Lowberg's ROTJ SE Build

[lowberg]

Hello Dented Helmet experts! I have been building replica props my whole life (Mostly in the Ghostbusters community) and one bucket list item for me was to do a full sized Boba display for my collection. This is my first large full scale Star Wars project and I’m very excited for the journey.

I’ve decided on doing a ROTJ SE themed build, because I love the ROTJ ensemble and colors but prefer the ESB helmet aesthetics. Plus, I already painted an ESB bucket a few years back so just makes sense

I’m not going for 501st approval, so my plan is to cut some costs where I can with some DIY soft parts but still use semi-accurate armor parts and accessories to make a great looking Fett with future upgrades possible if desired.

My ESB helmet is 90% completed (need to do interior and finish rangefinder) and was done with Humbrol enamel paints with a combination of airbrush and topical damage.

My old build thread on that -> Lowberg's ESB Helmet Build

My base armor for this build is vacuum formed pieces from DHPFX. They seemed like a reasonable value, although not the most accurate they will be a great base for me and will be fine with some minor modifications. My base for the Flak Vest is a fencing jacket I picked up super cheap. It ticks a lot of the boxes: Thick material, built in neck seal, zips from the back. I will mod this to have the proper shape, shoulder caps and quilting and will be able to use the extra material for making ankle spats, pouches and some other things.

My first project was building up the gauntlets. I added some details that were not present on the kit, like the raised black square and oval greeblie on the right gauntlet and the little protruding switch on the left.

I painted with Rustoleum metallic silver as a base, masking fluid for damage, and Rustoleum claret wine red as a top coat. I’m going to let this cure for a few days and then work on assembling and weathering with airbrush and washes to bring them all together and darken them up.

 

[lowberg]

Gauntlets are pretty much wrapped up. Just need to finish the hose connectors and install the flame thrower tip.

This weekend's main project was to tackle the shins and elbows.
I did a base coat of Krylon sunflower yellow over silver, but ended up adjusting the yellow color with Tamiya acrylics (yellows, orange, and browns) as the Krylon was just too bright as a base. I tried to do the two tone yellow layering that's seen on the ROTJ SE left knee, came out okay but I'll tie it all together in weathering! Sand colored damage outlines was applied topically with a mini brush.

 

[BudaFett]

Gauntlets look wonderful!

 

[lowberg]

Thanks so much!

Today was a GREAT mail day at my house!

Machined knee darts came in from QuestDesignCanada on etsy. They are beautiful. I may recess them into the knee armor (Should have thought that through before painting, doh!). Nothing a good ol stepper bit and steady hand can't take care of easily.

Secondly, my boots came in from UMBLeather also on etsy. I'm not a Fett expert but these seemed like a good value. There's not too many options available right now and these seemed fine and decently accurate for the money. They custom made them with measurements of my foot and ONLY TOOK 2 WEEKS from ordering to delivery in USA Fit is perfect!

 

[BudaFett]

They look pretty good for leather!

 

[lowberg]

They look pretty good for leather!

Ah the Etsy user name is UMBLeather, but these are like a canvas material. Not the highest quality custom boot but definitely decent and fits me well, smells like straight up gasoline though... going to have to let these air out for a while

 

[ShortFuse]

smells like straight up gasoline though

60% of the time, it works every time.

 

[Irongladiator]

lowberg
I keep all of my boots in gasoline. I'm more of a 92 octane guy though - ethanol free of course!

Seriously though - they don't look too bad for a budget boot.

-Iron

 

[lowberg]

Been a long time since I've posted an update but over the past 8 months I've been able to acquire most of the costume parts I need for my build.
I've made some decisions to raise the bar and up my accuracy goals from "good enough" to something better than that , so I've made the following part changes to my original goals:

• Received New MinuteFett Armor (More accurate shape)
• Received Arkady Flightsuit / Vest / Softparts
• Received 7CS Jetpack Kit
• New Boots TBD (None really available at the moment but will use current ones for now)

I was able to score some second hand items off of the cargo hold which will make my life easier, one of which is this incredible SE ammo belt made by Woodman which also just happened to be the perfect size for me. I also dyed my own girth belt for this project

Most recently, my wife helped me make some braids based off the SE photoshoot reference.
We used cheap halloween costume synthetic wigs for the 4 different colors.

I will continue to be doing all of the painting myself so my painting ToDo list is as follows

• Paint all Armor
• Tighten up helmet and convert my ESB paintjob to SE version w/ additional damage and SE hallmarks.
• Paint Jetpack
• Finish and weather EE-3
• Shin tools (resin printed & scratch built)

 

[AlphaCloneFett]

Quality upgrades, much much better!

 

[lowberg]

Got the shin tools tackled. Mixture of resin printed (RafalFett's files) and good ol' scratch building.
The sonic beam weapon / Squeege model would not fit on my print bed so I had to chop the part models in half and re-construct them afterwards.
Similar story with the stirrer model, except I only printed the top half and used a body of a pen to fabricate the bottom half.
The jetpack adjustment tool I scratch built to look similar to the SW Visual Dictionary version.

 

[lowberg]

36 years around the sun today! Everyone in my house is sick with some bug going around so while celebration is postponed, I am enjoying a nice weekend of crafting!

Today I made significant progress in updating my helmet and converting it to the ROTJ SE version. I painted my helmet inspired by the ESB paintjob about 7 years ago. It was my first adventure into the world of building Fett related things, and at the time I had no intention of doing a specific costume. The casting I used originally was some GMH iteration and had damage/gashes cast into the mandibles. I tried my best to work my magic and fill these areas without doing a full re-paint of the mandibles. It was tedious to do and I wish I did it at the very beginning of the helmet build, but I think it came out nicely for what it is, and the repair job is not very noticeable.

After that was taken care of, I went over reference photos of the SE costume photoshoot and StarWars Celebration IV galleries to "Convert" the paintjob to the ROTJ SE promo version. This included touching up the damage, adding scrapes and scratches, the dirty greasy splotches, and some subtle weathering.

Left is before the conversion had begun and right is where I'm at right now

I have to do the simulated crack that runs up the left side of the helmet and into the killstripes but I'm still thinking of how to do it.
It looks exactly like bondo to me but not sure If I want to go that route...

 

[lowberg]

Used bondo for the "crack" repair. Didn't come out as great as I'd hope but still looks pretty good.

Also jbdubz pointed out to me what appears to be some odd small blue marker lines that appear on the SE lower right cheek and back right panel. It was painful to do to my helmet but I love weird wonk and stuff like this in props so I added it

 

[lowberg]

Began trimming my MinuteFett armor. I used some strong sheers to rough cut the armor out of the vac formed sheets and used a pencil to trace around and highlight the inner edges. Then with a medium speed dremel sanding wheel, lots of patience, and a steady hand, I brought all the return edges in down to about 4mm height checking my progress with a machinist's ruler along the way.

Shape of MinuteFett's armor looks really good. I bought his larger size and I think the spacing will work out pretty well for my build.
I'm going to use the jewlery pin attachment method for easy positioning.

I traced the display cutout onto my left chest with a template I made, and used a thin flexible piece of metal as a razor guide to score all of the edges.

Needs some cleanup with a file/sanding stick but turned out pretty good! This was super stressful!

 

[Mythosaur]

That's looking really good! My research on the thickness of the armor led me to it being somewhere around 1/4" or 6mm, but now I'm wondering if that is actually too thick (I know that 3mm of the 3-4 the 501st states looks too thin.)

 

[lowberg]

I think on the real costume it varies a bit. If you do 3-4mm measured from the inside, in reality it looks a little thicker from the outside assuming the styrene material used for vacume forming has about a 1mm+ thickness. It's all about feel ya know nobody is going to notice a 1-2mm difference

 

[lowberg]

Did a test run for armor colors on scrap plastic (bottom right)

I initially tried Archive X acrylics, but they just did not want to play well with my airbrush or paintbrushes, so I went with Tamiya paints which I know work easy for me. I did a few combinations of green (Tamiya Deep Green misted with Tamiya Olive) for the base and then misted burnt umber and black for weathering. Went a little heavy handed on the black so I plan to go really light with that.

You can see how much the color changed as I taped off some of the base greens for my reference later.
Any feedback is much appreciated!

 

[lowberg]

..And another quick and dirty test (Test #2 Left) With less heavy black misting and a light mist of grey added into the mix