin, there's going to be a lot of the creation process that I'm not going to be able to show you because it involved me recasting some of my own work (obviously for a good base to start with and to speed up my process so I don't have to start from scratch on every single piece, although I had did have to scratch sculpt some of them nevertheless). In the interest of keeping re-casters at bay and my secrets...well, secret (this is a source of income for me after all)...I have opted not to show you that part of it but I will show what I can. Suffice it to say that I have discovered an extremely fast way to go from sculpting medium to vac table buck...it took a long time for me to figure that out and I'm just not willing to share that yet (maybe one day when I get out of the game but not now). I hope it doesn't sound selfish because I really do want to share this but I know that it will be exploited and I'll likely be creating more competition for myself and that's not really a good idea obviously.
That being said, we'll start off with the big boy first...the backplate -
The necessary tool
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I'm going to have to jump forward to the mold (sorry guys) but I will share with you all how I did the JP slots (these were quite a PITA I might add lol)
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Here's some shots of the final piece (in styrene, .090)
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That's it for today. Collar is up next, stay tuned!
 
As I already said to you, you really did an amazing job and I can't wait to see the whole armor done!

... And thanks again for the much too kind words, Will!
 
Thanks again Dave :) More to come very soon, keep your eyes peeled!

Levi, couldn't have done this without you my friend, thanks again for your awesome templates (and exhaustive research info) mate! :cheers
 
More progress -
Collar is done. I did make a slight adjustment to RF's templates (even though his are accurate) in order to keep the piece more symmetrically mirrored (also to keep it properly lined up with the backplate shoulder tabs). Plus, it's aesthetically more pleasing, I think...at least I like the way it looks better.
So in a nut shell, I basically recasted my V2 collar and made the necessary adjustments. It still has the nice same snug fit as the V2 version. This was a pretty much straightforward piece to make, not really much in the way of 'progress' to report, but I did add pics of it lined up with the backplate.
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I had a discussion with RF about the dents and was surprised to learn that the two smaller dents on the inside towards the neck are in 'oh so slightly' two different places...it's not even perceptible with the two collars lying next to each other (like an 1/8" inch) but I don't even question RF anymore, that dude is on it and I trust his research completely...but for accuracy's sake I made two molds. I did make an adjustment on the far right dent on the ROTJ collar vs the ESB in order to give it a bit of a distinguishing character (with so many versions of the dents on these pieces floating around [hero, stunt, ESB, ROTJ, MOM, AOSW, etc] it's frustrating to decide with which one to go with and that will be later revealed with the knees). Again like I said, I just went with RF's templates and made one adjustment on the right dent (left in the picture)
ROTJ on top, ESB on bottom
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ROTJ
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ESB
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Here's some pics of how it matches up with the backplate -
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That's it for now, LOTS more to come VERY soon ;)
 
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Thanks again guys, appreciate it :)
That's not all Necro....get ready.

I really see no point in dragging this out any longer, so here goes: I have been hard at work in the Armory for the last 2 months busting my exhaust port day after day (that's what insomnia and OCD will get you) and I'm finally almost finished with this new kit. Again, I cannot stress enough my highest praise for RF's templates...they really are the shizzle folks and if you have any reservations about using them to make your own armor, well don't...they are spot on, and after finishing up the chest set I'm still amazed at their accuracy.
So grab a seat and make some popcorn ...you should probably go to the bathroom too and get that out of the way cause we're gonna be here a while ;)
Ok, knees are done. I basically just re-sculpted the caps and bodies from scratch and re-used my old knee dart housings and 'F' shapes. Honestly they were close enough to where it didn't warrant making an entire new set of them and I just really didn't see the point (not to mention that my foam knee dart installation kits will work with both V2's and the new V3's). Make no mistake though, even using the existing parts this still took me quite a bit of time (about 2 weeks) and effort and making two sets of molds is not fun, not to mention that the undercuts on these bad boys are a nasty thing to deal with. Here are the finished parts in detail
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For the right knee dent, I finally settled on this image. Again, maybe not the absolute correct one but with MOM, AOSW, SE, stunt, hero...ugh I'm sick of it all already. In the end, I liked this one the best (in case you were wondering) and decided on it lol
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Now on to the shoulders. I actually did this one first because relatively speaking it was the easiest and I already knew exactly what direction to take with it. I used this following image for reference for the shape (as well as some others floating around, but this one was a very telling photo for me)
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Here was the first master hot off the table...I had planned on making both ROTJ and ESB from the very beginning so I knew that I'd be making 3 molds of this thing - smooth, ROTJ and ESB. I poured the first mold then rinse and repeat for the other two. After that was the (not known at the time) dreaded task of carving out the dents. The ESB was the hardest obviously and I actually wound up screwing that one up the first time before getting it right the second go around (had to fill in with rondo and recarve...yeah, good times). Again, not totally 100% accurate, but pretty d@mn close and I'm happy with it so...
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Working on the ROTJ dent
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And ROTJ set
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Finally, the much dreaded chest set. I was NOT looking forward to this at all (even after all the research I had done on it over the past year) but I had an idea of how to approach it (I'd hoped) and it wound up being the correct way (luckily). There were two different angles I could have started on this from, and I'm pretty sure I chose the right one (for me anyway...the vertical curve)

Again, I apologize that I cannot show you how I sculpted these, but I wish to keep my methods my own (for the time being at any rate). However, I do keep records of all my progress pics from start to finish should the ugly "R" word ever come in to play and will gladly show these pics should the need ever arise to defend my sculpting abilities and integrity.
Thanks to Dom for pointing out to me about the ROTJ dent on the right breast plate (which is absent on the ESB version). Up until then, I had no idea about it and even questioned him as to where/how he knew about this. He did show me the photo and that was enough for me. Seeing this same dent on ROTJ RF's chest template only solidified it for me.
(hard to see in the photo, but it's there)
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Armed with that knowledge and RF's templates, here's what I came up with (after about 20+ hours of screaming, shouting, crying and throwing of things..uh, er I mean sculpting...till all hours of the morning)
ESB set
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And here's the ROTJ set with the dent on the right breast plate
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With all that out of the way, the pics below show where I'm REALLY at on this project as of right now. All I've got left is the cod, which I'm going to print out Levi's template and see how it stands against my current V2. Shouldn't be too much work to crank that piece out, it was pretty straightforward as far as the Fett armor went and should go pretty quick.

ESB set
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And the ROTJ set
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That's it for the moment folks. I'll be looking at finishing up the cod this week (hopefully) and will post pics and final 'family' group shots of the kit. I'll be revisiting the gauntlets, but not until next year. I have some other pressing irons in the fire to tend to first.
Thanks again for looking and all comments are welcome.
-RKD
 
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Finally, some accurate dents for the ESB/ROTJ abdominal plates (it's the same piece) and the ROTJ right chest plate! I just hope that this feature too will be added to the ROTJ left gauntlet ==> The Boba Fett Suit Fact Files - Post #49.

The v.2 vs v.3 chest plates from those images were/are made by Fettpride, and I think the images were reposted by KaanE (I also saved those images in my PC) in one of Fettpride's threads.

Your work is amazing (I know I repeat myself, but this is the truth) and I can't wait to see the family picure of the whole set!
 
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