General DrToothache's ESB Boba Fett

[DrToothache]

I have been browsing these forums over the past 12 years or so and have always wanted to do both a Jango and Boba build. Both builds are nearing completion however I recently (finally) wore the Boba Fett ESB costume to a local Comic Con and it was such a blast. This Boba build was started in 2020 when I was trying to "rush" build a Boba Fett costume for a Halloween party. Obviously, that costume wasn't great, but it was the starting point that motivated me to finally do this. I have learned so much from this community, and picked up so many skills along the way (sewing, painting, tailoring, weathering, etc). The build is definitely not finished but is finally in a place where I feel like progress has been made.

I am making this post to show where I started and how I got to where I am now, as well as to receive any feedback along the way. My costume is not perfect, and I don't believe that it is 501st ready yet so I am open to any criticism. My goal is to retroactively show as many steps as possible and list the various vendors that have helped me get here. After that I will continue posting as I make changes to the build and eventually (hopefully) get 501st approval. I am sure a lot of you relate to this, but I tend to really get into working on the costume and then take a break for months at a time, and then dive back into it full force. It seems to come in waves whenever I get into "boba mode". Therefore it was difficult for me to commit to making a comprehensive post on the build. My goal is to start to do that now to hopefully give back some way to the community here.

Anyways, here is the before (2020) and after (present day fett, minus the toe spikes that fell off).

I will start off this post with a vendor list: (Updated 4/22/2025)

• Helmet - EFX, with additional painted details/matte clear coat (this helmet is actually great for being a licensed product, however I am painting my MinuteFett bucket)
• Armor - MinuteFett
• Gauntlets - RKD MinuteFett
• EE-3 - 3D print from Etsy (waiting on movie accurate EE-3 ordered from Andy Meyers)
• Jetpack - MOW
• Jetpack Harness - KriptonTop with vintage US Divers belt buckle
• Jetpack Beacon - QuestDesignCanada
• Flak Vest, Neck Seal - MOW
• Cape - MOW
• Boots - MOW
• Boot Spikes - MachineCraftReplicas
• Pulce 40 - 3DPrintFR on Etsy Andy Meyers
• Chest Display - JupiterElectronics on Etsy
• Wookie Braids - Katarra8 on eBay Custom braids by 2015mxbolla
• Girth Belt - MOW
• Ammo Belt - MOW
• Collar Studs - MachineCraftReplicas
• Shin tools - NeoFett
• Gloves - BobaMaker and Mike M. (2 pairs)
• Hip Pouches - HandMadeHorrorShop on Etsy Kripton Top
• Flight Suit - existing flight suit from ebay that I tailored and added correct details. KriptonTop
• Nemrod Holster - custom holster made by me (will show details below) BobaMaker
• Audio Setup - CosVox module with amplifier and wrist sleeve
• Helmet Fans - Henry's Helmet Fans

Where to start? Well I assembled/upgraded a lot of this off and on over the past 4 years, so the easiest way is probably to just go item by item rather than chronological order. I will continue to update this post often with the progress pictures and steps I took for each item.

There are definitely some immediate fixes that I need to make, like matching the hip pouches better to the color of the flight suit, mounting the toe spikes more securely and swapping out my EE-3 with a properly sized version. I think that the lower legs on the flight suit could use a bit more weathering. I also need to substitute the homemade Nemrod holster with a proper replica. If there is anything else jumping out to you guys please let me know.

Everything went pretty well at the con for the first time wearing the costume. I only ran into some minor problems, such as the toe spikes falling off and my EE-3 scope breaking. I also tried to do a last-minute adjustment to the placement of my ab armor piece which resulted in it sitting a little uneven. I kind of expected a few problems though so I was pretty happy with how everything held up.

Some photo's from Comic Con:

 

[BudaFett]

Congratulations! Looks great!

 

[DrToothache]

Congratulations! Looks great!

Thanks BudaFett! I remember you helping me with dying my flight suit in an old thread that I made - I appreciate it. I took your advice from that thread to stick with the lighter blue flight suit haha. I think after weathering it got pretty close to an accurate shade of blue.

 

[DrToothache]

An updated photo on the mannequin (With the toe spikes back on!).

Next up is the DIY Nemrod holster....

 

[DrToothache]

I needed a Nemrod holster for the comic con, as I was swindled on eBay for one about a year ago and was still waiting to see if the seller would come through. We will see if that ever happens. I should've just went with BobaMaker instead of messing around on eBay, although this is the first time this has happened to me so I guess it could be worse!

To make the placeholder holster I purchased 2 types of rubber mats. One was a smooth 1/8" black rubber mat. The second was a corrugated rubber mat (to make the strap that connects the holster to the ammo belt). I know that the real holster is more of a hard plastic material, but for temporary purposes this was much easier to work with.


I then cut the smooth rubber mat roughly into the shape of the nemrod holster, using my Pulce 40 as reference to make sure that it will fit. Once I had the rough shape, I used super glue to secure both sides of the rubber into the holster shape

I then continued shaping by trimming certain areas to fine-tune the look. I left the strap that wraps across the gun integrated into holster rather than cutting it and attaching it.

While constructing I just used pinbacks to secure the straps Temporarily.

The hanging strap was then made using the corrugated rubber mat and attached with 2 chicago screws. Carboard and foam was used internally to get the general shape more accurate.



When Trying the costume on I noticed that the holster likes to really "flop around" when walking which is distracting in a costume that is already hard enough to move around in! To fix this I added industrial velcro on the holster and then sewed velvro on the flight suit where the holster should rest to hold it in place. This worked really well!


This isn't a perfect holster by any means, but it only took about an hour and a half to construct and looks decent from a distance. It serves its purpose as a placeholder item as I didn't want to put off wearing my costume for one of the least important items of boba's outfit in my opinion.

 

[BudaFett]

I mean that holster does its job!

 

[AlphaCloneFett]

was the jetpack painted by MOW?

 

[DrToothache]

was the jetpack painted by MOW?

Yes it was, Christian did a phenomenal job with it. Unfortunately I have to re-work some of it because my mannequin fell over and caused some extra battle damage haha.

 

[DrToothache]

Dying the flight suit and flak vest was something that I was a little worried that I would mess up but I took it slow and I think it ended up turning out pretty good. I was going for a really light blue/gray color and found a lot of tips on this subject browsing these forums. I actually had 2 very similar flight suits that both fit me pretty well, but one was 100% cotton and the other was a mix of cotton and polyester. I wasn't sure how well the cotton/polyester one would absorb dye so I decided to do both at the same time and pick whichever one turned out better.

I used Rit dye - 1 bottle of evening blue with just a little bit of pearl gray (maybe 1/6th of the bottle) for 30 minutes using the washing machine method.

This was the initial result in different lighting conditions:
(100% cotton flight suit on left, starting point in middle, mix of cotton/polyester flight suit on right)

A collage I made to help decide:

The one on the left came out way too dark, however I really liked the one on the right so I decided to continue working with that one. It looked pretty close but I thought that it needed just a little more blue so I did another 15 minute round of dying and this was the result: (Sorry for the blurry picture here)

I was pretty happy with the results and decided to keep this color for now and begin mounting the armor and weathering. I then died the flak vest and neck seal by doing 3 rounds of a pearl gray dye bath to achieve aa light gray.

I had a surprise package arrive around this time as well.....

This beautiful armor is MinuteFett's latest armor at the time and was painted by him. I wanted to mount this to the flak vest immediately, but it didn't make sense as I was packing for a move and taking apart my star wars mannequins...

Next up will be mounting armor and then weathering. After dying all of the soft parts though I ended up taking like an 8 month break from my build, as I was between jobs and preparing to move a couple of states away.

 

[DrToothache]

For mounting the torso and shoulder armor, I ended up using the jewelry pin method with extra strong pin backs (Thank you Fettastic for the idea). I used this method already on my Jango build with good success and I didn't trust myself to get it right the first time with the grommet method - so this was the perfect method for me.

I sanded the back side of all of the armor pieces where the pins would be attached, and sanded the backs of the metal pins. I then used super glue to attach all of the pins to the armor. After it set for 24 hours I began lining up the armor pieces on the flak vest, starting from the collar armor and working my way down.
The shoulder armor is a little tricky (as you can see I have some extra pins that I glue to far down on the armor. You want to make sure that you are not right on the outer edge of them or else they will stick out like wings. The trick is to go above 1.5inches from the edge of the armor, so that you can mount them towards the end of the sleeve but also have them hang correctly.

To attach the knees I used white elastic straps and some velcro to help keep them in place.

For attaching the jetpack, I purchased the KriptonTop replica jetpack harness, and scored a vintage US Divers belt buckle on eBay. The harness was easy enough to assemble as long as you're comfortable with a sewing machine.

Here is everything put together prior to weathering:

 

[DrToothache]

After mounting everything I began the weathering process. Weathering the flight suit was something that I put off for a long time but it actually ended being pretty fun to do. I tried to follow the reference photo's as much as possible, however it does seem that the weathering on Boba varies depending on the time of filming for certain scenes - especially with the boots! I like having a little more weathering so I stuck with the more heavily weathered reference photos.

To weather the flight suit, I used mostly Dirty Down spray and powders. For smaller areas I did use some acrylic paints as well but I found the powders much easier to control for small areas and looked more natural when applied by me. Dirty down is great for lightly weathering larger areas though, and I used it mostly for the browns and yellows. For the black areas I used charcoal powder with small sprays of dirty down.
Here is the list of weathering products:

• Dirty Down - Soot Black, Black, Mid Brown, Khaki, Grey
• Earth Colors paint - Raw Umber, Burnt Umber
• FolkArt Pure Burnt Sienna paint
• Black Acrylic paint

I started with the legs and worked my way up starting with some dirty down soot black spray and dry brushing the charcoal powder into the weather pattern on the thigh pouches. I used very small amounts of charcoal powder (this stuff will turn the suit completely black if you use too much). I brushed the powder on to get the circular weather patterns on the pouch pockets. Once the outline was made, I used a wet terry towel to blend the weathering into the pocket and make it less define.:

The weathering of the shins seems to be one of the more dirty sections of boba in the movie, so I initially went pretty heavy here with Dirty Down - Soot Black and charcoal powder. This was then dialed back by wetting the shins and using a terry towel to "buff" the weathering. Once dried, I went over the shins again with charcoal powder, Burnt Umber and Raw Umber acrylic paints (dry brushed).

Finished with legs:

Note that in my opinion, I overdid the weathering with the hip pouches / ammo belt pouches. These were a bit too tan/brown after weathering so I decided to remove all of the weathering and start over on them. I was pretty happy with how the rest of the leg weathering turned out though.

For the rest of the flight suit weathering, I used mostly powders and dirty down spray for the yellows/tans/browns with very small applications of charcoal powder.

The girth belt and ammo belt were also weathered at this time. For the girth belt, it started out as a bright red. I used charcoal powder, dirty down - mid brown, dirty down - black and dry brushing Raw Umber and Burnt Umber acrylic paints. It took a lot of weathering to dull out the bright red color. I think in the end it actually still needs some more weathering.

The girth belt was secured by sewing black elastic straps onto the buckles, following the reference photos for the general layout. I chose elastic straps over nylon so that I can just pull the girth belt up over my legs instead of having to undo nylon straps and re-attach them. It also allowed me to get a nice snug fit to keep it from falling down while wearing the costume.

The MOW ammo belt is very nice, however the color was way too clean and too light of a brown. I fixed this by dry-brushing black acrylic paint onto the entire belt. I first tested this out on an ammo pouch to make sure that the result was sufficient:

The last item to weather were the boots! I started by painting the initial black stripe in the center of the boot.

I then started with (you guessed it) charcoal powder to get an initial coat of weathering.

I then dry brushed with Burnt Umber, Raw Umber and black acrylic paints, as well as various powders. I focused on a "rusty" weathering at the seams and around the soles. Water was used to dilute some of the paints or too clean up areas where I went too dark. The toe spikes were then weathered with the same method (minus the powders).

That concludes most of the weathering. I think overall the look ended up being pretty close, at least close enough where I was happy with it. Definitely need to re-do the hip pouches as they are too clean at this point, I will update when I do so. This is really only the first round of weathering however, as I have a new flight suit arriving from KriptonTop that will need to be weathered.
Here is before (natural lighting) / after (natural lighting) / after (flash on):

 

[DrToothache]

I purchased my EE-3 replica from Andy Meyers which I am excited to receive. However I needed one for the comic con (what good is Boba without his blaster?). I ended up purchasing an affordable 3-D printed one to hold me over. The print was decent quality, however I was a little bummed when I realized that the scale was a little bit off. This seems to be 85-90% scaled size of the original prop.

Unfortunately, my dog got ahold of the package when it arrived and there were a few bite marks in the printed items. Wasn't too big of a deal but did create some more work for me.

Before gluing everything together, I used medium grit sandpaper to remove any seams or ledges. I then glued everything together using super glue.

Filled all of the bite marks from my dog with acrylic and sanded those areas followed by sanding everything with fine grit sandpaper prior to painting the primer. For the initial coat I used an automotive filler/primer combo to help hide any print lines. I did 2 coats, applying the second coat after sanding the first.

Once the primer was applied I used matte black spray paint for the main body, taping off the stock, flash tube and the grip. For the stock, I used brown spray paint as a base. Dry brushing with acrylic metallic paint onto the grip and flash tube was used to get a metallic finish.

To get a wood-like finish on the stock, I dry brushed black acrylic paint in streaks. The trick here is to make sure the the paint brush is actually dry. It's easy to accidentally apply too much black if your brush is wet with paint.
I also dry brushed a gun-metal metallic acrylic paint onto certain areas of the main body and scope and some more black acrylic paint on the handgrip to blend it into the firearm better. Weathering was achieved with a silver acrylic paint, lightly applying it to edges and areas that would naturally scratch up in use.

This 3D print obviously isn't 100% accurate, but I wanted to make it as close as possible before bringing it to the con. I wanted to re-create the greeblies on the bottom of the scope mounts. For this I used some random plastic items and nylon screws, nuts and a few washers.

The nylon screws were used for the front scope mount - I cut the heads off of them and sanded them down to an appropriate size and then glued them in place with a washer. I then painted the new greeblies black and added some weathering.

I also wanted to create an accurate sling. I purchased 1inch leather straps, some cheap bronze metal rings and metal wood screw studs with sling holes.

I predrilled the hole in the handgrip and the stock and then screwed in the wood screws, reinforced by some glue. I then attached the appropriately sized bronze rings. The leather strap was cut down to the proper size and attached in a similar fashion to how it was in the film.

The gunmetal finish looked cool but was inaccurate to the EE-3 in the movie. To finish the paint job I decided to reduce some of the gunmetal effect. To do this I dry brushed black acrylic paint over the main body of the gun. I also added black paint to the silver flash tube to make it look more weathered and hide the fact that my flash tube isn't chrome.

This definitely isn't the most accurate EE-3, but it did the job for my first comic con and was a good enough placeholder blaster for me!

Stupidly I forgot to apply glue to the scope caps, so the rear one fell off and was lost at the convention. Luckily the seller had sent an extra one so I was able to re-attach it later.

 

[BudaFett]

Naughty doggo! Even on a smaller scale, the blaster looks fantastic!

 

[DrToothache]

Naughty doggo! Even on a smaller scale, the blaster looks fantastic!

Thanks BudaFett! I was pretty happy with how it turned out all things considered.

 

[DrToothache]

New EE-3 in the works. After building the previous EE-3 and realizing the scaling was off, I received another print of the same prop that is scaled properly.

So far I have just been putting it together and sanding. I'm going to fill, prime and sand it today. Having this one in hand definitely show's how small the other one was!

Going to do a very similar paint job with the only change being a lighter colored wood stock. Still looking forward to receiving the more accurate Andy Meyers blaster but this will make for a decent placeholder.

 

[DrToothache]

Assembled, Filled, primed and sanded. Going to do another round of Primer and filler.

 

[DrToothache]

Made some progress on the new blaster and finished most of the painting. Decided to go with a matte finish instead of the satin one on the first build as well as a lighter shade of wood finish for the stock to better match the color in the film.

Started by painting the main body/scope a matte black. Then dry brushed both the handgrip and muzzle with metallic acrylic paints.

I then did a lot of dry brushing with different metallic silvers, blacks and the main body with gunmetal. Used Earth Colors acrylic paint (raw umber and burnt umber) as well as black acrylic paint on the stock.

Pretty happy with it so far. Once everything is fully dried I am going to dry brush the main body and stock with a matte black. After that, I will add all of the missing greeblies and the leather sling.

 

[BudaFett]

I like how the greebies have a built in area on the stock!

 

[DrToothache]

I like how the greebies have a built in area on the stock!

Yes it definitely makes attaching the stock greeblies easier, my only complaint about it is that their positioning isn't correct unfortunately

 

[DrToothache]

Did some finishing touches to the EE-3. Added the sling mounts, the under-barrel greeblies and the leather sling. I really dialed back the gunmetal finish this time. The last things that I will probably do is use some oil on the sling to darken it and do a black wash on the "wooden" stock.