Nefthys

Congratulations! Welcome to the fun side of the dark side! Cheers, Nef

Be patient and lots and lots of practice for bald caps. They are one of the hardest types of prosthetic makeup to do, and especially to do on yourself! Sounds like you have everything in order and are going about the steps the right way, they are just super difficult. Don't worry that your first try wasn't a huge success. It will take time and a few tries before you start to get the hang of it down. Keep in mind that cream makeup over Latex can discolour a little and look "chalky" or splochy. If you get a good makeup primer to put down on the latex bald cap first then you should be fine. You can also use Castor Sealer to seal the latex before putting on the cream makeup. Also remember that most alcohol based makeups are designed to be some what transparent. Check to make sure you have one that is a full cover if you want to get drastic looks. Water based body paint is also a good option if you can get a good quality brand like Kryolan or Mehron in your area. I use the Mehron to make myself white for my Jarael costume and it's great. Just remember to use a good sealer afterwards so it doesn't rub or sweat off. Let us know how your next attempt goes! Cheers, Nef

Stunning costume! Every detail you have put in is fantastic (and especially shaving the eye brows). Really hope you get this approved, it's a beautiful build. Cheers, Nef

Hi Melly, While I'm not an expert on the Mara Jade costume and I can hopefully give an answer to your question. The CRL's are meant as a guide and are open to some interpretation and flexibility. Your gun does not have to look exactly like the one picture in the CRL, but it should look close to it and to Mara's gun in the images from the comics. There are a few different versions of Mara's gun that can be seen in different comic panels and so there is no 'one' set weapon for her. With that being said, if you want to alter a Nerf gun, it can in no way be recognizable as a Nerf gun once your done your modifications. You want to try and get your weapon as accurate as possible, and I don't think altering the Nerf gun you've posted would work. Mara's gun is very boxy in every aspect of it's design. The handle and the trigger area are very rounded and curvy on that Nerf gun. It would probably be much easier to make the gun from scratch rather then try and alter something. Pam has an excellent tutorial on how she made her Mara gun. If you would rather alter a gun, you might be better off with the Nerf N-strike Reflex or the Captain Rex nerf gun. Both are already fairly square in design and would be easier to modify into Mara's weapon. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ajs98IfMcr0/T ... C08890.JPG If you are not up to making one yourself, there are a few prop makers you could always commission to make the gun for you as well. You can PM me if you like and I can point you in the direction of a few. Hope this helps! Cheers, Nef

Love seeing how this build is progressing. Keep up the excellent work! I am very excited to see the whole costume come together at the end. Cheers, Nef

Looking great! Congrats on the approval as well! It's always nice to welcome another Nihilus to the ranks. Cheers, Nef

Excellent progress so far. I have a fond affinity for this costume, so it is great to see someone making it!

With the water receding and people being allowed to return home, now comes the hardest part; rebuilding. This is an amazing video put together that is quite inspiring. Thankfully our 501st members are all safe and accounted for. A few pictures to give you an idea of the scale of flooding that hit our province. The downtown core and stadium in Calgary flooding. Inside our hockey stadium. It was flooded all the way up to the 12th row at it's worst. Roads, bridges and train tracks have been washed out cutting off several towns in the mountains. The army and construction crews have worked around the clock to get access back to these areas. Many houses were completely surrounded, and some washed away. I'll be heading down to Calgary next week to help out where ever I can with the clean up. Flood in my city hasn't been nearly as bad as other areas hit in our province thankfully. I'll be a bit busy and pre-occupied over the next couple weeks. Some of my friends were hit by this flood so I'll be doing all that I am able to help them get back on their feet and moving towards rebuilding. Cheers, Nef

Hello Bhelia, I just wanted to let you know that our resident guru Mara Jade costumer, who would normally be all over this thread with helpful suggestions, is currently taking time to get her health in order. Please be patient in regards to waiting for a response. I sadly do not know much about this costume so would not want to offer up any suggestions at this time. I just wanted to let you know that we costume mentors have seen your thread! Cheers, Nef

I'm afraid I don't know who that Nihilus is, but it is a great costume. It would come down to how many Nihilus' wear platform boots for added height and figuring out who it is from there. My garrison can spot my Nihilus from a mile away because my mask is so distinctive, but it gets hard to figure out who is who when they have a MWA masks. Anyone else know who it might be? Cheers, Nef

A state of emergency has been declared in many parts of Southern Alberta due to extreme flooding. Most of the the down town core of Calgary is flooded and over 100,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. Our garrison has been asking for roll calls on our facebook page and it seems all our members are doing okay, albeit soggy. Please keep us in your thoughts as we get through this. The clean up is going to be a pretty big job! If you want to follow the news there are many sites covering it, or have videos. You can also google "Calgary flood 2013" to get a good idea of how bad it is. http://globalnews.ca/video/661728/raw-v ... -flooding/ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/s ... tions.html Needless to say our troop this weekend has been cancelled. Scuba Clone costume anyone? Cheers, Nef

All I want to say is: "Go home bobbin, you're drunk!" Hahahaha, okay I'm done.

As the others have said, better pictures would be great. To me it looks like the "cat ears" might be a bit small. Once you get some newer pictures up here we will be able to give you more feed back. The costume is looking really great so far in the picture at least. You are certainly very close to having it completed, just may need a few tweeks. Cheers, Nef

With any purchased costume there will always be some adjustments and tweeks that will need to be made so it looks good on the wearer. Not everyone is the exact same size, so things need to be tucked, pulled, pinched, added too, and so on. As for the MWA COTF Nihilus, there are some things that would need to be altered. The belt isn't quite right, the middle strip isn't wide enough and is also shiny, compared to the matte finish on the wider under belt. It also appears the belt is missing those little black studs that hold the thinner top belt on. Also the cowl would need some tweeking a bit. The cowl should come in at the side of the mask. Right now it's looking a little "cobra headed". The quilted lines on the sleeves seem to be too narrow as well, so you may have to sew new ones that are wider. This is just what I have observed from seeing what is shown on MWA website. As for the cost for a Nihilus, it really comes down to how you go about making the costume. Prices will vary depending on what materials you use, how much you buy pre-made (like the mask) versus what you build from scratch. Personally I nearly spent almost $400 on my Nihilus costume. I went with a heavy piano weave linen fabric which is a bit pricey, where other people have gone with silk noil or a cotton which can be purchased much cheaper. I sewed everything on my costume, built my own mask and under cowl and "cat ears". I made my own belt from scratch as well. Only thing I bought were the gloves and I already had a pair of black boots. There is no exact cost on Nihilus, it comes down to how much you are willing to spend. Being a Mando, you probably know this already. Some people pour a lot of money and time into their kits, while other just can't afford to spend so much on their kit. Comes down to what you want to do. I also have a Mando, and it was a lot cheaper to build then my Nihilus. I hope this has been helpful! Cheers, Nef

I started making this costume a while ago (over a year now) and it is sitting unfinished in a box. When I was working on the under tunic I did it as two square pieces of fabric overlapping and sewn under the purple dress, just as you have described. I also see it as a second piece of fabric under the top dress in the picture, so that is how I was making it. I think it is actually more of a stole, similar to what priests wear over their robes, but again that is just my personal interpretation. Like this, but it is under the purple dress: http://www.stjames-hamptonhill.org.uk/i ... /Stole.jpg Again, this was just how I saw it. More reference images for this costume would certainly be handy for deciding on if it is part of the top dress or is a second garment under it. Cheers, Nef

I agree that a less "actiony" photo would be needed to do a proper review, but so far it's looking awesome. Cheers, Nef

Haha! Glad you like the pictures Pam! It certainly was an amazing weekend. Every year I can't wait for CCEE to arrive, and then it all happens so quickly and you get to the end utterly exhausted, but very happy. Thankfully they have started running a second convention in Edmonton city. This year will be it's second con, and it's already booking fast. I'll certainly be posting up photos when it happens! If my staff went missing, I somehow doubt I would mind a trip to sunny California to retrieve it, hehe. Speaking of, I'll be in California all next week for E3! Cheers, Nef

While the pattern looks good, it's hard to tell all the details from the angle. It may also be the photo, but the markings looks dark blue. They should be more of a dark purple colour. But again, that may just be the photo. An excellent start! I look forward to seeing the rest of your costume as you progress. Cheers, Nef

This is looking absolutely amazing so far! I also love the socks Cheers, Nef

Both designs are nice, and the layout is great. One thing that may be a problem, especially if viewing it on a mobile device, is the text. It's really small on the images making it hard to read. You'll also want to use a sans-serif font for the blog text, as it's much easier to read on a screen. Just my 2 cents! Cheers, Nef

Pictures would be great. Have fun this weekend!

Great photos! Looks like you had a lot of fun!

Greetings! Well it was just over a week ago that the 501st was at CCEE 2013. We ran another successful charity photo booth and everyone involved was amazing. Everyone really put in a great effort no matter what the task was. We worked with the Make A Wish children's charity this year and were able to raise $8,108.75 over the 3 days!! Here is a group shot of (almost) everyone that helped out this year in the 501st. We also had the pleasure of Ian McDiarmid visiting our photo booth and taking the time to have a photo op with some of our members. As well as running a successful photo booth, the 501st was asked to lead up the Parade of Wonders (POW) which kicked off the start of the expo weekend. There are some awesome photos as well as great video from the event. The parade ended in Olympic Plaza where the Mayor of Calgary White Hatted (similar to giving the keys to the city) the Emperor himself, as well as other visiting celebrities. A great video covering the whole parade, as well as the whole ceremony can be found on youtube here: And some pictures from the parade! Here is the 501st crossing the street in style led by Vader. Some pictures from the very talented David Luckman of Lucky Shot photography of the parade. And on a personal note I was able to finish my Mandalorian armour for this convention and get approval into the Mando Mercs costume club. I have been working on my armour for over a year now, but due to time constraints was only recently able to complete it. It was so good to finally have it done and be able to troop in it at the expo. I am now an official member of Hett'Ciri clan! And another great Mando group shot! Some other highlights from the weekend were getting to meet some really awesome celebrities! I got to meet John Rhys-Davies! They had a fantastic line up of people visiting this year, including Weta studios who had an amazing booth. "Booth" is really an understatement, they made their area look like a dwarven tomb with life size Gandalf and Thorin statues standing on top. At the Weta booth was the brilliantly talented Dave Tremont who is one of their sculptors and prop makers. He brought with him the first reproduction of Radagast the Brown's staff to show off at the con. I had the chance to have a very awesome and long talk with him about prop making, costumes, the industry and so on. We chatted for almost 45 minutes while he was leaning on the staff. At the end of the conversation he offered to sell it to me, needless to say I jumped on the chance and did just that! I got a lot of odd looks walking around in my Nihilus robes with Radagast's staff, especially when hanging out with R2, heheh. It was a fantastic weekend overall! I am very excited for next year, but first is the Edmonton Expo this September. You can bet the 501st will be there again in full force! Cheers, Nef

Congratulations! Always nice to have another Nihilus in our ranks, and a very fine looking one too! Cheers, Nef

I imagine it would be as it is stated as part of the CRL description for the belt: Belt: The black leather belt is worn at a slight angle, as if the lightsaber worn on the right is pulling that side down. The base belt is approximately 8 cm wide. Two thin belts, each approximately 2.5 cm wide, are worn over the base belt. These belts are held in place with black leather belt keepers which are spaced at intervals around the waist. The small belts have a side-release buckle at the center front. A pentagon shaped silver plate is located just to the right side of the side release buckles. It is as wide as the base belt, and it covers both of the smaller belts. A small black leather pouch hangs from the top of the belt to the left side of the side release buckles. A Covertec lightsaber clip is located on the right side of the belt. The belt closes in the back. Because it is listed in the CRL description, it would be recommended to have it with your costume. The weapon, in this case a lightsaber, is optional and not required for approval, but the covertec clip is considered part of the costume. Hope this helps! Cheers, Nef