Thanks for all the praise guys. The Jubilee in the two pics is my girlfriend Julie( Iceheart on these boards)
I was kind of going for a swat/ special forces soldier look. I wanted to blend the mandalorian look with the look or feel of the modern special forces soldier. Specifically the familiar look of pouches on legs, back, and sides. Making thinkgs look funtional and as though they would actually work. For some reason I always end up thinking of mandalorians as ground pounders, a futuristic infantryman type. Thus the backpack in place of the standard jet pack, and the backpack having a tall antennae and some pouches.
The helmet I had the most fun with. You guys should see the stack of sketches I made coming up with my final design. I came up with a design philosophy for the mandalorian helmet. (At this point you should realize I'm an industrial designer, also the guy who interned at hasbro) I decided that the helmet (and gauntlets for that matter) are modular. I decided for the purpose of my design excercise that the look of variantes on the armor in other images and publications were not due to artistic style and liscense, but rather should be considered "canon" variations. A vented earcap was not becuase some artist drew it that way, but because the earcaps could be interchanged and specialized. Places on fett's helmet like the arrows above the visor and the vents on the back, what were they? I decided they would be attatchment points for other possible devices or objects. Think of the modern soldier"s kevlar helmet. You have plain helmets (like boba's), or ones with lights or night vision devices on the front (like my helmet). So I decided my points of difference would be placed on the front over where the arrows are, on the back where the keyslots are, and the earcaps. But I also wanted to see how far could I push the visor, the defining feature of the helmet, and still make it recognizable as mandalorian. I also wanted to make it completely different by changing the visor color. Plus, I had the gold visor laying around from a failed attempt at sculpting a master chief helmet. So I sketched a whole bunch on it and came up with what I had.
It sort of helped me to develope this design philosophy when I went through designing my mandalorian. It helped to get me thinking, give myself some guidlines and constraints, and give me a good base for getting reference. Below is one of my final design renders, and you can see some of my other sketches at
http://tkbearcrew.com/v-web/gallery/Custom-mandalorians And believe me, thats not even a quarter of the doodles and sketches I did for this revision of my mando.