Jes Gistang inspired female stormtrooper armour

Hey all I've had a wee project bubbling away over the last few months after seeing a Jes Gistang statue. I really liked the look of this statue and wanted to make a set of forms similar to it. The only change I wanted to make was to bring it more over to a standard TK look. The idea being it's a set of stormtrooper armour that fits the female form better than regular armour.

So I decided to do the following:

A chest and ab plate like the statue
A modified backplate and lower back
An entirely new set of groin and butt plates that were a kind of hybrid of a few different things
A modified helmet sculpt that would scale to the armour better and avoid the 'bobble head' effect that a larger tk can sometimes create
The arms and legs in tk style, just a lot of trimming required

I've made a fair bit of progress with the forms and am getting close to being able to do a few test pulls. Here are a few crappy WIP pics of my forms plus a Jes Gistang pic

Any c&c most welcome

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

Awesome!
Is it pepakura+fiberglass+bondo? Or direct sculpt? How many time it takes to you?

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

Hey, very cool!

I know that KWDesigns is also doing this build, and he has started not so long ago. Most of the details are on the www.whitearmor.net forums for the FISD.

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

hornetbcn said:

Awesome!
Is it pepakura+fiberglass+bondo? Or direct sculpt? How many time it takes to you?

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The chest plate and backpack are direct sculpt into plaster forms. I mainly used a belt sander to sculpt with! Ha ha! Ok so yeah the backpack details are wood and resin bits

The ab and lower back bits are a wooden base with resin and bog details. And the butt and groin are plastic again. The good thing about this approach is that the thing you are making is the form you use for vac forming, no transition molds and no casting. the down side is it's easier to stuff up the dimensions and there can be a bit of back and forth till you get the forms right

Time wise I'm not sure to be honest, hard to tell with all the measuring and mucking around getting the dimensions right. Probably 40 to 50 hours I'd say

thanks for the interest!

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dday said:

Hey, very cool!

I know that KWDesigns is also doing this build, and he has started not so long ago. Most of the details are on the www.whitearmor.net forums for the FISD.

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hey dday yes I've seen the beginning of his build it looks amazing as always he does fantastic work from what I've seen, very thorough and very clean It kind of prompted me to post my own build up but I thought 1 Jes build on each board might work better

CHeers

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

I see! Excellent to see someone else tackling the design, I will enjoy seeing how they both turn out!

I really like the way you have the look captured so far for sure.

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

oota goota said:

...A modified helmet sculpt that would scale to the armour better and avoid the 'bobble head' effect that a larger tk can sometimes create...

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Exactly!

I think it is a shame when I see people spend time, money, and effort on female armor and then stick a regular helmet on there. It just does not make any design sense. If you're going out of your way to make armor which attempts to capitalize on the female form, you are basically implying that regular armor is male. Think of it this way; if you took a statue of a man, and replaced the body, would it look right to just stick the male head back on? It especially looks weird when they do so it with the sexy type armor. For heaven's sake, at least stick some big red wax lips on the mouth and a pink bow on the dome.

Your work looks great so far. I look forward to your progress posts.

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

dday said:

I see! Excellent to see someone else tackling the design, I will enjoy seeing how they both turn out!

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ha ha me too!

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

Mara Jade's Father said:

Exactly!

I think it is a shame when I see people spend time, money, and effort on female armor and then stick a regular helmet on there. It just does not make any design sense. If you're going out of your way to make armor which attempts to capitalize on the female form, you are basically implying that regular armor is male. Think of it this way; if you took a statue of a man, and replaced the body, would it look right to just stick the male head back on? It especially looks weird when they do so it with the sexy type armor. For heaven's sake, at least stick some big red wax lips on the mouth and a pink bow on the dome.

Your work looks great so far. I look forward to your progress posts.

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Thanks MJF! Yeah I want to try and make the armour more 'believeable' than the sexy-type stuff but still form fitting and that includes the helmet. The regular helmet's way too wide and too tall for the women who I have seen wearing them. I'm sure there are exceptions to this but it's the exceptions that prove the rule right?

I have made a bit of progress with the helmet but forgot I had a pic. My first attempt at anything star wars was to make a stormtrooper helmet using a POS costume helmet as a base. The base I used turned out to be a Don Post derivate and was very inaccurate and quite small but this year I realised it would be a perfect base for a female helmet.

So I had an old casting that I was able to hack up a bit and add a cut down bucket. I've only modified one side of the faceplate and need to shorten the lower jaw a bit but here's my rough concept. Here's a WIP I'll try and put it next to a tk bucket for comparison later on. I've scooped out the cheek on one side a bit like a clone helmet and a bit like the JG statue just to see what it looks like and you can see the electrical tape holding the two halves of the cut down bucket together

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour



sorry had a weird thing with the image uploader

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

Here's a few more pics of the concept helmet next to a regular sized bucket. IMO it's not too different from a regular bucket just a bit smaller. I've added in the scoop to fit with the sculpture and I was thinking about putting in a fin on top of the bucket??? Not sure about that tho'

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

Would you be open to a post about design suggestion?

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

Mara Jade's Father said:

Would you be open to a post about design suggestion?

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Yes absolutely fire away I am keen to get people's input

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

First of all, let me start by saying I lack any talent to do what you are doing. i also understand the look you are going for. You are not trying to make something cartoonish or over the top. You are attempting to make a what might be considered functional armor but still distinguished itself as female. Such as the way the state shows an emphasized waist and noticeable bosoms.

Furthermore, I hope women do not take my following suggestions as sexist. I will make comments that are general and in no way applies that such details are something that all female desire or aspire toward.

I like the direction of the armor so my ideas are strictly helmet relates. I do like the the reduction in size. I also like the addition of what appears to be cheekbones. I wonder if a thin piece of black or gray trim might make that detail pop.

I notice you dropped the brow. I actually think you might want to try going higher and thinner. Think of them as eyebrows. Women usually want thinner with more arch.

I would also like to suggest larger lens, possibly even with a little more roundness. Women use eyeliner to make their eyes look larger. So even if you do not want to change the actual eye holes and lenses, you may want to experiment with some black detailing around the lenses to give the allusion of larger eyes.

Other suggestions would be a reduction in the nose as well as a smaller grill across the nose. I would also reduce if not eliminate the bulbous bottom sides. They look like jowls. Women spend a lot of money to get rid of those.

As for the fin idea. I like it but I think adding a fin to the top such as a clone helmet or Rocketeer would represent something more phallic. If the stormtroopers had fins, I would suggest a smaller one. Howerver a small fin or fins running down the back may give the suggestion of flowing hair.

Okay, that is my humble opinion. I hope there was something useful in that babble. Whatever your final design, I support and encourage your project. I'll keep watching.

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

Hey MJF thanks for all your thoughts, awesome!

Mara Jade's Father said:

You are not trying to make something cartoonish or over the top. You are attempting to make a what might be considered functional armor but still distinguished itself as female. Such as the way the state shows an emphasized waist and noticeable bosoms.

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Yes that's exactly right. I'm trying to get a suit of armour that looks like it could fit the SW universe, specifically post ROTJ ish, looks like a stormtrooper ,looks like a female and looks like it can work

I definitely take all your suggestions on board and have a think about how it might look on the helmet. I think it will come down to changing enough elements to make it more 'female' but not lose too much of the TK bucket look.

Mara Jade's Father said:

I notice you dropped the brow. I actually think you might want to try going higher and thinner. Think of them as eyebrows. Women usually want thinner with more arch.

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That's a great idea! I'll have to juggle that with not losing to much of the dome at the top but yeah cool I will give that a go

Mara Jade's Father said:

I would also like to suggest larger lens, possibly even with a little more roundness. Women use eyeliner to make their eyes look larger. So even if you do not want to change the actual eye holes and lenses, you may want to experiment with some black detailing around the lenses to give the allusion of larger eyes.

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I think the lenses are a bit smaller than the regular helmet so if I expand them to match the normal size that might work really well. Then it's just a case of building out the eye 'rims' a bit

Mara Jade's Father said:

Other suggestions would be a reduction in the nose as well as a smaller grill across the nose. I would also reduce if not eliminate the bulbous bottom sides. They look like jowls. Women spend a lot of money to get rid of those.

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Yeah a mate of mine wants me to reduce the nose and errr jaw bit aswell so I'll definitely be hacking up these bits. In the ROTJ bucket has a smaller and more rounded black mouth piece that I'd like to emulate. and yeah flattening the 'jowls' will push the faceplate more towards a regular one. Nice!

Mara Jade's Father said:

As for the fin idea. I like it but I think adding a fin to the top such as a clone helmet or Rocketeer would represent something more phallic. If the stormtroopers had fins, I would suggest a smaller one. Howerver a small fin or fins running down the back may give the suggestion of flowing hair.

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The fin idea came from a weird hybrid pic a friend of mine dug up for me and also that the JG statue has these scooped out cheeks that are very reminiscent of the clone helmet. I really can't decide. It would give the helmet more height without width but yeah want to avoid the phallic thing. I'll probably do a quick mock up and see what everyone thinks!

Hey cheers for the input MJF I'll get some more pics up soon and thanks for following the thread

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

Here's a quick WIP of a test pull of the chestplate. I'm pretty happy with the results. The sides flare out a bit more than needed but that will allow for different body shapes (to a degree) and can easily be pulled in with some strapping. There's a couple of wee blemishes that need sanding out of the form otherwise it's GAME ON!

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

hey all here's a couple more WIPS. This time the lower back and ab plate. The butt and groin forms are basically done I will test them next.

I can see there might be a bit of a problem getting the chest plate over the ab. I haven't really thought that through yet. I might have to take a bit more off the forms we'll see

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

Hey all here's a couple of WIPS. I've finished all the armour pieces enough to do a set of test pulls and put one together. As I've mentioned earlier it's a half Jes/ half standard tk mix. C and C most welcome.

I've reworked the chest plate a bit and lifted the neckline and flared the sides slightly. I've also scooped out the ab and lower back pieces pretty severely as there was way too much space in there before. After that I added about 15mm more height on the forms so the ab and lower back will curve around the waist more.

Oh yeah and I've made a belt form and hand guards. I used a standard tk belt for dimensions and added a 20mm deflection/ curve at the ends of the belt. the boxes are about 10mm smaller and the width of the belt is about 65mm or so



I'll pull some test forms after work tonight wish me luck!

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

hi all here are some rather blurry WIPs of my first pulls. I've just concentrated on the torso at this stage. There's a few tweaks to be made but overall I'm pretty happy with the results so far. I only have black plastic handy so black it is!




The groin piece need some serious trimming to fit but I wanted to have the thing too big rather than too small at this stage. Also I could get the butt to go all the way round as the damned mannequin's legs were too close together!

I made a few adjustments and got my wife and a mate to try the suit on




Next step is to make a few adjustments and then get some white plastic and pull a full suit. I've made a start on the helmet but that will be a while away and I'd like to iron out the bugs in the suit first C and C welcome

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

That is pretty freakin' cool!

Re: Jes Gistang inspired stormtrooper armour

CSMacLaren said:

That is pretty freakin' cool!

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Thanks man! I am looking forward to getting a suit out in gloss white