TKModder421

Alright, here's an initial fitting of the top half. After trying on the thighs with this (not shown) it has become apparent that I'm going to have to trim them down at the top a bit all the way around. I'll probably take them in a bit as well, making them a little more narrow for skinny legs. Anyway, please let me know if you see any adjustments that need to be made with what I've got so far. TIA

My next step was to start with the strapping since things were finally coming together. Also so I could get a better idea of what needed adjusting I decided I wanted to go with nylon straps with buttons to put it all together. I wanted it reliable but also easy to disassemble and pack up for transport. So I went to work making the straps. After research I decided to go with double button straps for better reliability. I am using nylon webbing and E6000 for the armor-side snaps instead of ABS plates. After thinking about needing to test fit the whole upper body and being unsure if further shaping/trimming was going to be necessary I decided to temporarily use the ANOVOS supplied velcro between the back plate, kidney and posterior. Once I'm sure about how things fit and the positioning of the straps I'll swap out the velcro for the nylon straps I've made. I did go ahead and install the straps between the chest and ab, because I thought I had a pretty good idea of how they should strap together... turns out I was wrong and I gave too much slack between the two. I had to rip off the two armor-side snaps you see below and place them ~1 inch lower I also decided I wanted to be able to completely disassemble the ab and kidney plates to make it more compact for transport. So I created a strip of buttons to connect the two on the rivet (left) side.

OK, back to it!! So after asking around and impatiently doing a bunch of research, I decided to trim a little off each side of the ab plate I also shaped the ab plate and kidney plate a bit to wrap around my torso a bit more naturally. This is how much I took off the ab plate: On the right side (basically just went up to the "return") and the same off the left And it still lines up nicely with the kidney plate

Haha. Ok awesome, good to know! Thank you so much for your time!

Oh! Alright, thank you! So if I trim them on the vertical, do I need to worry about cracking on the kidney return edge when I'm cinching the pieces together with the belt? Because I notice if I overlap them now to try and get a more form fitting shape, I'm getting warping/bending at two spots (4 and 8 o'clock positions) on the kidney top and bottom return edges. And would that be as far as you would trim? and just pad the inside from there?

I wanted to ask, since I understand you've built armor for different sized people, and I'm just trying to get a consensus of the best route for me to take on the ab and kidney fit. I'm a thin guy, 5'9" with about a 30" waist, so as of now the ab and kidney are pretty wide on me. I've seen some build threads (i.e. Cricket and Sha Sha's build threads) where they trim down the ab, kidney and posterior to get a proper fit. I've had a few others suggest leaving it alone and just filling things in with padding to keep them from moving around. (I'm not discounting anyone's advice, I just want to hear multiple opinions before I proceed) I just wanted to get your professional opinion as well. Here's how they fit currently. pushed to the side so you can see the gap better

Thank you Q!! Oh really? I guess that makes sense about keeping it proportional. I just hadn't noticed too many others having the same issue, and those that did, such as some of the smaller troopers, ended up modifying the kidney plate. So I was thinking that's what was needed. Having a wide waist won't end up looking disproportionate to my narrow shoulders? I got the sense from reference pics that you would want the whole lower abdominal piece to wrap more fitting around the waist. I was waiting to start the strapping until I knew if I was trimming the pieces. But if that's normal then I'll just leave it and start working on attaching and strapping things together. I think I'm going to trim down my extra return edge on the kidney plate at least to the original trim line. There are two points that warp on the top and the bottom of the kidney plate when I put on the belt. Should I try and reinforce those points? Han seems to have very little return edge on the kidney plate from this angle. Is there any L3 requirements for the amount of return edge on those pieces?

Anyone?

Yeah of course, anytime! Glad I could help. Always feel free to pm me if you have more questions

I'm slowly but surely building my ANOVOS ANH Stunt as well. I'm also not a big guy (5'9" 150lbs). But from what I've heard is that you want around 2 finger width space between the armor and your body. It's best to err toward the larger side though, as you'll be hating life when you trim too much and find yourself trying to figure out how to fix it. There are plenty of people that use foam padding and other fit adjustment methods if the armor ends up fitting a little large. Also if you use E6000 to glue things together and you end up deciding that it's too large and you really do want to size it down, you can always rip it apart and try again As far as image sites, I use imgur to store and link to my images. Here are my forearms, I ended up trimming the return edge off the inside of the elbow because it was slightly too long and was cutting into my lower bicep, and I had to do a hot water bath to get them to be round enough to be comfortable since I trimmed so much off to get them to not be gigantic on my forearms they were very oval at the openings. Before After (Sorry, I just realized these images are 2 different forearms, but they looked essentially the same before and after so you get the idea) Here's how they fit now. Note: Keep in mind the camera may make the proportions a little hard to judge, sorry about that.

Hope you all had fun at Celebration!! I'm so jealous, wish I could've been there! Ok so on my initial fit tests of the abdomen and kidney plate you can see how oval the two are. This makes them fit fine front to back, but it gives me a decent gap on each side. Looking at reference pics I can see the torso look much more tubular and form fitting around the abdomen. I also don't see much return edge on them. So I'm wondering what direction I should take with this. Should I trim and hot bath the shape to be more round and form fitting? I'm thinking I'm going to need to trim down the vertical sides on the kidney and ab piece, and maybe a little bit of hot bath to make it fit properly. I've been looking for examples and what is necessary to fit these pieces for thinner/smaller troopers (I'm 5'9" and have about a 30" waist) and I've found a few, but I was looking to get some advice on the best way to go about this. Maybe even a good thin/small trooper build to check out? IDK, maybe I haven't seen it yet? I also have some questions... First off what return edge is necessary to keep on these pieces? I assume if I have to cut into the notches when I trim down the kidney I'll have to rebuild those? Also right now I have a fair amount of return edge (around 4mm in addition to the original cut line) on the top and the bottom of the kidney plate. I'm not entirely sure yet if I'm going with a bracket system or the supplied ANOVOS strapping to connect the ab and kidney to the chest, back and butt. Any advice? I'm not super concerned with accuracy, more with ease of installation, use, it's sturdiness and being hopefully Centurion level approvable. My concern right now with the return edge is when I flex the kidney to test fit, I'm getting warping and bending on the return, and I don't want to crack it, so I don't think that will be able to be kept, at least not as large as it is currently is. If you all would be so kind as to give me some suggestions on how I should proceed so I can weigh my options. TIA 

Hope you all had fun at Celebration!! I'm so jealous, wish I could've been there! Alright, so I'm thinking I'm going to need to trim down the vertical sides on the kidney and ab piece, and maybe a little bit of hot bath to make it fit properly. I've been looking for examples and what is necessary to fit these pieces for thinner/smaller troopers and I've found a few, but I was looking to get some advice on the best way to go about this. Maybe even a good thin/small trooper build to check out? IDK, maybe I haven't seen it yet. I also have some question... First off what return edge is necessary to keep on these pieces? I assume if I have to cut into the notches when I trim down the kidney I'll have to rebuild those? Also right now I have a fair amount of return edge (around 4mm in addition to the original cut line) on the top and the bottom of the kidney plate. I'm not entirely sure yet if I'm going with a bracket system or the supplied ANOVOS strapping to connect the ab and kidney to the chest, back and butt. Any advice? I'm not super concerned with accuracy, more with ease of installation, use, it's sturdiness and being hopefully Centurion level approvable. My concern right now with the return edge is when I flex the kidney to test fit, I'm getting warping and bending on the return, and I don't want to crack it, so I don't think that will be able to be kept, at least not as large as it is currently is. If you all would be so kind as to give me some suggestions on how I should proceed so I can weigh my options. TIA

Alright, I'm ready to move on. I was thinking I better wait to build the shins until I've got boots that I can do a test fit with So I'm gonna start working on the abdomen. On my initial fit tests of the abdomen and kidney plate you can see how oval the two are. This makes them fit fine front to back, but it gives me a decent gap on each side. Looking at reference pics I can see the abdomens look much more tubular and form fitting around the abdomen. So I'm wondering what direction I should take with this. Do I trim and hot bath the shape to be more round and form fitting? Or is this just normal? Pushed to my right side with still 2 fingers width, I have a significant gap on the other side

Oh forgot to ask, if there is a particular white paint I should be using?

Ah yeah! Great advice, thank you!

I went ahead and attached the ammo pack to the right thigh, after which I realized I should've painted the rivets first I won't make that mistake with the rivets on the abdomen and kidney piece

Next, the back... I followed James advice and glued on half the strip first because of the curve of the two pieces where they butt. After letting them set for a day I attached the other half

To fix the cover strip on the right side, I ripped it off and rubbed all the E6000 off the strip and the thigh. I didn't take a pic but I used painters tape in addition to the clamps and magnets to really hold down the cover strip and in place to conform to the curve of the ridge. Here's after I got the tape and most of the E6000 mess off

So I did a 2nd pass. Slipped a couple times and there's a couple spots where -once you brush it, there's no going back-, and you just gotta make it work somehow. But overall I like the way it turned out with the dry brushing of the silver. I also decided to paint the ejection port with the same silver - one of those moments I mentioned before - so I just painted it all in. Not sure what else to do with it. Eventually I'd like to clear coat it to prevent the paint from being worn, since I plan on using it as my cheap blaster for troops. What type of clear coat do you all think I should use? I'd like to keep it similar to how it looks now. Not planning on using gloss right? I don't want it to look wet. So should I do matte clear coat? I've even seen satin? Anyway, let me know what you think. Any suggestions for weathering, the ejection port or anything further are welcome.

Overall, I like how it looks after being painted, but it looks too nice, it still pretty much looks like a plastic toy. It doesn't look very realistic just as is, so thanks to Shane from Alpine Garrison's advice I'm going to do some silver/metallic dry brushing to give it some wear and tear. Make it look used! Which is definitely one of the classic charms of the Star Wars universe. So I started by looking up some tutorial video's on dry brushing and prop weathering. This one was extremely useful. So after watching some videos I decided to give it a go. I had some Tamiya Mica Silver spray paint left over from my Shadowtrooper mod so I just used that. I just sprayed some into the cap and used that since I only needed very small amounts. I followed some of the dry brushing techniques they discuss in the vid above and did a first pass.

I didn't do a great job of documenting this mod/build. I managed to not take any pics of my painting or gluing process but after I painted the original blaster and all the individual conversion kit pieces with a flat black Rust-oleum rattle can, I glued them onto the blaster with E6000 and held them in place with rubber bands and painters tape. Then after the glue dried I did another couple of passes of black I think I could've done a better job on the screwhole-epoxy job. Oh well...

Oh gotcha!

That's what I've heard of other local troopers doing as well, so I thought it would be fun and a good build experience. Good luck on yours!

So previously I had trimmed and sanded the pieces that Doopydoos sent me. Unfortunately I didn't document any of that, but some needed a fair amount of work. And I feel now that I probably could've cleaned them up a bit more, but they're decent enough for a toy conversion, so I think I'll stick with what I've got for now. Moving on... So I started gluing the the magazine well onto the blaster body (the magazine wasn't being glued in yet) Then I realized that I didn't want to worry about white showing up in gaps between the kit pieces and the base blaster, so I decided to paint all the pieces and the blaster body before I proceeded with gluing. So I carved out some plastic on that center bar in the nozzle and tucked in the LED a bit further. And then proceeded to (sloppily) paint the inside of the muzzle black I also filled in the screw holes with epoxy and sanded them down

So I watched a couple YouTube vids about the conversion and they all start with sawing off the tip of the muzzle and the front of the scope to replace them with more accurate pieces. So I sawed 'em right off! I left the red LED and ended up tucking it in a bit further so it would light up inside the muzzle if I wanted to install batteries. And then proceeded to cut off the front of the scope as well