BIG night tonight! My armor color quandary has been solved, straight from the source. From Kilian Plunkett, lead character designer for the Clone Wars series:
Visla’s armour is actually a dark gunmetal colour. So it’s metallic and slightly reflective but it’s a dark, very, very slightly indigo, grey. His flightsuit is a very dark green gray. Only his boots and the leather ‘vest’ that his breastplate sits on are actually black. The values are close to each other, anything that’s not fully black is about 70-75% black, the blue sections should pop quite a bit from the rest of the outfit.
Turns out that a local Star Wars author that I've come to know is friends with Mr. Plunkett. He relayed my question on the colors, and now I know for sure. The Gentle Giant one isn't right
Beyond that, *I finished the @#%@!@#!ing vest!!! UGH. It took me 2 tries to get it right. I used the pattern drafting tutorial on TDH. The first one just didn't sit right... not sure what I did wrong, but I scrapped it and started over. Second time was the winner!
I ended up doing something like you see in the movies regularly... My vest is not black, it's deep, deep blue. I made one in black and it just didn't look right. I remade it in midnight blue, and now it looks black in photos, but has some detail to it, rather than just being a solid mass of #000000. I'm going to apply some black weathering to it as well, so it should read as black nicely, but looks... I don't know... richer?
Here's a bathroom mirror shot of the flight suit and vest:
I've got the armor clamped on with magnets. Each of those silver dots is a neodymium magnet pulling at just shy of 8lbs. Works great for clamping most anything... the PSI is about as good as a 1" spring clamp.
Since the Deathwatch shoulder armor sticks out pretty aggressively, I added a 1.25" wide strip of 0.125 HIPS into the sleeve, so that it supports the shoulders and makes them stand out, rather than falling flat against my arm.
I also picked up the cape fabric tonight. Cotton duck in a nice shade of light blue... looks and feels good.
Here is is just draped over my shoulder:
*phew*
Neck seal is up next.