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Dark Jedi's Starkiller


Guest Anonymous

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Guest Anonymous

So I've made some pretty big strides in making a game acurate training suit. I figure I keep a thread/ log here to keep my self motivated and let people know where I am at.

 

Now to begin,

 

Shoulder Armor

 

The origional set I made for opening night was good, but had many problems. All the straps were nylon or elastic, the back kept buckling, and the surface was anything from smooth. So after opening night I took it appart and retrimmed it so it would be straight when it is held together. Using some of the belts I got from good will, I made the commectors for the two halves leather and the underarm straps as well.

 

Additionally, I finally invested in a palm sander ($20 at Wally World) and spent the last two weekends bondoing and sanding the thing to a glass finish and used Krylon Silver paint for the base finish. The results are pretty nice IMO.

 

Before:

DSCN4502.jpg

 

After:

DSCN4539.jpg

DSCN4538.jpg

DSCN4540.jpg

DSCN4542.jpg

DSCN4547.jpg

DSCN4548.jpg

DSCN4559.jpg

 

Additionally i ordered a resin restraining bolt for the left half. After it arrives I will begin the procces of weathering the armor.

 

Gauntlet

 

Although the gaunlet definatly has some similarities to a Fett gauntlet, I think that the best bet is to start from scratch since the Fett gauntlet would need heavy modifications. For instance, the "lanyard launcher" on Fett is on the outside, and on Starkiller it is on the inside. Additionally, Starkillers gauntlet appears to be more of a wearable iPhone and thus dosnt have the random spikes and feed lines that fett does. Using the given references:

 

gauntdet2.jpg

gauntdet3.jpg

gauntdet1.jpg

 

I used fiberglass, Bondo, and Balsa to make my gauntlet

DSCN4544.jpg

DSCN4556.jpg

DSCN4553.jpg

DSCN4557.jpg

DSCN4558.jpg

 

From here I will need to make a plastic plate with the appropriate red lettering and wire a bunch of LEDs which will be powered by a 9V batery that is inserted through the bottom of the gauntlet. The gauntlet will attach to my arm via elastic bands.

 

Belts

 

This week I ordered 7 black bonded leather belts for the costume. when they arrive I will need to figure out how to attach them and how to make the neccesary buckels, probably from a combination of snaps and wood

 

Cloth parts

I discovered that Joanee fabrics does carry 100% cotton bull denun, which has a texture remarkably like that of the game rendering as feels like a good weight. It comes in an off tan color, so tonight I am going to try an experiment with dark brown Rit dye and see if I get the color I want. If it works, I am going to tear appart the sweat suit I used for the relese as a pattern and sew a tunic. the scrap bull denium will be used for wrappings.

 

I am going to look later for the loin cloth fabric.

 

Think that coveres it for now.

 

dj

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Guest Anonymous

This looks great dude!

 

I'll be updating my thread soon on the deathstar version, if you wanna keep an eye out for it :)

 

- Fitz

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Guest Anonymous

Thanks for linking me here Fitz! You've done some AMAZING work on this Dark Jedi and I seriously doubt I'll be able to do that well on mine.

 

I caught your comment about the loincloth though, so I thought I'd offer my two cents on that. It appears to be a rough yet sheer cloth to me. I found some dark gray speaker cover cloth that I think is going to be the cat's meow for a loincloth once I tea stain it a little bit darker. Keep an eye out!

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do you see on your shoulder pieces how the angles on the back of the neck don't quite match up, (or in my case how the left shoulder extends towards the center much farther than the right). that's the reason i'm doing it as a single piece for my version 2, then splitting it up the back. i think it will help out by, if not creating symmetry, at least creating the illusion of symmetry between the two pieces.

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Guest Anonymous

If you look at the picture where I am wearing the armor you can see it matches fairly well. When it is on the table and the straps are off one wants to lean.

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DJ - For the snaps...

 

It looks like you put the snaps on squares of glass-cloth then resin'd those to the backside of the armor.

 

Or am I seeing that wrong?

 

Also, the view of the primed gauntlet looking straight down on it makes the electronics cut-out area look slightly warped or skewed. Whereas the oblique view with the sanded bondo on the fiberglass frame looks square.

 

~ Vonnor

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Guest Anonymous
Cool. Nice trick! :P I'm sure I'll eventually have to go that route with the Kota armor - after the velcro wears out.

 

(added another question to previous post)

 

I'll see if I took some other pictures of the thing, but the way I did it was I made the fiberglass curve piece and then made a square box for the electronics that was built on top of that.

 

Once the box was in place, all the other detail was built up with bondo and balsa.

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What I was sayin' is, in one photo the actual rectangle cutout you made to put in the battery/electronics/LED doesn't look square. It looks twisted somehow. The actual cutout area, nothing else. In the other picture (the pink bondo photo) the cutout area DOES look square.

 

I wonder if it's a quirk of the camera angle or something.

 

Am I the only one that sees that?

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Guest Anonymous

I went to the shop to take a look at again, and I see what you are talking about where it does look twisted from a certain angle. However, from what I can tell using some scrap balsa it is square, and the twist will disappear when I make the display plate.

 

Now for some updates:

 

Tunic and Pants

 

As some of you read above I am planing on using Bull Demium for the tunic. I was going to go with it for the pants too, but when I did my dye experiment (see below) I think I found a better alternitive.

 

So to see if the fabric would accept dye and what mixture to use I bought an inch of fabric and ran some test. Here are the samples (images taken using a scanner)

 

Sample2.jpg

 

Top Left: Dickies brown work pants with mixture of Black & Dark Brown Dye

Top Center: Bull Denium, no dye

Bottom Left: Bull Denium, mixture of Black and Dark Brown Dye

Bottom Center: Bull Denium, Black dye for 2 min and rinsied

Right: Bull Denium, Black Dye, 1 hour and rinsised

 

I am really happy with the pants which have a similar texture and will dye them as shown above this weekend. For the tunic, I was going to go for dark, dark brown, but the sample on the right seems to be a much closser match to both the force unleashed version and SC4 verision. Additionally it seems to have a brownish tint from the fabric, and will allow me to put the blod stains and other weathering seen in the game.

 

For the wraps, I will do another dying experiment with tan and possibly yellow dye to get the right dirty gauze color.

 

Opinions are appreciated.

 

Armor

 

I've looked for some weathering tips on TDH and found a method of using acrylic paint with wet rags and dry newspaper to give the armor a worn look, and will experiment with weathering this weekend on a sample I am preparing. My armor made another large step forward today thanks to the arrival of a restraing bolt I ordered from www.resinparts.com

 

DSCN4565.jpg

DSCN4566.jpg

 

With this in I should be able to have the armor done by next week depending if I get caught up with school work or other parts of the costume.

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Guest Anonymous
I went to the shop to take a look at again, and I see what you are talking about where it does look twisted from a certain angle. However, from what I can tell using some scrap balsa it is square, and the twist will disappear when I make the display plate.

 

Now for some updates:

 

Tunic and Pants

 

As some of you read above I am planing on using Bull Demium for the tunic. I was going to go with it for the pants too, but when I did my dye experiment (see below) I think I found a better alternitive.

 

So to see if the fabric would accept dye and what mixture to use I bought an inch of fabric and ran some test. Here are the samples (images taken using a scanner)

 

Sample2.jpg

 

Top Left: Dickies brown work pants with mixture of Black & Dark Brown Dye

Top Center: Bull Denium, no dye

Bottom Left: Bull Denium, mixture of Black and Dark Brown Dye

Bottom Center: Bull Denium, Black dye for 2 min and rinsied

Right: Bull Denium, Black Dye, 1 hour and rinsised

 

I am really happy with the pants which have a similar texture and will dye them as shown above this weekend. For the tunic, I was going to go for dark, dark brown, but the sample on the right seems to be a much closser match to both the force unleashed version and SC4 verision. Additionally it seems to have a brownish tint from the fabric, and will allow me to put the blod stains and other weathering seen in the game.

 

For the wraps, I will do another dying experiment with tan and possibly yellow dye to get the right dirty gauze color.

 

Opinions are appreciated.

 

 

My comment,

 

Can I order a few meters of each fabric type from you? I'd really love to get those in a few meters for potential costume fabrics.

 

THEY LOOK great.

 

- Fitz

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Guest Anonymous

I have been slammed schedule-wise, so I'm on hold with this project for the time being.

 

As far as coloring I tend to favor the almost-black dark brown look. I saw another fabric the other day that had nice coloring, but was also a sort of compromise between the fabric look of some renderings, and the leather-ish look of others. I can't recall the name, but when I get a chance I may be doing some experimenting with it.

 

Right now I'm working on a Renaissance costume event at the end of the month, as well as a Christmas event. Nights are almost gone for me at this point.

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Guest Anonymous

Thanks for the responces guys. From what I can tell, the thing we all seem to agree on is to disagree about what the fabric is and what color it is. So I would like to take a moment and defend my color choice.

 

To begin with, when I first saw the character (the shot against the black background, not the SC4 images) I thought the suit was dark black. Uppon buying a black shirt and black pants, I saw it was clear it was not full black.

 

So then I spent some time reading the post here and it seemed that most people believe the tunic was deep brown. I was a little skeptical at first, but then I remeber I was wrong about the anakin tunics and figured that the suit was a "brown one shade higher than black" Thus I bought dark brown dye. However I was still a bit unsure.

 

Running the color test I was happy with the dark brown black because I like dark colors, but when I saw the sample that only had black dye my jaw dropped because it had the "I think I see brown in it" look that I saw in the cut seen renderings of the costume. It looks perfect to me so thats what I will go with.

 

Some additional evidence that this is the color

 

1.) It posses the game redering quality of looking lighter in direct light but almost pure black in the slightest shadow.

 

2.) it is not a pure black. when I put it next two my black shirts it looks more to have a slight brown tint.

 

3.) this collor will show abbuse. The cut scene renderings show the tunic is stained with blood and grime from years of training. I had the impression watching the cutscenes that there are darker splotches on the tunic with a more deep brown tone than the rest. The dark brown I dont think would show this as well

 

4.) the SC4 version, though not cannon, looks more grey than brown. Since the character looks much more brightened in SC4 than TFU, this may not be a coinsidence

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Guest Anonymous

I hear all this and I recognize the brown tint is there. The problem is getting the right blackness in the dark brown, right?

 

I'm starting with a black fabric and I'll be using a rather diluted bleach to fade it, then dying it brown. Doing the opposite, starting with dark brown and dying black would probably work pretty much the same way.

 

This will hopefully give it that brown sheen over black appearance as well as the uneven weathering. In areas of specific detail, such as what appears to be a puncture bloodstain in the middle (and a little left) of the back, a diluted bleach mist from a spray bottle can help allow for those details to show.

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Guest Anonymous

I spent most of this weekend sewing and dying a tunic. Origionally I wanted to make it black based on the color samples so after I sewed it I soaked in in black Rit dye for 30 min. At first I was happy with it, but the more I looked at it and the pictures I felt that yes, it really does need some brown. So this morning I soaked it in Dark Brown dye for 20 min and ran it through the wash. The result is sort of a "mystery color" similar to the character in that when I put it in diffrent rooms the color seems to change from brown to gray to black (which is what the renderings Ive seen so far have been driving me crazy with. I will post pictures tomorrow along with my wrapping color experiments and perhaps by tuesday some pictures of a weatherd and wired gauntlet.

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Guest Anonymous

As promised here are some pics of my tunic. As I mentioned earlier, it is made of Bul denium died once with black and once with dark bround. the "pattern" was obtained from cutting up the sweat shirt I used on opening night and making the front fold as you see here (keep in mind you ar looking at a mirror image.

 

with flash:

DSCN4591.jpg

 

without flash:

DSCN4590.jpg

 

Basic fit:

DSCN4594.jpg

 

Fit with belts (I look heavier with out them for some reason)

DSCN4595.jpg

 

Unfortunatly I left my USB drive at home which has a scan of the tunic fabric as well as some samples for my wraps, so keep an eye out for those later this evening.

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Guest Anonymous

If I may quote the immortal Spinal Tap, "How much more black could it be?"

 

The cut looks pretty good but I suggest hitting it with black a few more times, at least in the pics it jut looks brown. Nice in-progress pics.

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Guest Anonymous

Ok, pretty major update so bear with me.

 

Tunic and Wraps

 

The pictures of the tunic above are where I got right now. As I mentioned before showing off exactly what color it is is a bit of a trick depending on the lighting. Right now I think it is a little on the light side, but I am looking into fixing that problem with acrylic paint once I find a good technique to apply it so the tunic looks as dirty as my armor.

 

For the wraps I prepared several samples with a combination of brown and tan dye. Let me know what you think. Personally I think I will go with one of the fist two on the left

wrapsamleswithbackground.jpg

 

Gauntlet

 

Using the picture from the standards thread, I printed a flipped copy and masked off a piece of pexiglass. I then painted it black and placed a piece of red tail light tape on the back. The plate is lit with 4 lamps from radioshack and a 9V battery. The plate will be held inplace dy two small pieces of tape and the wrap.

 

DSCN4596.jpg

DSCN4601.jpg

DSCN4603.jpg

DSCN4605.jpg

 

Weathering

 

Using acrylic paint, engine black to be exact, I gave my armor and gauntlet the abuse that Vader and his training would have gave to Starkiller. After doing this I am happy that my armor now looks grimmy, but I realise I must make the tunic look soiled as well. I tried a few methods on some old rags, and once I find a good method, I will grim the tunic and pants which will hopefully make it a bit darker.

 

DSCN4607.jpg

DSCN4609.jpg

 

Red Flags

 

So as you can see my suit is coming along pretty well. My only major issue right now is what to do about the buckles. I dont think they make snaps in the correct size, and I need a good way to have the belts hold while having something that looks like snap clips. Any suggestions?

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