I wanted to wait until the whole project was done before I posted anything here. This past weekend, the local 501st garrison marched in a pretty big local Halloween parade (est. 80,000 people there).
I've always thought it would be cool to have a carbonite Han in a parade. The IC one is WAY too heavy, not to mention too expensive to risk damaging.
I decided to make a stunt type Han. Something that would look good from a few feet away, would be light enough to carry, and durable enough to be juggled from truck to troopers to float.
First up was the sculpt. I wanted this project to be quick. I had just short of 2 months to build it all. I used air-dry clay to build up the face and hands. I gave myself 2 days for the face, and 1 for each hand.
Here's what I ended up with:
I didn't take any pics of the hands because, well, I'm dumb. But they looked like hands, only made of clay. I sprayed them with a few coats of black spray paint to seal them up.
With the face and hands done, it was on to the body. I found a shirt that was sort of similar to Han's, and some generic pants. Sleeves snipped, legs snipped and I was on my way. I soaked them in latex house paint and arranged them in the right general shape. The body was padded up with balls of newspaper.
Here is the stuff all layed out on a piece of cardboard.
To get a decent bumpy texture around him, I used some joint compound from a kitchen remodel on the flat parts around the body.
The final Hancicle was done in paper mache. Packing paper and cellulose wall paper paste combine to form:
I spent a couple of days on this part of things. The paper was done in 4 sessions, since my fingers were getting too cold after a while. Han was lubricated with cooking spray to make sure the paper came off. The downside was that I lost some detail, since the paper wouldn't stick tightly to the molds. This was really apparent in the fingers - I lost my fingernails completely.
Once dry, I pulled the paper mache off of the mold, and filled it in with spray foam. After a day of drying, I used a hack saw to cut the excess foam from the back of it, leaving a smooth, fairly solid, and very light sculpt.
Sadly I didn't take a pic of the PVC frame, though you'll see part of it later. But the box is framed around 1" PVC pipe.
The top and sides are 1/8th" tile backing board, screwed to the PVC and sealed with latex caulking. Something like bondo would have made for a smoother edge, but this needs to be able to be bumped around without cracking.
The paper/foam was glued down to the tile backing board with liquid nails, then a tile board trim was put down over the top to frame Han.
Here is is, all mounted:
And primed:
And coated with 3-4 layers of rustoleum hammered finish silver paint:
Next came the side panels. I wanted lights, I wanted them to look somewhat close to the originals, but went into it knowing that this was being aimed at casual fans, not people who would actually know what the panels should look like.
I ended up using kitchen drawer organizers, cut at an angle, and battery operated LED christmas lights.
To attach them, I made plastic brackets out of a no parking sign and a heat gun. These brackets went on with industrial velcro, and use industrial velcro to attach to the body. I'm going to replace this with nuts and bolts I think, as they don't sit flush with the sides of Han. Either that or I'll seal the seams with caulking. Not sure yet on that.
I mounted the battery boxes for the lights on the inside, where they'd be easy to get to. Here you can also see the frame:
At this point I thought about the paint. I saw one of the HiCs from the movie when I went out to California earlier in the year, and have collected all of the reference photos I can find. They all seem to show the entire thing being 1 color.
In ESB, when Han is being floated out to Slave 1, it looks like the edges area gunmetal color and the middle is silver. I decided to paint mine up that way, since I though the contrast would look good, and it would mimick the lighting / scene better.
So before attaching the panels, I painted the outside with rustoleum "dark bronze" hammered finish, which is really more aptly called "grey". Yeah, the sides should be smooth, but the texture of the paint masked some construction defects
And here he is, all painted and lit up. I also lit all 8 panels, since I thought the effect would be cooler for people seeing him.
For the parade, we mounted 4 PVC rods under it with zip ties, and wrapped them in black duct tape so that they'd be less noticible.
4 TKs carried it, led by Boba Fett. I was too far in the back to hear, but the troopers tell me that people were pretty excited to see it. The troopers switched sides a few times throughout the parade, but overall said it wasn't bad to carry.
So, overall it was a total success. I'd estimate it's in the 20 pound range, so divided by 4 people, that's not bad at all. I used a lot of things I had around the house, but if I bought everything just for this, probably about $200 went into it.
I've always thought it would be cool to have a carbonite Han in a parade. The IC one is WAY too heavy, not to mention too expensive to risk damaging.
I decided to make a stunt type Han. Something that would look good from a few feet away, would be light enough to carry, and durable enough to be juggled from truck to troopers to float.
First up was the sculpt. I wanted this project to be quick. I had just short of 2 months to build it all. I used air-dry clay to build up the face and hands. I gave myself 2 days for the face, and 1 for each hand.
Here's what I ended up with:
I didn't take any pics of the hands because, well, I'm dumb. But they looked like hands, only made of clay. I sprayed them with a few coats of black spray paint to seal them up.
With the face and hands done, it was on to the body. I found a shirt that was sort of similar to Han's, and some generic pants. Sleeves snipped, legs snipped and I was on my way. I soaked them in latex house paint and arranged them in the right general shape. The body was padded up with balls of newspaper.
Here is the stuff all layed out on a piece of cardboard.
To get a decent bumpy texture around him, I used some joint compound from a kitchen remodel on the flat parts around the body.
The final Hancicle was done in paper mache. Packing paper and cellulose wall paper paste combine to form:
I spent a couple of days on this part of things. The paper was done in 4 sessions, since my fingers were getting too cold after a while. Han was lubricated with cooking spray to make sure the paper came off. The downside was that I lost some detail, since the paper wouldn't stick tightly to the molds. This was really apparent in the fingers - I lost my fingernails completely.
Once dry, I pulled the paper mache off of the mold, and filled it in with spray foam. After a day of drying, I used a hack saw to cut the excess foam from the back of it, leaving a smooth, fairly solid, and very light sculpt.
Sadly I didn't take a pic of the PVC frame, though you'll see part of it later. But the box is framed around 1" PVC pipe.
The top and sides are 1/8th" tile backing board, screwed to the PVC and sealed with latex caulking. Something like bondo would have made for a smoother edge, but this needs to be able to be bumped around without cracking.
The paper/foam was glued down to the tile backing board with liquid nails, then a tile board trim was put down over the top to frame Han.
Here is is, all mounted:
And primed:
And coated with 3-4 layers of rustoleum hammered finish silver paint:
Next came the side panels. I wanted lights, I wanted them to look somewhat close to the originals, but went into it knowing that this was being aimed at casual fans, not people who would actually know what the panels should look like.
I ended up using kitchen drawer organizers, cut at an angle, and battery operated LED christmas lights.
To attach them, I made plastic brackets out of a no parking sign and a heat gun. These brackets went on with industrial velcro, and use industrial velcro to attach to the body. I'm going to replace this with nuts and bolts I think, as they don't sit flush with the sides of Han. Either that or I'll seal the seams with caulking. Not sure yet on that.
I mounted the battery boxes for the lights on the inside, where they'd be easy to get to. Here you can also see the frame:
At this point I thought about the paint. I saw one of the HiCs from the movie when I went out to California earlier in the year, and have collected all of the reference photos I can find. They all seem to show the entire thing being 1 color.
In ESB, when Han is being floated out to Slave 1, it looks like the edges area gunmetal color and the middle is silver. I decided to paint mine up that way, since I though the contrast would look good, and it would mimick the lighting / scene better.
So before attaching the panels, I painted the outside with rustoleum "dark bronze" hammered finish, which is really more aptly called "grey". Yeah, the sides should be smooth, but the texture of the paint masked some construction defects
And here he is, all painted and lit up. I also lit all 8 panels, since I thought the effect would be cooler for people seeing him.
For the parade, we mounted 4 PVC rods under it with zip ties, and wrapped them in black duct tape so that they'd be less noticible.
4 TKs carried it, led by Boba Fett. I was too far in the back to hear, but the troopers tell me that people were pretty excited to see it. The troopers switched sides a few times throughout the parade, but overall said it wasn't bad to carry.
So, overall it was a total success. I'd estimate it's in the 20 pound range, so divided by 4 people, that's not bad at all. I used a lot of things I had around the house, but if I bought everything just for this, probably about $200 went into it.
