The Force Awakens Stormtrooper Armor Build [WIP]

Gotta love all the new members joining just to ask for the files and we wonder how they end up on ebay all the time.

Well done, sir! I am impressed with your pepping skills. I've got my stormie bucket just about finished and have been trying to find the armor files for a month or two with no luck. Is there any way you can direct me to where you got them? Or could you send me the files directly? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! I will be watching this thread for sure to see your progress.

Awesome job! Could you please send me the link to the pep files please? I'm really wanting to build this helmet myself and this is one of the best builds I've seen so far. Thanks

Reading this thread makes me want to build one! Keep it up the good and intricate work mate :thumbsup

Rey5 Pacman117 Mortikai99 yoyoitsme DylanHarris99

Here is a dropbox link to where I've uploaded the files. I found these online for free, so I hope I'm not violating anyone's policies here.

Back from the holidays!

There were a few final trim pieces that needed to be attached to the chest, which I still needed to finish off. That took a disproportionate amount of time compared to the size of the pieces, but it was all definitely worthwhile. The structure in the entire chest is certainly more robust now that the final trim is in place in the arms, neck, and lower. I took some time with the tailor's measuring tape to double-check the scale, and it looks like it's right on the money.



The natural next step would probably be to begin pepping the detail piece for the front of the chest, but I have decided to postpone that part until this current part is at least through the first stage of hardening. Since the front detail piece isn't a closed piece, I don't want to start on it until I have this piece hardened for the front to rest on -- the chances of it getting warped are too high. I'll figure out the best timing for making that piece after this clamshell portion of the chest is completed.

Instead of moving to the chest detail, I'm shifting further down to the ab plate. I've decided to put my scaling document on Google Sheets, just in case anyone wants to take a look at how I'm structuring that data. If you happen to be 185cm tall, you might even find the measurements worthwhile!

Here's that file.
@Mark117 was kind enough to link to the 501st list of required costume components for any First Order TK's to be considered for entry. While I did not start this project with the intent of making it completely screen-accurate, I may change my mind now that this detailed reference is available! I will probably get on the 501st to try to see where they get the gaskets needed for their suits, and find answers to other questions that arise as time goes on. A big thanks to @Mark117 for his input!

Finishing up the cutting portion of the ab plate. There are a lot of annoying pieces in this pep, but nothing that looks too difficult or ridiculous. I am a little bit concerned about the way that some of the scoring and cutting lines align on the pep files, particularly in some cases, lines appear broken on the pieces. For example, for the two recessed arches on the wearer's right (looker's left), the inner lines look straight on the model, but are just .. broken in places on the actual piece:



I decided to just cut the lines as they exist (broken), and figure it out afterwards. There will be enough material with the tabs that I will be able to remove material if I need to. I'll update this post if I could have just cut them straight.

17 pages of cutting later, I'm ready to start scoring and gluing!

...tomorrow.

Ab plate update:

This pep has been strangely difficult to put together. There are a ton of huge pieces, which made me think this would be pretty easy! But ... because of the organic shape of the pep, all of the piece have to bend ever so slightly, and the tabs don't align correctly 100% of the time. I have come to find that these peps aren't as perfect as the helmet was, so there are instances where some improvisations is necessary. For example, the two recesses in the chest didn't fit all that well, so I had to clear out some material between the tabs.



I decided to put the entire top portion together, and the entire bottom portion (minus the lower band) together, and then mate the two. This worked out pretty well, although I needed a little platform to put the upper half on while I glued the two together. I went around the entire top/bottom portion, gluing one tab on each piece, until I had it aligned correctly and tacked-together. Afterwards, I went back through and secured the remaining tabs with a tiny bit of glue. Here are those two, joined together (the lower band part has yet to be attached).



The panel that covers the gap in the back of the ab plate is ... really interesting. I will say this for anyone who builds this after me: do not assume that it is 100% flat or straight. Not only is it rounded along the x-axis, it bends in at the top and out at the bottom on the y-axis. Keep that in mind while gluing it together! I had to take the dang thing apart the first time because once I was finished with the middle portion, the side trim pieces (which show the intended contour of the piece) did not fit without bending. It still isn't perfect, so I will probably have to fix this in or after the fiberglass stage.



I'll post a picture of the entire ab plate when it's finished. I'm probably going to have to throw some bracing into both this and the back cover pieces in order to get them to sit in the right positions for when I resin the outsides of them. But, the good thing is: I have enough pieces to start working on resin! I'll get to that soon, hopefully. Stay tuned.

Looks like pretty good pep work. If I might add a couple of points that might be useful. I find that if you untick the option to hide lines less than 175 degrees, you get to see all of the fold lines. I usually score these as it seems to make the pep sit better, especially on long and large sections. The other thing I have had success with is decreasing the tab size to 3mm and using a good quality PVA builder's adhesive - not the cheap school-grade stuff - and applying it with a toothpick.
Just my thoughts, and keep up the great work on this very impressive build.

Blaxmyth said:

I find that if you untick the option to hide lines less than 175 degrees, you get to see all of the fold lines. I usually score these as it seems to make the pep sit better, especially on long and large sections.

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This sounds like a great idea; moving forward, I will want to look at this as an option. In the past, I specifically tried not to score some lines too heavily, because it might cause more exaggerated high/low areas in the finished pep, which would prolong the bondo phase. However, I'm not as familiar with this costume as I was with the physical form of Master Chief, so I think I would like all the help I can get. I don't love the idea of creating more high/low spots with additional creases, but I think the benefits of having the paper pieces "know" where they are supposed to bend far outweighs any potential negative effects!

Thanks for the tip!

As for the glue, this may be heresy, but I use hot glue. I don't trust myself to get every tab glued perfectly every time, so I needed an adhesive that would allow "revision," so to speak. Hot glue in tiny amounts has proven to be the best option. It isn't perfect, but it is the option that provides the greatest amount of flexibility.

If hot glue does what you want it, that's great! I applaud you mastering it, as all I managed was to recreate the stairway scene in the original Dracula with cobwebs everywhere.

I've actually been very pleasantly surprised by the latest quick bonding PVA, which can grip in as little as five seconds, and which has cut my building time hugely. It is quite expensive and I don't know if it is available everywhere. Here in New Zealand it is sold as Selleys Interior Quickset Aquadhere.

Some amount of hot glue cobwebs are still present, and indeed are a nuisance when they appear. But I have most of the process down to where I can build without creating them most of the time, so I think it's an acceptable trade-off.

Out of curiosity, what do you feel is the greatest upside of using quick bonding PVA? Have you encountered any difficulty working with that as your adhesive?

finch said:

Out of curiosity, what do you feel is the greatest upside of using quick bonding PVA? Have you encountered any difficulty working with that as your adhesive?

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I settled on PVA after trying superglue and hot glue. The super glue didn't bond the card very well, which surprised me, but it made up for it by bonding me to other bits of me. The hot glue was problematic for two reasons - one was that I ended up with too large a dollop of glue, and the other was that the nozzle was cumbersome for some of the deeper joins. The PVA works best (for me) when I use a toothpick to apply it, and when I have made a precise job of scoring the fold line and pre-bending it. I have a small pair of pincers for the odd join which needs to be clamped for a short time - usually no more than 15 seconds. I guess there is no one best method, and for me PVA is the best solution so far. Cheers, Phil

Finished with the ab plate pep. I am glad to have a few pieces finished up and ready to harden! I think the actual ab plate portion (the part that wraps around your torso) turned out great! I have to be honest though, I'm not particularly happy with the way that the back plate came out. I'm not sure if it was a really difficult model to unfold and therefore the unfold was a little bit off, or just poor work on my part (I assume the latter), but I will certainly have extra work there to get it to an acceptable level of finish. It doesn't bother me enough to make me want to re-make that part, but I am a little disappointed.

A few posts back, I got a little bit of pre-print pep advice from @Blaxmyth that might help when working on some of these large pieces that have weird contours. Armed with a new workflow that surfaces additional scoring lines, I think I'll have better luck on these pieces going forward.

Front


Back (with plate temporarily in place for the picture)

Well, just hit a big snag in the process. I want to put together the shoulders next, to continue my top-down build process. Scaling each previous piece has been really easy, because each of them has been a single piece which I could scale by the vertical height of the piece. However, the shoulders and hand plates are in the same file, so my previous scaling technique will be rendered useless!





I have scaled these pieces to 101.5% of their file-open dimensions (not scale factor percentage), because that is the average change I have made to each of the previous two files from the same set of unfolds. You can see the final dimensions in millimeters in my scaling spreadsheet. Ultimately, I don't agree with the decision to collect all of these pieces into a single .pdo file, simply because the user's hands and shoulders may need to be scaled individually.


Do not want!

After posting on the 405th, I learned about an incredible little feature in Pepakura Designer called 'Measure Distance.' I stopped what I was doing and immediately used that little trick, but it turned out that my scaling was correct to within a millimeter even though I hadn't used that feature. So, I kept moving ahead. That was an incredible discovery though.


Since starting earlier this evening, one of the shoulders is now complete. At the moment though, I couldn't tell you which one (left or right). The folds are tighter and the pieces are smaller, and the piece came together quite a bit faster/better than the ab plate. I did still run into a little but of bunching here or there, which you can see from the picture. The gap won't be an issue to fix in resin/bondo so overall I'm happy with how this one turned out.





There is, however, a mysterious missing piece that's numbered and tabbed on the printed pieces, but doesn't exist in the pep. Sometimes these pieces can be found outside the borders of the grid of 2D pep pieces, but in this case the piece is just nowhere to be found. Apparently it would have gone on the inside of the top of the shoulder, but at the last second it was removed from the file.





The folded version in Pepakura Designer shows the piece as it exists in real life, sans missing piece. I'm not really sure what the deal is here, but whatever. Moving on to the next shoulder!

Loving this build. Keep posting pics, please!

Great build! You've inspired me to join and try my own first order helmet build Any tips for a first-time maker?

Oh and by the way, I haven't joined just to try selling stuff on eBay, as some have suggested... Maybe some people should think about being less hostile to new members, and instead encouraging the growth of such a great forum?

BarnOwlBy said:

Great build! You've inspired me to join and try my own first order helmet build Any tips for a first-time maker?

Oh and by the way, I haven't joined just to try selling stuff on eBay, as some have suggested... Maybe some people should think about being less hostile to new members, and instead encouraging the growth of such a great forum?

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Hey BarnOwlBy! Great to see someone else starting down this path.

My number one caution to you as someone who hasn't used Pepakura before is: you may want to find some random pep piece to build that isn't a helmet on your first shot! Seriously, helmets have incredible detail and are arguably the easiest peps to identify mistakes in. I might find a gun or some other pep piece to build before the helmet, just because you will learn a LOT in the process of building your first piece. You don't have to go through the process of actually hardening it as well, but I would at least get a few hours of cutting/scoring/gluing in before setting the helmet in your sights.

My thread on the 405th of my MJOLNIR Mark VI (Master Chief) build would be a decent place to start for advice on pepakura basics!

As for the comment about eBay, I think the guy was saying that Pepakura files regularly find their way onto eBay. I can't say I have looked for hand made helmets on there, but I know I wouldn't sell anything I made on eBay -- not worth it!

Best of luck with your build!