First post here on the RPF, but me and my friends have frequented these boards for a little while, drawing inspiration for our dream project, which I hope to detail here for you all. Who here is old enough to remember the very first mission of Kyle Katarn? I've been a Star Wars fan ever since I was a little kid, but there was something special about the
LucasArts games for me and my favorite series (with special honorable mention of Tie Fighter) was always the Dark Forces series. I remember being caught off guard by how awesome that original Dark Forces was and Kyle Katarn quickly went on to be one of my favorite characters from the Star Wars universe. I even have a Kyle Katarn costume from Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight.
...But I digress, this thread is really about the titular Dark Forces themselves, the Dark Trooper. The Phase 1 and Phase 2 were always pretty awesome, especially when they got the drop on you in the game, but the one that always interested me the most was the Phase 3 battle suit that Rom Mohc wore during the final boss fight. I'm talking about this guy:
So, me and my oldest friend started talking about doing this for a Star Wars Celebration one year and doing it as it existed in the game, 8 feet tall and intimidating. We first had this idea before SWC 6 in 2012 but we couldn't pull it off because we spent too much time completing our Bender from Futurama dressed as R2-D2, which was fun in it's own right. Then we talked about it for another few years and instead of working on it for SWC Anaheim in 2015, we did the Kyle Katarn, a Sith Elsa, and an Undead Tie Pilot. So finally, jump to 2016 and I decide I'm just going to go for it and start working on it and draft him into that way! And what do you know, it worked. So, I will tell you now that the costume is complete and we did manage to debut it in the costume contest at SWC orlando 2017, just this last weekend. In the spirit of the two major threads that helped us pull off a giant costume, I wanted to post the trial and error process on here for anyone who is interested. I want to give a big shout out to two threads that we referenced to get it done - The Giant Raynor by MWiggs and the 40k Space Marine by Sylgian. An extra special mention to MWiggs for actually letting us use his hand models and answering any questions we had about his process for creating his awesome suit.
So, let's get this rolling. I'll probably be doing this over a few days because it was a year long process.
TLDR: We made a giant Dark Trooper costume from Dark Forces.
LucasArts games for me and my favorite series (with special honorable mention of Tie Fighter) was always the Dark Forces series. I remember being caught off guard by how awesome that original Dark Forces was and Kyle Katarn quickly went on to be one of my favorite characters from the Star Wars universe. I even have a Kyle Katarn costume from Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight.
...But I digress, this thread is really about the titular Dark Forces themselves, the Dark Trooper. The Phase 1 and Phase 2 were always pretty awesome, especially when they got the drop on you in the game, but the one that always interested me the most was the Phase 3 battle suit that Rom Mohc wore during the final boss fight. I'm talking about this guy:
So, me and my oldest friend started talking about doing this for a Star Wars Celebration one year and doing it as it existed in the game, 8 feet tall and intimidating. We first had this idea before SWC 6 in 2012 but we couldn't pull it off because we spent too much time completing our Bender from Futurama dressed as R2-D2, which was fun in it's own right. Then we talked about it for another few years and instead of working on it for SWC Anaheim in 2015, we did the Kyle Katarn, a Sith Elsa, and an Undead Tie Pilot. So finally, jump to 2016 and I decide I'm just going to go for it and start working on it and draft him into that way! And what do you know, it worked. So, I will tell you now that the costume is complete and we did manage to debut it in the costume contest at SWC orlando 2017, just this last weekend. In the spirit of the two major threads that helped us pull off a giant costume, I wanted to post the trial and error process on here for anyone who is interested. I want to give a big shout out to two threads that we referenced to get it done - The Giant Raynor by MWiggs and the 40k Space Marine by Sylgian. An extra special mention to MWiggs for actually letting us use his hand models and answering any questions we had about his process for creating his awesome suit.
So, let's get this rolling. I'll probably be doing this over a few days because it was a year long process.
TLDR: We made a giant Dark Trooper costume from Dark Forces.