ESB Boba Build (WIP)

[Jesuit24]

I've finished the second pass of paint on the armour. I ended up mixing 76 and 117 together and adding a touch of black for the centre diamond.

Now I just need to mask everything up one more time and hit it with the green.

I started thinking about tailoring the flightsuit, currently the legs. Like with my first version of the costume, I'm concerned I don't have an objective eye for the fitting since the fit looks totally different in pictures to what it feels like and what it looks like when I look down. I've pinned one leg so far, taking in an inch from the waist and tapering that to 1/2" for the legs from both the outside leg and inside leg (in order to keep the seams straight). Here's a picture, wearing my old boots:

Which looks more accurate? Before or after? I always struggle at this bit. :/

 

[bcurtis]

I started thinking about tailoring the flightsuit, currently the legs. Like with my first version of the costume, I'm concerned I don't have an objective eye for the fitting since the fit looks totally different in pictures to what it feels like and what it looks like when I look down. I've pinned one leg so far, taking in an inch from the waist and tapering that to 1/2" for the legs from both the outside leg and inside leg (in order to keep the seams straight). Here's a picture, wearing my old boots:
View attachment 163380
Which looks more accurate? Before or after? I always struggle at this bit. :/

Altered looks better. Are you gonna bring the arms in some too? Glad to see when people take the time to get the flight suit fit correct. It's a make or break element to the whole costume.

 

[Funkyred]

Try wearing the cod piece and kidney plate , they weirdly have an effect on the way the flight suit fits. Also put some foam in the leg pouches . This will give you an idea if they are positioned correctly on the front of the leg .

 

[Jesuit24]

I'll take another photo once I've got the codpiece and kidney ready. I have padded the pockets since taking those photos. I used some EVA foam and shaped out space for a small container to store spare batteries in one pocket and a mini repair kit in the other. I've kept working on the armour. I laid down the green, a mix of 78 and 76 and went back over it with the grey weathering before peeling off the masking fluid and sticking down the decal I got from Bobamaker.


Thinking I might use some inks to mottle the green a little more before I clear coat everything.

 

[Builder]

Hi Jesuit....I think that you're at a perfect stage in the paint up to as you say "mottle" the surface of your good looking paint.
My suggestion is to mix a very sightly darker and lighter value of your base greens and grays, thin them and dab with a small piece
of sponge ,say one inch or less, or use any uneven surface material for a older and used surface look.
It will get you away from a sprayed only look which it sounds like your shooting for. If you get a little too much paint down use a small piece of wadded
paper towel to pick it up...just add and subtract, let it dry, back and forth etc. Patience pays off at this stage.
We all can interpret things like color,detail,etc. differently so here are a couple of pics. of how this technique looks on our armor.
The only difference is that I applied it as I did each layer of paint and not completely at the end. As you see I like a more layered build up to
the look to the color. It's still a very small build up.
This is the fun stuff when you really make it your own.



You're going to have a great Boba. Happy trooping!

 

[Jesuit24]

Made some progress.

I took your advice, Builder and used the sponge/paper towel trick. I think it worked quite well. I then hit it with sealer (I tend to go with a layer of gloss automotive laquer and then go back over it with a matt Humbrol sealer. I've seen people in the miniature painting hobby do this and they call it 'bulletproofing', since gloss laquer is a lot tougher than matt, going over it twice gives you extra protection. Also, I find the gloss and matt gives a nice in between finish; matt but with a very slight shine, less so than satin. I have noticed the chest decal is peeling up a bit after the sealer, so it looks like I'll need to take it off and redo that in the future, but for now I'll leave it be. I feel like I've spent forever on the chest.


I've arranged it how I see it in ESB, with a big gap between the collar and chest plates and the chest lights lining up with the vest sleeve, and I'm pretty happy with the jewelry pin method since it's so forgiving if you mis-align it (and I've done that a lot). I also Gorilla taped the hell out of the chest lights into position. Originally, I planned to use magnets, but there weren't many places I could attach them to the light board. The hem of the vest still needs sorting out. After all the armour placement, it needs to move up about an inch above my belly button. Since the vest usually sits on your belly button, hopefully this won't look too weird. Also, I've noticed that the abdominal plate, since it's so straight, it tugs the fabric out at the sides making the edges stick out more than the bottom of the chest plates. I don't know if I can heat form vac formed ABS, but I don't particularly want to risk it, so I'll make do. I want to get a JP harness before I drill holes in the collar and back armour or start sewing button holes in the vest, although the chest light button hole was a good prep run for me on my sewing machine.

I've also sorted out the cod and kidney pieces, drilling the holes, trimming the kidney and attaching the elastic. I'm going to be covered in heavy duty velcro by the end of this, but I do love the stuff, it's so much better than regular velcro. So I'm turning back to the tailoring issue now that I can put more armour on and see how it's going to fit.

The cod does pull the legs up, so it was a good shout to get me to wait until I'd finished it before I tailored anything. I was quite confident I'd need to raise the pockets but from these pictures I might get away with it. I'm still indecisive about slimming the legs though. Same pins are in it from before, so I've slimmed one leg by 1" and left the other unaltered. Altered looks a lot neater especially in the thigh although original has more of that billowy ankle that Boba has. What do you think?

Some reference leg shots:

 

[Builder]

You're well on your way to a fine result Jesuit. A'll just point out some things we all have to deal with so hope you don' t think I'm too picky at this stage
of your build. Sounds like you are moving along with patience and good self critique skills.
I agree that your armor color and surface look much better now. I would line up the chest plates vertical and parallel to the center chest piece.This will
make the chest lights more parallel to the floor and add upward slant to the top edge of the chest pieces. Placement of all the armor will still depend on how you fit the collar piece when you
solve the back armor shoulder connection job. I think it's the hardest job in this costume when it comes to fitting the harness, jet pack, and back armor to prevent "pull back" on the collar.
Can't tell you the number of times we put things on and off to get there.
The altered leg is much better and I would suggest not over filling the pouches. There are wrinkles in them in many reference shots. We filled with different smaller size foam pieces so it
looked more uneven. I would wait till everything is fitting before shortening the vest.
Here is a shot of how we stand with our Boba now. Buy no means perfect..small changes can and will be taken care of as time goes on.

For instance, the vest is pulling up under the ab armor.
This is because I didn't see a need for any locking pin backs on the bottom armor edge when the vest wasn't on.....it laid out just fine.
Once on, my sons body type makes it pull up under the armor. Not a big deal..I'll add pins. My point is that you have to build for your body type and adjust a lot as you go.
Boba is a real balance of parts...your body proportions should make for a good Boba.

 

[Jesuit24]

So it's been a whole year now. I've not done a whole lot more. Other things tended to get in the way. Still, in the interim, I got my helmet back from ToEleven with one crazy paintjob. I spent a good week taking every opportunity to stare at it as I walked by. It now sits centre stage with my other helmets above my TV.


I also got a better mannequin with poseable arms. This will make my life a lot easier when it comes to the fiddly bits I can't do without constantly taking things off. I had to cut his legs off to shorten him to my height, which was a bit grim, but with fiberglass and milliput, he's just as strong as he was before.


Boots also came in from RSProps, which I believe are Imperial Boots which have been bought for this side of the pond. They're a bit big, but fit snug with lifts which I was planning on wearing anyway. I think I'd have preferred them unweathered (RSProps does the weathering) just so I could have gone a bit easier on the the white sole weathering. I'm still going to need to take the weathering darker since the ESB boots are grubby, but the rubber weathering may be a little too dark.


Bigdane's harness came. I assembled the strapping with full metal fett's metal fastenings. I've still got to sew the grey jetpack hook straps to the back, but I need to wait for my jetpack to arrive for that.

The jetpack was ordered yesterday. It's going to be an NME one. I'll modify it a bit more screen accurate. I went with NME because it would be a little smaller and lighter, plus they had a discount code for 20% off for May 4th to sway me. I've also ordered the leather ammo belt from Delta13 with custom cutouts for the soundboard I plan on using.

I've also since corrected the armour placement, straightening out the breast plates, which has let me sew the vest button holes in the back for the hooks and bar. I made the bar holes longer than needed to allow for any pull from the jetpack. Still need to hem the bottom of the vest, but I've folded it over to where I'm happy for the photo (I've also included a few of my older SE costume pieces on the mannequin for the sake of seeing how it looks).


So now I guess I sit and wait for my jetpack and ammo belt to come.

I have one question though. I know seeing the harness waist strap is acceptable, but what about the shoulder straps? You can see them through the arm holes of the vest and it's something I've never seen on anyone else's costume. I'm not sure what the solution would be to hiding them aside from maybe wrapping them in flight suit coloured fabric.

 

[Jesuit24]

Tweaked Boba a little while I wait for the jetpack and belt. I attached two press studs to the neckseal to combat it pulling up with the weight of the jetpack, since I was seeing a lot of the grey dickie. I may need another in the centre, but I'll see how it goes. I was debating sewing the neckseal onto the flight suit to solve the problem and be more screen accurate but apparently that comes with it's own problems.

I've also further tweaked the armour placement. I feel like that's a neverending task that I'll never be happy with, but this is where the mannequin really comes in handy because it gives me the chance to take a step back and see how it looks. Regretfully, I THINK my chest armour is just a little too small. The gaps between the chest plates and the ab plate and the ab plate and the bottom of the vest are too big for ESB. I could move the ab plate up and re-hem it higher, but then w're getting too high above my belly button for the vest, which will make too much of the jetpack harness visible. I may opt for Wasted Fett's FPA chest armour, which is slightly bigger than FP v4.

I have also hemmed the vest. Again, I was towing the line between having too much of the divers buckle visible and closing the gap between the armour. New armour should solve that, along with my plan to velcro the bottom jetpack harness strap higher on the flight suit. I know having the buckle visible is fine, but I'd prefer not to see it since most of the people who see this costume won't have seen it before in the film.


I weathered the side pouches. I just wet the fabric, sprayed on some grey, black and brown rattlecans (going heavier with the black) and then buffed it into the fabric with a sponge. I could have gone further with the weathering but I'm still on the fence over how much weathering I want to do. I know the behind the scenes photos show him caked in dirt, but the screencaps seem to mute a lot of that. I can always add more later anyway. Also weathered the boots the same way but used wire wool to buff the rubber.


I made the foam padding for the pockets. I rounded off the sharp edges on the side pockets, and rounded them off severely for the thigh pockets. I'm planning on putting my voice changer in the jetpack, since the setup currently JUST fits in a sidepocket but messes with the shape, so I'm putting the voice changer speaker in a thigh pocket (so it's facing forward).


I also bought shin tools. I'm in the process of cutting them up.