troopermaster

It's a 2mm kit. Take your time with the build and ask any questions if you get stuck with anything. And keep that young Jedi away from your new shiny kit

Happy New Year

Here is the interior shot for you.

I don't think you need to make them bigger. Remember this is a hero helmet and not a stunt. The frown is half the size of a stunt so no need to make the teeth gaps bigger.

I think you are not looking at the holster properly. Take a look at more photos or screen caps and you'll see the holsters are pretty much the same as my design (although the TM blueprints have been updated a while back). If you look at the bottom and see how it seems to taper, this is simply because the bottom is more tubular and flattens out towards the top. Most of the holsters look flat in ANH, but they are designed to be kind of tubular to hold the blaster. I haven't spent too much time looking into the holsters over the past few years so can't really say too much about them, but I am keen to see where you end up with this. Looking at the RS/Simon holster, it is definitely a holster worn by the Death Star Troopers/Guards. Look when Vader and the Guards go into the detention cell to see Leia, the same holsters can be seen clearly on them. ----------

I do have one on my camera that I will upload for you tomorrow.

Looks like you could do with trimming a bit of the fronts of the ear caps the make them slimmer. The ear caps tilt inwards looking from above the helmet and not sit flush like you might imagine them to. When fitting the bubble lenses, I find that cutting some small squares of ABS and gluing them on each end of the eye socket inside the helmet will give you a base to glue them to. You only need to glue them on each end and not all the way around. You will also need to trim around the lens to make them more like the shape of the eye socket. Here a few photos of a helmet I just made up for reference.

No. I believe they were taken from a TE bumpy and cleaned up a bit. TE2 later designated them the SFS, though they were never made from the actual SFS foam helmet.

Just to be clear, these are not the original moulds taken from the Brian R. helmet. They are copies that have been altered slightly.

You mean like this trooper in ESB? Nice job, Noel

Nice work, Caleb This is probably the best CfO helmet I have seen. I like the paint job on the frown. This is someting that can make a nice helmet look off but I think you have it spot on! Well done mate

Nice one Steve! Those are some sweet looking troopers in your photos mate

Me too... ------------

Flexible ABS shoulder straps with velcro glued to the underside.

That's only a crop of it.

I'm just going by the photo of the guys outside Elstree studios. They may well have used a unitard and/or seperate garments. Thinking about that photo, I think the guy with the white top just has black leggings with braces - no leg armour.

I don't think they used a one piece unitard for undersuits. I think they wore a seperate black turtle neck dance top and dance leggings. The screen grabs and promo photos I have seen show they are not too tight either. There is a photo out there of a trooper taking a knap at Elstree and I believe there are one or two other half dressed troopers at his side. One has a white t-shirt while wearing the black leggings and leg armour if memory serve me.

You can easily rectify this by gluing two strips of black ABS inside your butt plate to keep it from ever creeping onto your kidney plate. You don't have to use two pieces (or even black for that matter) but if you have something there wedged behind your kidney plate and glued inside your butt plate it is virtually impossible for the butt to ever creep up like it is doing.

That's true, and I don't think we should start refering to them as Simon holsters. Has anyone identified which particular costume these holsters were used on?

Simons holsters.

It should bend just the same. I have bent an ABS abdomen plate over itself before and it only left a crease mark (as did the PVC) which is better than cracking IMO.

No mate. I did make a few suits from PVC a year or two ago, but I had problems forming it. I am thinking of letting this one above go soon though.

You wouldn't have to worry about a thing if you had PVC armour. I don't have a photo of me sitting down (although I can do it quite easily) but I do have this photo showing how I can flex at the waist with an uncut abdomen plate and no cracking!

There is also carbon fibre 'look' ABS available which would be even cheaper and not so hazardous. I had toyed with the idea of making a few CF helmets in the past but wasn't sure if there would be any interest?

I'd go for Loakes ---------- A bit pricey new, but you can buy some second hand for a lot less. I'd say all the boots used in ANH were probably used and then cleaned up and painted white. Whichever brand you go for, try and get boots with leather soles like the originals.