My lightsaber has arrived!

[Atavistic]

After a month and a half of waiting for it to be crafted and shipped, my Darth Nihilus lightsaber has finally arrived.

I'm putting up a few pictures so that its details can be seen...

 

 

 

 

 

The lightsaber has light but no sound, which makes it remarkably lightweight. The activation button is inside of the hilt (you reach inside the open pommel to activate the light). The blade is held in by a set screw, making it unobtrusive. Though I may swap it out for a thumbscrew for ease of use.

 

My Darth Nihilus costume is well on its way but is held up until I pick up some two-part epoxy putty next week to connect my crown permanently to my mask. I've got to finish my skirts and attach my cloak/hood to my crown (provided by Scottrooper). I intend to use Velcro to hold the hood in place so that I can remove if I ever need to.

[Twi'lek Pam]

Sweet! That looks really nice! I love seeing different interpretations of that artwork.

 

(I often cover the end of my FX saber because the thrumming sound gets on my nerves after a while, especially when I'm trying to talk to people in a noisy convention hall. I don't mind having silent lightsabers at all!)

 

Pam

[Atavistic]

Things are still moving forward on my Nihilus. We finally got the crown attached to the mask with epoxy putty last night and it's holding strong. Tonight we may have a go at attaching the hood to the mask and crown. We'll at least do a test fitting in order to see how we'll go about getting things to look correct.

 

I've ordered the material for my skirts and I'm awaiting its delivery. Unfortunately, I can buy the material cheaper in the U.S. than I can locally and so I'm having it shipped in. It may take up to two weeks to get here.

 

My Nihilus belt arrived last week and that's resting in the back room. Getting the hood to wear correctly seems to be the biggest remaining challenge and the skirts ought to be pretty easy for my wife to sort out.

[Atavistic]

Lightsaber has arrived... check.

Belt has arrived... check.

Fabric has arrived... check.

 

My wife and I have been working on my hood/mask for nearly a week now, inching forward bit by bit to make sure things are developing solidly and securely. The hood/mask is nearing completion and I thought that I'd post some progression photos of our work to see where things are going.

 

The crown and mask attached with epoxy putty...

 

Test fitting the hood...

 

Working on the shape...

 

Gluing the edges in place...

 

Results of the gluing...

 

Checking the profile...

 

Filling in the "cat ears"...

 

 

The last photo was taken tonight. Tomorrow we'll trim up some of the fabric edges and clean things up a bit. My sister in-law will come over next Wednesday with her sewing machine and we'll take care of the skirts in short order.

 

My wife and I will work with the cloak's knot to get rid of its tag ends and then we'll make sure that the cloak drapes correctly. We've already worked on the cloak's drape but will look it over again once the hood is complete.

[Atavistic]

Since that last photo we've tidied up the hood a bit and have sorted the cloak's knot (no more tag ends). Let's take a look at our results...

 

 

 

 

I welcome everyone's thoughts, concerns, praises, or criticisms of our efforts. As we worked on this part of the costume we kept a couple of pictures of the COTF Darth Nihilus with us at all times and we referred to them constantly for reference. My wife wasn't thrilled to work on this part of the costume because of the unnatural drape and fall of the fabric. "Fabric doesn't work this way!" she kept saying. Despite the challenge, we've come up with something and I'd appreciate hearing thoughts on this, whether good or bad.

[berzerker]

"Fabric doesn't work this way!" she kept saying.

 

Tell me about it. I had to pin the cloak to the shoulders using snaps at 2 points per shoulder. My knot is placed with a rare earth magnet.

 

Having made clone armour (a CGI character that never existed in real life) and now Nihilus (a CGI charater that never really exisited) it is a real challenge to achieve accuracy for the pics and more so to make a costume that you can move in and still looks right 30 minutes into a troop.

 

Your cloak is looking great. My "crown" was different so I'm interested to see other ways to achieve the same result.

[Atavistic]

I had to pin the cloak to the shoulders using snaps at 2 points per shoulder. My knot is placed with a rare earth magnet.

 

Great minds think alike My idea was to use rare earth magnets to hold the knot in place. That or a safety pin. We're still debating how to keep the cloak in place on the shoulders. Untouched, the cloak would fall over the upper arms like a Tusken female's shawl. Fortunately, there's enough gathered fabric on the shoulders to hide a connection method (it will vanish within all of the fabric). We're considering Velcro or hook and eye closures to hold the cloak in place on my shoulders.

 

Thank you for the compliment on my cloak. It's reassuring to think that I'm heading in the right direction.

[Atavistic]

We've made some definite progress today. We finished the hood completely, marked where the Velcro will be sewn on the outer tunic and the obi, have added hook and eyes to the outer tunic and cloak to hold the cloak properly on my shoulders, and we've shortened the cloak so that I'm no longer stepping on it. Over the next two days I'll weather the bottom edge of the cloak.

 

On Wednesday my sister in-law will come over to make my skirts and then I'll weather them. If I don't procrastinate the weathering everything could be finished by next weekend.

 

As I feared, when I wear my HeatGear balaclava under the Nihilus mask there's a small gap between the bottom edge of the balaclava and the top edge of my inner tunic, revealing flesh. To solve this, we've added two small press studs to join the balaclava to the inner tunic when worn. The press studs are clear and sewn on with black thread. Resting between the balaclava and the inner tunic, they are invisible. The press studs have solved the problem of the balaclava riding up and I can move my head without them coming undone.

[Atavistic]

My sister in-law accomplished quite a bit yesterday. The inner skirt is done and sewn into place. The outer skirt was pinned fully into place last night. It needs to be tacked in place, which will be done today.

 

Tomorrow my sister in-law will bring the skirts back over here for a final test fitting and then she'll finish them up (shortening the outer skirt to match the length of the inner skirt). She is dissatisfied with the obi that came with my costume and so she intends to remake it as well. To help ensure that the costume lasts, she took my existing inner and outer tunics and she overlocked the seams in the garments. She said that the seams were just waiting to fray and eventually come apart so she took the time to reinforce them all and locked the seams in place. You've got to love it when your sister in-law is a professional seamstress.

 

She's managed to use nine full yards of fabric in my skirts. The outer skirt has a full meter more of fabric than the inner skirt to really create the gathers. The inner skirt is pleated (creating gathers) and the outer skirt is double-pleated to make use of all the remaining fabric left after the inner skirt was crafted. Each skirt has a split in the front and the splits are wide enough for them to be apparent.

 

After our final test-fitting I will be able to weather the skirts. Their lengths have been measured to reach the soles of my feet, and so they will hang just above the ground when I'm wearing my boots. This will give me enough length to weather the bottom of the skirts and still have them hang quite low and close to the ground.

 

Once I've weathered the skirts (I've already weathered the bottom of my cloak) I'll put everything on and my wife will take some photographs of everything put together. Once the pictures are ready I'll start a new thread with the pictures posted in it.

[Twi'lek Pam]

I have really been enjoying this build thread. Thanks for sharing your progress!

 

Pam

[berzerker]

WIP threads are my favourite reads in all the detachments I visit.

 

Like you, I have tonne of fabric in my skirts. I attached suspenders to them just to keep them in place.

 

Looks like you're close to completion. Can't wait to see your final pics.

[Atavistic]

WIP threads are my favourite reads in all the detachments I visit.

 

Like you, I have tonne of fabric in my skirts. I attached suspenders to them just to keep them in place.

 

Looks like you're close to completion. Can't wait to see your final pics.

 

 

Suspenders... that's what I have done. My black pants are a pair of BDU pants with a pretty solid waistband. Both my inner and outer skirts have been sewn directly to my pants. I've added bachelor buttons to the inside of the pant's waistband and I wear the pants with suspenders. The front button of the pants is exposed, providing the space for the inner skirt's split. The outer skirt has a wider split than the inner skirt, making it easier to differentiate between the two skirts. My primary concern with the skirts was that their combined weight would pull the skirts lower than I wanted them to rest, below my natural waistline. And so in order to keep them up in the proper position I've utilized heavy duty suspenders. If the weight of the skirts pulls down a bit it's easy to readjust the suspenders and pull everything back up. I wear suspenders regularly with blue jeans and when my sister in-law suggested sewing the skirts directly to my pants the suspender method seemed like a logical solution for how I would wear my skirts and keep them up where I wanted.

 

My sister in-law is due to come over tomorrow (Friday) to finish the skirts and the obi. If we finish early enough I intend to go out back with my cheese grater, scissors, wire brush, etc. and dive into the weathering. I still think I can have this finished by Saturday though I will be paying close attention to the remaining weathering. I won't rush it but I'm not going to procrastinate doing it.

 

The person I bought the original costume from (custom made for me) started the weathering on the outer tunic, despite my wishes, and did far more than I would have. So now I'm weathering the cloak and the skirts but am trying to find a balance between the excessive weathering of the outer tunic and how I envisioned the weathering to turn out. I may have to weather things more than I want to in order to keep the costume's look consistent. Or I cut some of the outer tunic away to reduce the weathering it has.

[Atavistic]

There's been more progress today. The obi has been sorted out and the skirts are finished. My outer tunic has been trimmed up a bit to look more like the COTF artwork and that got rid of a lot of the extraneous weathering that the tunic came with. Both skirts have been trimmed up to an appropriate length, hanging just above the floor when I'm wearing my boots. I'll see how the weathering affects the look.

 

I had to re-weather the hem of the outer tunic once it was shortened and I finally hit my weathering stride. I found a degree of weathering that I like and I did the outer tunic and the cloak hem anew. I then moved on to the skirts. There's a lot of bloody fabric in there to weather and I didn't finish it today. I finished weathering the inner skirt and I've finished about half of the outer skirt. I spent over five hours weathering things tonight and so I'll leave the last half of the outer skirt for tomorrow.

 

When I finish the weathering I'll clean things up (stray fibers and cut shreds of fabric). I'll then have to clean myself up again ( I was covered in a layer of black fiber when I called it quits for the night). When tidied up I'll don the costume and we'll take some photos. Tomorrow's supposed to be sunny and nice and I want to get the pictures taken while the weather permits. Rain is expected next week.

 

With a good hour or so of work I ought to be able to finish the skirt weathering in the morning.

 

 

**Micro update: I finished weathering the outer skirt this morning. After brekky my wife and I will tidy it up and get it ready for photos.