Ord Mantell's PP2 Build

[Ord Mantell]

Progress shots on the pp2 blaster paint job. Should be finished in another day or so...

I'll go into details of the process later but these are the basic colors I chose after hours of looking at the references:

Dark Blue, Reefer Gray, Grimy Black, and Tuscan Red. Also need a little silver and black.

 

[Ord Mantell]

a quick glimpse of the paint process on the sling gun...

After weeks of looking at the references, I felt the only color that had any masking was the dark blue, and it went on last, or nearly last, with maybe only touch up weathering going on top. I used both vaseline and latex for masking.

 

[Ord Mantell]

in the shed where I do all my airbrushing, freshly finished...

There were a couple of mishaps where the paintjob got damaged along the way, and instead of re-doing it, I made repairs. I can go into it only if ppl are curious. So it's far from perfect, which... well, perfection is always the goal.

On one hand, it's not a complicated paintjob, but on the other hand capturing the chaos of the original while trying to be careful to accurately replicate it's detail is not exactly a walk in the park. Moreso than with the armor I think.

While I did photoshop some rough stencils, I didn't actually stencil anything due to the difficulty of making marks on a dark surface that can be covered or removed afterwards. Chalk paper would work fine for that but I didn't have any and didn't think it necessary. What I did instead was print the stencils out and hold them next to the area to get the scale and layout while free-handing the masking with a q-tip.

I also decided to switch the handle to final forward-button position before painting it since I didn't see any compelling evidence either way beside the fact there is far more blue on one side than the other, which matched better with the handle being in it's final forward-button position.

Next item on the agenda is the wookie scalps. The hair should arrive in a few days.

 

[BudaFett]

Absolutely beautiful! It's crazy to think that something that they probably painted in an hour quickly takes so long to replicate!

 

[Ord Mantell]

Hit the mic shin tool with some red misting to finish it off...

 

[Ord Mantell]

Colors are the same as ESB, except none of the colors I bought for ESB are available. Went shopping until I found the ones above on etsy. The way they are tied is the same as ESB, too, for the brown and gray braids anyway, as far as I can tell. The blonde is slightly different, having a loop and then an extension. the extension is about 12-14" total length which attaches to the loop segment with a 2" section where they join up between tie-offs.

 

[Mottrex]

in the shed where I do all my airbrushing, freshly finished...

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There were a couple of mishaps where the paintjob got damaged along the way, and instead of re-doing it, I made repairs. I can go into it only if ppl are curious. So it's far from perfect, which... well, perfection is always the goal.

On one hand, it's not a complicated paintjob, but on the other hand capturing the chaos of the original while trying to be careful to accurately replicate it's detail is not exactly a walk in the park. Moreso than with the armor I think.

While I did photoshop some rough stencils, I didn't actually stencil anything due to the difficulty of making marks on a dark surface that can be covered or removed afterwards. Chalk paper would work fine for that but I didn't have any and didn't think it necessary. What I did instead was print the stencils out and hold them next to the area to get the scale and layout while free-handing the masking with a q-tip.

I also decided to switch the handle to final forward-button position before painting it since I didn't see any compelling evidence either way beside the fact there is far more blue on one side than the other, which matched better with the handle being in it's final forward-button position.
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Next item on the agenda is the wookie scalps. The hair should arrive in a few days.

My second favourite blaster that looks Fantastic!

 

[Ord Mantell]

 

[Ord Mantell]

I've not really been happy with the suit color since taking some of the first photos of it under studio light. The RIT denim I used had a tendency to get a little saturated under some lighting conditions and even look almost like a Jango suit. There was slightly too much red in the denim color, making it seem purple under bright light. Under normal room conditions it looked fine though.

But when I re-dyed my ESB suit and weathered it with Dirty Down, I noticed that it behaved in a much different way than I expected. It could make the ESB blue very much like the PP2 blue. I found this to be the case when I weathered the left hip pouch of the ESB costume, which is a bit darker than everything else on the costume. When I was done with it, I felt it was perfect for the color it should be, but it also looked a lot like PP2.

Here is the weathered pouch, which is ESB blue with black Dirty Down sprayed on, next to the pp2 suit with the RIT denim color under normal room light.

This made me want to strip the suit and start over. So I did.

I used RIT color remover. Then used the same recipe I used on my ESB suit to re-dye it.

Before weathering I did a quick fix to a problem with the way clothears does the seams running down the arms. They closed the seams on both sides but really it should be open on one side. So I opened them up with a seam ripper.

It doesn't correct the mistake to be 100% accurate, but it's better this way than not.

halfway through with the dirty down, one side is weathered, the other side not...

I feel like this is a better way to get the PP2 suit color as opposed to what I did originally.

 

[BudaFett]

I love dirty down. Black always comes out heavy, too, but the weathering is beautiful! The blue looks great as well, even though I thought it looked perfect before!

 

[Ord Mantell]

I love dirty down. Black always comes out heavy, too, but the weathering is beautiful! The blue looks great as well, even though I thought it looked perfect before!

Thanks Buda! I openly admit not using Dirty Down early on in my builds is probably one of my biggest mistakes. I went the cheap route and used what I had on hand already. Dirty Down is magical stuff. It really works better than anything else I've used for aging/weathering clothing. It's worth the money. I know it washes out easily so people who troop a lot might not want to use it for that reason, unless you don't mind reapplying it after you wash a suit. For PP2 or even ROTJ that could end up being a pain, but for ESB or SE, I feel like it should be doable.

 

[viewoptic]

I have dark brown and nicotine yellow Dirty Down on my Clothears suit. I bought two cans to tweak things a bit how I wanted. I agree it's phenomenal.

 

[Ord Mantell]

there is a list of small tweaks needed all over, but it's finally time to do that helmet...

 

[BudaFett]

Finally!