First time costumer (HAN ROTJ)

[Lancer]

Hey everyone.

Well I finally dipped the toe into the pond so to speak. I was wanting to do a Han and an Xwing costume, but the practical real life stuff called money meant if I went for both, I wouldn't be finished any time soon, so I've put Xwing on the backburner for now and raced on with my Han Costume.

So I'm starting a thread to cover my progress as we go. Photos will be forthcoming once the stuff arrives.

Due to the stupid UK Laws restricting my blaster import options (ie nil pretty much) I managed to source one in the UK and this is a ROTJ DL44 in resin. For £30 couldn't complain. Its coming in a few pieces in cream so I just need to assemble and paint.

So my blaster has also dictated my HAN choice, as I'm aware the blaster changed over the three films.

In time I'd like to do a ANH Han costume because I really prefer the ANH version of the blaster with the long sight and longer barrell but I'll do that a different day.

Mainstay for the costume will be Costumebase (runs for cover) but I'm not leaving it stock. It will be altered to fit better. Originally I was just going to buy the gunbelt, but when I started doing the math, for an extra £25 + £10 more shipping I was getting a han costume as well, so I thought what the hell.

In time I'm going to do my own gunbelt, but at least if I've got the costumebase one, I've got something to use as a bit of a baseline and a learning experience.

So: the list

Shirt
Pants
Waistcoat
Gunbelt

all got from costumebase. £70

Trouser Belt (just got to snip the middle buckle pin off)

http://www.todaysgentleman.com/Stor...l.aspx?sid=1&sfid=124365&c=130639&i=228965486

(including delivery) £8.50 (gawd, I love the exchange rate right now)

Greeblies for belt pouches

Gonna make my own

Gun
resin Droid Caller

STAR WARS PROPS AND REPLICAS

(including delivery) £45

Boots

Country Supplies | Product Unavailable

Not got these yet because I'm not sure on size, but for £20 I can't really go wrong. Has anyone bought these at all? It's just that normally I take a 10-10.5 but my work ankle height boots (altberg and magnums) for some reason I take a 9.

Jacket
I also found a pattern I could use as a pretty good match for Han's jacket in ESB. it will also make a brilliant duty jacket for xwing pilots in orange fabric (this style of jacket was drawn many times in the Xwing comics and would go brilliant with an xwing costume)

Falcon Jacket Pattern

I've put my email in to rebel legion but not heard anything back from them yet. Are there any costumers Leeds based at all? or any costuming societies near by in the Leeds, york, manchester, sheffield area?

I feel all lonely now :rolleyes

 

[Lancer]

BTW. for those interested. the place I got my blaster from also does a number of other bits and bobs of interest to people, a stormtrooper comlink. a scout blaster, E-11 conversion bits, and a full size Stormtrooper DLT19 and a full hollowcast resin E11 which at the moment is still under £100!

Anyone got their E-11 at all? I'm sorely tempted by this for the price.

 

[defyitall]

What do you mean by you put an email into the Rebel Legion? There's an RL base in the UK. Here's their website and forums, in case you don't have it.

The costume base stuff is an alright base to modify. Biggest thing to change is those dang pants stripes. Not sure why they made them so big. They're supposed to be like 1/4" x 1" not 3/4" x 2" or whatever the heck they are. I have their shirt and vest for my ANH and I had them altered pretty heavily. They fit well and do the job. I'd like to redo the shirt in a better fabric. That's the one thing about costumebase, their shirt fabrics suck. It's a really cheap synthetic blend or something. Doesn't take dye at all and pills kinda bad if your dry it.

Oh yeah...

So the Dawn Anderson pattern? Are you going touse that for Han? Or just for some X-wing related thing?

 

[Lancer]

I meant rebel legion UK. Just hadn't heard back about my account being activated for my posting rights on their forum.

yup, bloodstripes are my first thing to sort. Again, I'm really using costumebase as a cheap way to get into this, and then build from there. I imagine in time it'll all get replaced and I'm not averse to making / altering what I need to. The gunbelt is something else I definitely want to upgrade with real leather but that is something I'm going to do myself.

the dawn anderson pattern looks pretty good. I know Kay Dee used it for her other halfs Han jacket (just didn't put the arms on) but it looks like it will do pretty well for hans ESB jacket.

also, the look of it is pretty bang on for a jacket the xwing pilots could wear over their flight gear when they're on the ground. The jacket I refer to fore reference is drawn a lot in the Xwing comics and there are some pretty good pics of it in Phantom Affair #1

It's a casual jacket with pockets, and a back vent as this Anderson pattern has.

 

[defyitall]

Yeah, it works great for ESB. It's pretty much the most spot on pattern there is for that jacket. I actually own one of Dawn's Ready-To-Wear jackets for my ESB costume and have been trying to sell it for 2 years. Sucks when you spend that much on a jacket and then lose 30 lbs.

And it modifies well for the ROTJ vest since that vest has four box pockets. Just need to add the loops on the back. It works for ANH just need to sort the glove pocket yourself.

I was just confused since you were doing ROTJ. I thought you were insinutating he wore a jacket in that movie or soemthing crazy like that!

 

[Lancer]

I was just confused since you were doing ROTJ. I thought you were insinutating he wore a jacket in that movie or soemthing crazy like that!

oh no. it's just the way I understand it, apart from slight blaster differences and the tools on the gunbelt being different, the only major differenec between Han's costume in ESB and ROTJ is jacket to back to waistcoat, so if I make a jacket, I effectively get two costumes for the price of one.

I'm making the belt tools myself anyway and have some reference material so I'll work up both ESB and ROTJ versions of those.

One question though. the bloodstripes on the costumebase pants? are they sown onto a seperate piece of material which is then sown onto the pants? or directly onto the pants themselves? obviously if its the latter its gonna be a ***** unpicking that lot to fix them.

I'm steering away from iron on bloodstripes by the way. I've seen them criticised a lot on various costuming forums so I'm not going that route.

 

[Lancer]

well the costume still hasn't turned up. however, I've been fiddling with the blaster the last few days.

nice piece. not much in the way of air bubbles. good clean cast and the one I got sent was cold cast aluminium which will be a huge help with the weathering.

All assembled and filled now, so on to painting this baby over the next few days. undercoat tonight.

 

[defyitall]

oh no. it's just the way I understand it, apart from slight blaster differences and the tools on the gunbelt being different, the only major differenec between Han's costume in ESB and ROTJ is jacket to back to waistcoat, so if I make a jacket, I effectively get two costumes for the price of one.

True , true. The costumes are similar. Same brown pants. The shirts are both the cavalry style double fold bib design. Though their details are slightly different and the colors are different. If you wanna get down to the specifics. ESB has a blue jacket and ROTJ has a black vest styled after the one in ANH. And the stuff you know: tools are different and blaster is different.

One question though. the bloodstripes on the costumebase pants? are they sown onto a seperate piece of material which is then sown onto the pants? or directly onto the pants themselves? obviously if its the latter its gonna be a ***** unpicking that lot to fix them.

They're actually cheap ribbon sewn onto a piece of material that attached BETWEEN the two side seams. My pants were huge so I had my tailor/costumer remove the crappy bloodstripe strip and sew the two seams together. Eliminating the extra couple inches on each side.

Good choice on skipping the iron on stripes. From what I've heard they are very hard to work with and don't yield great results even when you take care. Best to get some of the embroidered patches, embroider them youself, or pay to have them embroidered.

I've seen the ROTJ pants at Where Science Meets Imagination and the stripes were actually on a separate strips that was sewn onto the pants ahead of the side seam.

 

[Lancer]

well it's gonna be interesting what the fit of the pants will be.

if they're big, then that gives me spare material to work with. spare material for the bloodstripe strip.

 

[Supa troop]

I have a set of accurate bloodstripes somewhere shoot me a pm and ill sort them out if your interested

im in the UK

 

[Lancer]

oh that would be cool. fantastic.

I'm in Leeds. I'll shoot you a PM

 

[tk6214]

dude i'm glad you made that post I need this info
many thanks

 

[Lancer]

well my costume arrived finally. blaster done but I'm not over the moon with the finish. I think I 'over weathered' it. but I've put it in logical places it would wear taking into account the holster etc.

the trousers are bloody huge. they are like a tent. easily 38 waist and I'm at best a 34. hence why I'm not standing side on to you all. Proper trouser belt has yet to appear and I'm still working on getting some belt greeblies.

however, this is it thus far.

I got the boots from Robinsons in the UK. $52. size 44
A metal droidcaller from Clothears costumers $70

 

[Lancer]

pictures of my blaster. This is a resin DL44 in cold cast aluminium. I then undercoated in matt black before overspraying in gloss black.

The sight was sprayed with two coats of brass. Everything was then weathered by use of craft knife, sanding paper etc. I think the banged up finish on the sight is good, but I wonder if I've overdone it a bit elsewhere. I've basically put weathering where either:-

a) the gun parts come into constant contact with the holster.
b) are outside the holster (mainly the sight) and are likely to get dinged whilst walking about.

the last thing to do is a bit of dirt via pastel powder. overall I'm quite pleased at how this turned out because I haven't done any modelling at all for about 8 years. felt good to drag my stuff down from the loft and get everything out. Most of my paints were still useable too

opinions please.

 

[Lancer]

*update*

the knurled knobs under the gunsight mount are getting replaced by hex screw heads.

I found a local seamstress who is going to go to town on my 'tent' trousers. AND make the bloodstripes accurate.

from the information I have they should be 1" by 1/4" with a 1/8" gap between each stripes. They won't be embroidered but be yellow ribbon tape. So hopefull yin about another week I shall have new photos of me in better trousers with my proper black belt and belt greeblies.

Once I have the trousers in hand and fitting properly I will then 'adjust' the gunbelt so that the holster hangs slightly higher and the tie down strap for it prefers being above the knee.

 

[Lancer]

Got fitted for my trousers on saturday. its looking good and the bloodstripes are in fact going to be embroidered which I'm really happy about.

ok, it's costing me £25 for the stripes, but that isn't much to make it look 'right'

the stripes should be ready in about another week so hopefully I'll have something to show off then.

 

[Solo4114]

FYI, check out corellianexports on ebay. He's an RPFer that I've bought from in the past. Very reliable.

I'm not sure what your price range is for boots, but the Russian/Soviet ones are generally fairly affordable and look pretty close. They may be tight on your calves though (they're tight on mine, that's for sure). But they don't wrinkle as much (or rather, wrinkle in the right places), and they're tall enough. You can probably find them on E-bay as well.

Hope that helps!

 

[Lancer]

well the way its going, I'm going corellianexports for belt greeblies. There was someone else going to do me some ESB ones but he's disappearred off the radar a bit.

Boots, I have already. I thought for costuming first time out, I'd get something basic. They're not the greatest by any means, but they fit. They only look really wrinkled at the moment because of the way the trouser leg was stuffed down the boot. I'm adding elastic to the bottom so it should be a lot more taut down the leg and less bunching.

To be honest, I'm also just getting used to wearing high boots like that. I've never worn high boots and its a bit......wierd to be honest. I also have a big calf from cycling for many years so its snug shall we say.

 

[Lancer]

http://www.costumecostumecostume.com/patches.htm

The above link (halfway down th page) has both red and yellow bloodstripes available in embroidered style.

I ordered yellow.

I only wish I'd got a group order together as postage for 1 set was $25. yikes. ie the cost of the stripes.

bloodstripes arrived yesterday. in clear plastic bag inside a nice solid paper envelope. They are about 30" long so long enough to go down the leg and be hidden by the boot tops but do not go all the way down to the bottom of the leg.

good quality stitching. I know if you google it, Kerezman comes in for some flak over time, but I had good comms and no problems getting them within a week of order.

I know Kerezman has come in for some flak on this and other boards but I must say that me personally had great service and fast delivery.

updated my pistol. attacked it with some brasso metal polish to bring up the cold cast bits and also even out the paint finish.

then I rubbed graphite powder over it to give it a 'blued' metallic sheen.

the grips were washed in black. drybrushed and then coated in ink before being drybrushed again and have come out really really nice with a good deep finish to the colour. this is then all sealed in with some satin varnish.

Been round to the sister in laws for tea tonight. the nephews went wild over me dressed as Solo. guess what put on as a DVD to watch later until bedtime.

anyway, sometimes the flash didn't go off but here are some new shots of me doing my best to be the galactic scoundrel we all know and love.

Last things to sort now

1./ Belt Greeblies.
2./ Adjustments to the gunbelt so it lays better. I need to shorten the straps slightly to tighten the holster area to the thigh and also raise it a bit in height so it doesn't sit quite so low. I'm also going to raise the leg strap slightly to stop it constantly trying to dip below my knee and trip me up.

back ladies, back I say. form an orderly queue.

 

[Billhag]

Lancer
Are you going to apply to the 501st?....because I think you should get
clearance straight away with this fantastic costume.
Nice work, well done Sir!.....:cool