Great progress sir. It's always amazing how each piece added makes a costume look much better than you'd expect from that piece alone.
As for the question regarding joints, I am really curious to see the end result of IM's build, I think that's probably the most realistic version I've seen. Most of the examples I've seen online (from Disney productions etc.) seem to have a small light weight/softish looking ball sewn or attached at some of the joints to give you the grey ball look but they are not really accurate on position or size. With black clothing on underneath I didn't think it was super noticeable for my end result that I skipped them, even though I had originally intended on attaching a couple of balls like the examples I saw.