Star-Lord (Female), Finished Pics pg. 2, Upgrades in Progress pg. 3

I've (very) slowly been working on a Star-Lord costume for Toronto Fan Expo at the end of August. I own a hip-length red leather jacket (which I keep forgetting to take pictures of!), so I'm working on a "close enough" costume to go with it. Since this is a jacket that I wear as a normal coat, I won't be doing any modifications to it, but it should still get the point across! I will probably be wearing black pants and knee-high black boots that I already own, just to keep it simple since I have a lot of work to do for his accessories. I do need to buy a shirt to wear under the jacket, since I don't actually own any plain grey/blue shirts - all of mine have geeky stuff on them! I also found this belt at a secondhand store that I think works pretty well for his costume! Now I just need to figure out how to do the holsters.



One of the first things I did for this costume was the orb. I carved it from a styrofoam ball, then used (many, many) coats of white glue to smooth the surface out. I mixed some black craft paint in with the glue so that it would also function as a primer. I then painted the raised parts silver, but wasn't happy with it, so I went with Silver Leaf Rub 'n Buff instead. The Rub 'n Buff is still coming off on my hands a bit, even though I have buffed the crap out of it several times. I've also let it sit for a week, and it's still doing it, so I'm not sure what I've done wrong. I'm not 100% happy with the final look of it, but I do think that it gets the point across! And I still have another styrofoam ball (they came in a 2-pack) if I feel like redoing it sometime (though not before Fan Expo!).

Comparison with my carved styrofoam ball and the movie prop:


My finished version:


I've also started working on the blasters. I'm making mine out of foam, as I can't find the Nerf ones locally (though I'm in discussion with someone in the US who is selling a pair, so I may scrap my WIP ones and buy those instead). Currently, they are three thicknesses of floor mat foam, and still need to be smoothed and shaped. I'm planning to use craft foam for the details, and (most likely) plumbing parts, etc. for the barrels.



Lastly, the helmet. I'm using JFCustom's foam file, though I had to make some significant changes to the paper mock-up to get it to fit me properly - it was way too long from top to bottom, though the fit around my head was pretty good. Because of that, I'm having a bit of trouble getting the foam pieces to fit together properly, so it's been a bit of an experiment. I'm planning to make it a two-part helmet, possibly held together by magnets, and again to use craft foam for the details. Here's where I'm at as of last night. It's finally looking the part, though I still have a lot of work to do! I actually also have the back piece put together as well, but didn't remember to take a pic.



I still have so much to do, and am running out of time to get it all done (especially since I'm also working on a couple of other costumes at the same time!), but I hope I can manage it!

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

On my buckles (three so far) the rub n buff was dry and not coming off within 24 hours. You may want to hit the orb with a clear coat to prevent it from shedding paint everywhere. It certainly looks the part though!!

Keep up the good work.

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

From all my research, clear coat dulls Rub 'n Buff to a dirty grey, which kind of defeats the purpose! It's not too bad - it just leaves a sheen of silver on my fingers right now. I think I'll try buffing it really well again to see if that helps, but my plan is to try to make a satchel to keep it in and just pull it out for pictures, and possibly to add gloves to my costume too, to try to keep my body heat away from it as much as possible. If I can find gloves that work for me!

Thanks so much! I'm having fun with this costume - it's my first real "build", instead of just more or less repurposing other items, or finding appropriate pieces.

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

Only one way to find out about the rub n' buff and clear coat. Try it on a spare piece of something laying around. I do like the idea of the satchel though.

Another builder has a Han Solo belt that seems to fit much of the criteria for the belt an holster. I was thinking of using one of them and modifying it. I found a few places on ebay, but they are all resellers, so I can't get some of the Solo details omitted. (Droid caller, extra pockets...) I may purchase multiple belts and cut and rivet them together like I did for my Ash shotgun holster.

I have one of the nerf blasters, and I'm not too fond of all the bolt holes on it. I may leave that one out and just go with a kit I'm purchasing from another member here. I'm in Calgary, and if your interested in a nerf blaster (No box anymore) I may be able to set you up.

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

I'll probably do that at some point. We've got some other stuff that will need to be clear-coated within the next couple of weeks for a different costume, so I'll sneak in a test piece. I do like the idea of a satchel, since he does carry one in some of the trailer scenes, so I may do that anyways. The blasters I can holster, but I'll need somewhere to put the orb if I want my hands free!

I saw that, and I quite liked it. I've never built holsters before, but I've read a few tutorials and it may be within my skill level. My biggest concern is ending up with too many projects and not enough time!

Aww, I wish I'd gotten your message sooner! I actually just bought a pair of the Nerf blasters from a costumer in the US - he's already painted them, and I got them for about the same price as it would have cost me to order them from Amazon. Thanks, though! If I hear about anyone looking for one, I'll let you know. I'd love to get a kit sometime (ditto for the helmet), but it's just outside of my budget at the moment!

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

A bit more visible progress today! I found a grey shirt that should work for the costume, and here's a look at my jacket as well (sorry for the terrible bathroom mirror selfie!).



And I finished up the main body of the helmet and taped it together for a rough test fit. It's not perfect, but hopefully it will work. Any suggestions on the best way to attach the front and back halves? I've tried magnets, but it's so tricky to get them lined up properly!

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

I spent a couple of hours on Sunday talking with a friend about the eyes - he's much better with electronics than I am so he had some ideas for hopefully getting them to light up. I'm concerned that I don't have a lot of space for it in the helmet, though - it fits pretty tightly to my face! I hope we can make it work, though.

I got a bit more done today - I started on the mouth piece. I've made it out of craft foam because I thought it would be much easier to cut breathing holes in thinner foam, though I will be doing some reinforcing on the inside so it doesn't warp. It's just very roughly taped into place for these pics. I need to figure out all the other details before I really start attaching things.

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

My progress has been slow the past couple of days, thanks to recurring shoulder/neck pain that gives me headaches, ugh. It's really hard to work on stuff when you have a headache! But I'm feeling better today, so I started on attaching the front and back halves of the helmet together. I'm using 1/4" rod magnets. Depending how it looks when all the magnets are in place, I may also add in some elastic straps (which would mean it would just separate slightly, instead of coming apart entirely). I'm hoping I won't have to, but if the magnets aren't holding it in place properly, I might have to. This is my first time ever trying something like this, so there's probably a better way to do it that I don't know about.



You can see on the picture of the inside that there's a gap right behind the ear piece (right above the bottom set of magnets). I'll add another magnet there tomorrow, but it's late so I'm going to bed now!

I also bought a pair of the Nerf blasters from a guy who had already painted them for his costume but had to sell it. Unfortunately, the paint job is awful - it's full of dings, fingerprints, and what looks like dog hair. There's also what looks like dried glue on both handles. Any advice for stripping and repainting them? I messaged him to ask what kind of paint he had used, but he never got back to me. Lesson learned - ask for more/better pictures before buying!



Sorry for the slightly out of focus cell phone pic. You can't really see the full effect of the bad paint job here, but you can see the dried glue on the handles. Any ideas on how to fix these?

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

Wow, that paint job is... unfortunate. I think all of the guns in this thread are looking good, so that's where I'd look for what to do once they're cleaned up. As for stripping the paint, I've never done anything this big, but I know for plastic miniatures people typically soak them in a grease cleaner like Simple Green or Purple Power. Soak for a while, maybe scrub it a bit, and the paint comes off pretty well and thoroughly without damaging the plastic. I don't know exactly how long it will take or if it'll do anything about the glue, but that might be somewhere to start. Good luck!

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

bh1138 said:

Wow, that paint job is... unfortunate. I think all of the guns in this thread are looking good, so that's where I'd look for what to do once they're cleaned up. As for stripping the paint, I've never done anything this big, but I know for plastic miniatures people typically soak them in a grease cleaner like Simple Green or Purple Power. Soak for a while, maybe scrub it a bit, and the paint comes off pretty well and thoroughly without damaging the plastic. I don't know exactly how long it will take or if it'll do anything about the glue, but that might be somewhere to start. Good luck!

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's one of the threads I have bookmarked for when I'm ready to repaint. Thanks for the suggestions! I'll have to see if I can find that stuff locally.

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

The helmet is all put together, except for all the detailing! I got all the magnets installed, and the mouth piece glued on.



I also started stripping the paint off the blasters. The internet told me that vegetable oil can take paint off of plastic without damaging it, so I decided that it was worth a try before going out to buy anything else. This is about 20 minutes of work with a cloth dipped in canola oil. I was completely shocked that it actually worked! But it was still taking a long time (and was really hard on my bad shoulder), so I decided to try letting it soak in the oil for a while. I wasn't sure that it was going to work, but when I checked it after half an hour, I noticed that while the piece didn't look any different, I could see tiny streamers of silver in the oil around the edges. I left it to soak while I worked on the helmet, and I just pulled it out to find that the paint wipes right off with absolutely no effort. So much easier than scrubbing at it! So I have one piece completely stripped, with the next piece in the oil to soak. I'm heading out to play D&D in a bit so I won't get any more done on it tonight, but I'm pleased with my progress for today!

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

I haven't posted in ages, because most of my progess hasn't been very visible/interesting. I've been working on stripping the guns so I can repaint them, and getting the helmet ready for paint. Things are going pretty slowly because we've suddenly become ridiculously busy in the past couple of weeks, wtf.

I did manage to get a bag that's okay for now - not anywhereclose to accurate, but my convention is in two weeks and I don't have time to wait for anything to ship from China! So I found a relatively cheap messenger bag at WalMart that will do (I couldn't find any sling bags locally that weren't prohibitively expensive!). My main criteria were that it had to be brown, and couldn't have visible logos (or at least not ones that were hard to cover/remove). This will do for now, and I'll work on finding/making a more accurate one when I have more time.



I also got started on painting the helmet (this is the first coat - it's going to need at least one more). The gold is not quite as bright as the flash makes it out to be - I'm pretty happy with the colour. I've decided to do a couple of coats of silver first, and then metallic black. I noticed on the movie helmet that there's a lot of spots where the darker grey is worn to show silver underneath, so I thought I'd try to replicate that with my helmet. Obviously I still need to attach all the tubes, eyes, and other details, but I figured it was easier to paint it first!

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

This looks really good!

Did you try any craft fairs for the bag (if you have any near you). Probably couldn't find it in leather, but I've seen sling bags in different stalls before (of course, never when I was looking for one lol).

How did the guns end up?

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

mneiai said:

This looks really good!

Did you try any craft fairs for the bag (if you have any near you). Probably couldn't find it in leather, but I've seen sling bags in different stalls before (of course, never when I was looking for one lol).

How did the guns end up?

Click to expand...

Thank you!

I don't think there have been any big local craft fairs lately. I've also never seen anything quite like Star-Lord's at ones I've been to in the past, and I've also noticed that they're super expensive. I'll keep looking, but with the convention in less than two weeks, I just needed something for now!

They're still in-progress. We've been so busy lately! We've been away the past couple of weekends (and this one), which isn't helping! I've almost got all the terrible paint job stripped off, then I'll need to repaint them. Hopefully I can get it done next week - the weather looks like it should cooperate. *crosses fingers*

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

I was away at a beach resort wedding all weekend, but as the weather was terrible (around 12C and pouring rain!) I spent most of my time in the room, working on painting the helmet, lol.

Here's the state of it right now. I'm planning to put a darker silver over the silver parts so I can weather it by sanding down the darker paint to expose the silver. It also needs a couple more coats of gold, I think.



I found some braided tubing at a craft store that I hope will work for the tubing on the sides. I just have no idea what to use for the end caps! Suggestions?



I also picked up a red plastic gift bag that will hopefully work for the eyes:



And lastly, here's a paint comparison between the silver base coat, some "brushed pewter", and "metallic black". Without the flash, I honestly can hardly tell the difference between the silver and the pewter, and the black is way too dark. I suspect I will have to mix my own colour, ugh.

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

Oh! The braided tubing looks great! Where'd you get it?

I used acorn nuts for the ends of the tubing. I believe #10, 3/8 inch outer diameter
I used aluminum pipe cut at 1/2 inch, 5/8 inch and 3/4 inch for tube portion of tubing, the tips are the acorn nuts

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

I found it at Michael's. I happened to walk past it on a display, pulled an about-face, and went back to grab it, lol.

I was considering acorn nuts, but I wasn't sure the shape was *quite* what I wanted. But I only have a week to finish this, so I might just pick them up anyways, lol. I'm just not entirely sure how to attach and paint them. :X Yours are looking good! Thanks for sharing!

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

Michaels!?!? Too simple?

Tutorial:
buy screws of appropriate size, screw one end into acorn nut. Place in pipe, or in your case, MORE LEGIT LOOKING BRAIDED STUFF, use dremel to cut off screw in direction of threads, attach other end.Make sure acorn nuts outer diameter 3/8 inches (the size of the hole for the pipes in the mask)

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

LOL except for the fact that I'm afraid of my dremel. This build is the first time I've used one, and it's slightly terrifying for someone who doesn't use power tools! I do have a friend that might be able to help, though. He's much more familiar with this sort of stuff than I am.

OMG you're making a metal mask? Do you have a build thread for it?

Re: Star-Lord Costume (Female) WIP

For those ends (tubes) look for little elbows in either plastic, or copper...local Rona, Home Depot or Canadian Tire. Your build looks good btw