My long-awaited Anovos/Denuo Novo First Order Stormtrooper armor

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

MyBuddyBossk... First of all, love your user-name. Yeah, it's been an interesting time. I have seen some good fanmade suits come along. I'm supplementing this one with some of KB's, but it's still going to require work to integrate. I wanted to hold out for something with provenance -- even if liberties had to be taken for manufacture and construction. I had hopes after Anovos said they were going to do the inversion-forming that we'd get nice sharp corners to work with, so seeing that turned out to be a straight up lie was... irritating.

But. I've spent a lot of my formative years in this hobby learning how to make silk purses out of pigs' ears. As long as I have something of the right approximate size and shape, I can work with that. I am fond of quoting a bit of Industry wisdom Rick Sternbach passed along to me some years ago: "We have been doing so much for so long with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing." I also have a personal aim of making most of my costume work "better than the film prop". I know the shortcuts taken for things that don't need to stand up to scrutiny, but a worn costume does. So while waiting to get the kit was an exercise in patience, so, too, will be the process of building it to my standard.

Also, I just realized, I haven't posted pics of the weapons or accessories in this thread. Gloves from Imperial Armoury:

SE-44C sidearm blaster, 3D files by Germaine/5thHorseman over at the FISD, 3D printing mostly by me. Shapeways did the main sight piece, due to fiddliness, and the aluminum "holster-bracket" side plate was procured elsewhere...

This was after less than an hour of cleanup. It has since progressed further. I'll get some more pictures taken and up over the weekend.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Ah, the gift that keeps on taking. Updating things as I learn them about this kit, to pass along, even if I haven't addressed myself to fixing them yet. So. The thighs and calves on the film suits (TFA version, anyway -- I have no idea about the TLJ ones) have the outside seams back-over-front and the inside seams front-over-back. The kit gets that for the thighs, but the calves have the outside seam front-over-back, so I'm going to have to cut off the glue tab on the calf backs. Since I'm already thickening all the pieces, that's a relatively minor addition to the work on the shins, but still annoying to have to correct.

Unrelated word of advice. As I said above, I've been talking to DN about the clip greeblies. Where they stand now is they have thanked me for my "suggestion" and forwarded it to production. So, for the time being, if anyone orders arm or leg parts sets, they'll come with some right and some wrong greeblies. They also might, at some point, offer plastic parts only, but for now, only full sets. So I'll have some sticker sheets, should anyone need them for some reason. But, since I'm getting one set of each arm and leg just for the plastic pieces, between those and the other pair of legs I'm getting, I'll have enough of the large greeblies (6) to build the legs properly.

...It also means I'll have a dozen of the small clip greeblies. Maybe I'll use them to "swarzify" a pair of boots to make, like, a First Order-y version of BSG Colonial Warriors' boots...

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

As I said over in the main Anovos/Denuo Novo thread, I got the spare chest and right leg armor sets that I pre-ordered. I haven't looked on their site to see whether they've changed their listings, but what I got wasn't exactly what I ordered. Not that I'm complaining. The chest set (I pre-ordered outer and inner chest plates and backplate, plus chest latch greeblies) came as chest and torso armor -- down to the cod and butt plates. No thermal detonator, but I don't need one.

The leg came with the correct three large clip greeblies, rather than the two large and one small. So they seem to have listened to what I said.

I've already got everything rough-rough trimmed and the three pieces of the outer chest plate cut apart. Just with trial, taped sandwiching, it already feels so much sturdier. So, I guess... if one wants to build a good set of FOTK armor, ya need two kits. *lol* I'm going to wait to see what sales they run to get the rest of the arm and leg sets I need, but I have plenty to work on right now. I'll see about pictures later on.

 

[aero]

I just came acoross your thread today, I'll be keeping an eye on it.
I'm in the process of finishing up my armour.
Abs slurry for me and tonnes of sanding. I'm not painting the armour so it's been a long process getting everything just right. The forearms aren't right and to get the shape right meant hours of abs slurry and sanding. These forearms that come with the kit aren't TLJ.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

aero, yeah, the closest approximation is Finn's forearms, but, as you have found out, they're a base that can be worked with if one has the reference, patience, and materials. I admire your patience with sticking with bare polished plastic. Did you build the edges up sharper, too?

 

[aero]

Inquisitor Peregrinus, Yes, I built up the edges on the forearms and removed the box detail at the end of the Piccatinny Rail (whatever that's called) and 3D modeled and printed one for sharper detail. I also removed the pill detail on the wrist end of the forearm and made the pill recess deeper also. I'm going a little too far down the rabbit hole.
I'm trying to finish before Star Wars Celebration Europe.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Inquisitor Peregrinus, Yes, I built up the edges on the forearms and removed the box detail at the end of the Piccatinny Rail (whatever that's called) and 3D modeled and printed one for sharper detail. I also removed the pill detail on the wrist end of the forearm and made the pill recess deeper also.

Nice approach... I'm working with what I got -- partly to see if I can, and partly because the formed plastic is more conducive to the added functionality I'm incorporating. Don't talk to me about rabbit holes.

I'm trying to finish before Star Wars Celebration Europe.

Ooo... Good luck with that. How much is left?

 

[aero]

Nice approach... I'm working with what I got -- partly to see if I can, and partly because the formed plastic is more conducive to the added functionality I'm incorporating. Don't talk to me about rabbit holes.


Ooo... Good luck with that. How much is left?

tweaks here and there nothing too involved (he says while looking down the rabbit hole ), it's really the webbing side of things I'm figuring out.

 

[lmgill]

To be honest, I did not read your entire post, so if I'm saying something you have already covered, my apologies.
First, I'd be very curious to see the Anovos images of "one of their employees and prototypes". Because, as far as Anovos being unhappy with the Chinese pieces, this sounds misleading. I say this, because I'm the one who remade all their tooling and prototyped the new version of their suit. It was done in North Hollywood CA. not China.
Although after we retooled the entire suit, Anovos canceled their order for suits, then took our tooling, and gave it to their Chinese manufacturer. The suit you show, looks like the pieces that could be produced with my tooling.

As for the "inversion-forming", this is a made up term.
In the thermoforming world, this is know as first surface forming. It is when the surface of the formed plastic that will be seen, is the surface that was in contact with the tool.
Second surface forming is what most people think of when they think of vacuum forming. That is when the opposite side from the tool surface is seen. The chest pieces are 1st surface pulled. Anovos had no idea what this was until I showed them. Here is the multi part tool we made to make 4 chest pieces at one time, and if a tool was damaged (A much bigger issue with 1st surface tooling) we could unscrew the grey toll, and replace it while not having to remove the main tool from the machine.
All of the other pieces were second surface tools.
I also made some multipiece tools, so we could form the forearms without having to glue together multiple pieces and blend seams, like Anovos' first prototype.

Another observation, the original film suits were cast in Polyurethane rubber, not vacuum formed. So to try and reproduce the suit verbatim in thermoformed plastic is not possible.
I took a trip to a industrial polyurethane convention in North Carolina, in order to research the technology at present, to determine a way to mass produce the FO suits, as they were made for the film, but Anovos management said no, that it was unaffordable, even though I had not even given them a price.
The one thing I don't think they used, was the more efficient leg suspension system, that makes the legs stay where they are meant to on your legs. The issue with the movie version, is as you walk, the legs want to rotate around your thigh, misaligning the knee joint. They had this problem on set. (according to a friend of mine who was on set during filming)

Here is a couple of pictures of our prototype. I had it painted gray, so you could see the surfaces and seam alignment better.

In this shot, you can see all of the other prototype tooling on the shelf in the background. This is all second surface tooling.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Thank you, lmgill -- that's exactly the sort of insight I was looking for. Here are the pics they posted to their blog about the "first shipment they got from China" that they purported to be unhappy with:

Where you have the TFA version of groin armor in your pics above, these are definitely TLJ. Where they said they were using what I now know is properly called 1st-surface forming and were going to use a 5-axis laser cutter to cut all the pieces out before shipping, I know the first part to be BS, and the second part is likely made up, too. The pieces I finally received from Denuo Novo last Fall are exactly the pieces above (maybe not those exact ones, but from the same tooling). The wastage has all the same shapes and tells. And it was definitely 2nd-surface-formed. Your prototype suit looks fantastic -- and much, much sharper than what I got. I have no idea what they sent to China (if anything), but I am thinking it wasn't your tooling. Might want to see if you can get that back from Dana and Joe...

I'd appreciate any other insights you have into the TFA suit. Please take a few minutes to skim the rest of this thread and see what I ran into. I apologize for some of the redundancy in my posts. I was trying to bounce between here and the FISD and lost track from time to time of what I'd already posted where.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

General update-ish, prompted by lmgill's post. I was going to posting in a week or so, anyway, but...

I now have all the additional parts I'd ordered from Denuo Novo. The people in their shipping department need some clarification and/or caffeine. I ordered the upper-torso kit (chest and back pieces, plus chest greeblies and sticker sheet). What came was the full torso down to the groin and butt armor, minus belt and thermal detonator. They said keep the extra parts. The right leg parts kit was fine.

Later I ordered the left leg and the arms. The leg kit was also fine. The left arm kit was missing the main bicep piece, the forearm box, and the handplate, but had an extra pair of shoulder bell standoffs (they get cast on a single pull -- separated for the arm kits, usually) in addition to the one left one that was supposed to be there. The right arm kit was missing the resin greeblies, but that was fine, as I don't need them. They also sent another right leg and another upper-torso kit, because their system showed that order as still open. They said keep 'em.

Just got the missing bicep piece last week, and I'm going to be cutting a lot of plastic to get things to the point where I'm ready to work properly.

In the meantime, I've been idly working on the F-11D heavy blaster rifle, electronics for my SE-44C, ordering an updated thigh bracket from R2Dan, and painting the greeblies and ab boxes and waist pouch cover. Plus some preliminary work on the handplates and forearm boxes, as they're not getting laminated. I'll get some pics up tonight.

 

[lmgill]

Thank you, lmgill -- that's exactly the sort of insight I was looking for. Here are the pics they posted to their blog about the "first shipment they got from China" that they purported to be unhappy with:
Where you have the TFA version of groin armor in your pics above, these are definitely TLJ. Where they said they were using what I now know is properly called 1st-surface forming and were going to use a 5-axis laser cutter to cut all the pieces out before shipping, I know the first part to be BS, and the second part is likely made up, too. The pieces I finally received from Denuo Novo last Fall are exactly the pieces above (maybe not those exact ones, but from the same tooling). The wastage has all the same shapes and tells. And it was definitely 2nd-surface-formed. Your prototype suit looks fantastic -- and much, much sharper than what I got. I have no idea what they sent to China (if anything), but I am thinking it wasn't your tooling. Might want to see if you can get that back from Dana and Joe...

I'd appreciate any other insights you have into the TFA suit. Please take a few minutes to skim the rest of this thread and see what I ran into. I apologize for some of the redundancy in my posts. I was trying to bounce between here and the FISD and lost track from time to time of what I'd already posted where.

I believe you are correct, the images of the untrimmed pieces are not from our tooling. I would love to get our tooling back, but I doubt that will ever happen. I'm surprised at the roughness of the tooling on the unused surfaces. I'm also surprised by some of the shapes of these areas. They aren't helping the forming process any easier or better.

I'll have a more detailed look at the thread.

It is interesting that these are the pieces they sent, because what we were told, was Dana was not happy with what we had produced, (He and I didn't see eye to eye, so I'm not surprised) and asked China to make them better. We also heard China responded "We can't make them better".

What are the rubber ribbed pieces like?
The movie ones had ribs, but solid ribs, not actual convolutes, which is what you need to make the piece flex easily. The real ribbed pieces were very stiff. Again, something we heard from the set. We were told by someone there, that the actors could barely go up stairs because of the very limited flex of the knee joints.
We 3d printed a master and made convolutes from a high grade latex. But they stiffened over time, and I think one of our employees inadvertently dumped semi-rigid neoprene into the latex, since the other natural pieces we make with the latex are still very supple.

Here are some other shots from the shop, while we were prototyping all the Anovos products. We also did short runs of the Snow Trooper, Tie Pilot and X-wing Pilot hard parts.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Ah, man, that is sad-making. Your stuff looks amazing. I imagine far less work would have been involved in getting a suit wearable -- even without me retro-converting it from TLJ back to TFA.

What are the rubber ribbed pieces like?
The movie ones had ribs, but solid ribs, not actual convolutes, which is what you need to make the piece flex easily. The real ribbed pieces were very stiff. Again, something we heard from the set. We were told by someone there, that the actors could barely go up stairs because of the very limited flex of the knee joints.
We 3d printed a master and made convolutes from a high grade latex. But they stiffened over time, and I think one of our employees inadvertently dumped semi-rigid neoprene into the latex, since the other natural pieces we make with the latex are still very supple.

It's been a few years, but, if I recall correctly, the Standard version was going to have cloth gaskets and the Premiere was going to have rubber. I opted for Standard, and the gaskets I got from Denuo Novo are, in fact, cloth. I already knew that was likely, so I sourced rubber gaskets from Sean Thorsen. But they are, like the film pieces, solid, rather than convolutes, which I'd prefer. I don't suppose...? *wibbly eyes*

 

[lmgill]

Ah, man, that is sad-making. Your stuff looks amazing. I imagine far less work would have been involved in getting a suit wearable -- even without me retro-converting it from TLJ back to TFA.


It's been a few years, but, if I recall correctly, the Standard version was going to have cloth gaskets and the Premiere was going to have rubber. I opted for Standard, and the gaskets I got from Denuo Novo are, in fact, cloth. I already knew that was likely, so I sourced rubber gaskets from Sean Thorsen. But they are, like the film pieces, solid, rather than convolutes, which I'd prefer. I don't suppose...? *wibbly eyes*

I have some, but these are the ones that hardened, due to (my guess) the addition of neoprene.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Alas. I'll make do with what I have. I'd be grateful for any other insights and observations you have from working on the armor. For instance, I was surprised to see the groin armor is indeed that flat across the top. The one I got from a fan armorer I had been pondering shaping to the curvature of the TLJ piece from the kit. It fits to the body better...

...but I wanted to be sure of what was accurate before I potentially deviated.

I also still need accurate info on the inner bicep, thigh, and calf seams -- how far around from the front bicep seam is the side seam, is the curvature on the inner leg seams the same as outer (and how does that factor with how much shorter the inner thigh seam is than outer), and where is the inner-thigh "clip" detail that is absent on the TLJ version? Any measurements I can get would be lovely, and better than the eyeballing and guesstimating I've had to resort to...

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

Anyway... So there's a saying that life is what happens while you're making other plans. Life has been happening quite hard to me for about the last decade. I've tried to stay on top of things as I scrabbled for existential tools to enact real, foundational change. That is actually starting to happen. And, ironically, right around the time lmgill revived this thread with his observations, I had just started to feel impelled to Make once more. Waiting for the parts kits was a convenient excuse, but now I have everything, and, with no more ado, here's some stuff I've done in the last few days...

There are seven box details for the abdominal section. Three of these from the initial set were clean and fit perfectly with no-to-minimal work. One of the nice things about Rust-Oleum's paint+primer is being able to use it as a filler for minor-minor surface irregularities. So, painted, cured, and sanded down, they're ready to be painted for real.

Box 1:

Box 6:

Box 7:

2, 3, and 4 have either tiny nicks in corners or need work to get them to sit flush to the ab plate, and I haven't had much of a head for fiddly work. Box 5 -- the big one -- I'm carving out from the back to open up the square recess so I can make that a backer piece, rather than paint or a sticker:

The other big thing I got a sudden urge for follow-through on was the helmet. In about an hour, I went ahead and got it broken down. A couple things on an original prop...

Several things from this angle... Note the clip greeblies. The ones that came on the helmet had rounded ends -- which fit neatly in the rounded slots, but are inaccurate:

I have extra clip greeblies from the DN parts kits, so I'm using four of them to replace the originals. Conveniently, the slots are fine as-is (apart from needing to be widened a skosh).

Second, the way the main top piece and side pieces meet at that seam? Going down to that horizontal seam works. The extra little half-inch of separate pieces? Sloppy. One of my little hopefully-invisible tweaks is going to be to seal and fill that little break. Minor surgery.

Third, underneath, there's that offset inner ring. The helmet extends the correct amount, but is missing that offset. I've gone through and roughed in where it needs to be:

I'm going to mask off and measure and carefully cut out that portion, glue a facing to it that extends out about a quarter-inch all around, and glue that back in from behind. Boom. Offset.

Lastly from the above reference pic, the edge of the "nose" piece need to be corrected slightly. I thought I got a pic showing that angle, but apparently not. I'll show before and after to compare with this one once I do that. Apart from that, the piece is ready for its filler-primer stage (the whole helmet has more blatant surface imperfections than the ab boxes, thanks to being moulded plastic and having all the mounting posts and such on the back sides of all the pieces):

Moving around to the aerator, it's more accurate than I realized. It mainly just needs to be a more polished nickel/dark chrome:

I thought the angle it was mounted was way off...

I mean, how the hell you gonna attach anything to that when it's half-blocked by the shroud? Then I realized that that's accurate. On the movie helmets, it's also in-line with the cheek tube:

On the Anovos helmet, there are some fine details of the aerator recess that need to be addressed. Compare the pic above of mine against this one:

Lastly is the black stuff:

Some aspects of this are very straightforward. I need to fill in that bit of the brow trim that stuck to glue on the helmet body. That brow band I'm painting with a coat of rubber bumper coating. The lens is a distorted travesty. I'm tempted to order an optical quality one from a vendor I know in Germany, if they'll fit. If I can't polish out the eyestrain-inducing portions of this one. It has an upper lip that interlocks handily with the brow band that I believe the glass ones lack, and I'd like to be able to glue that. So we'll see.

The central portion is accurate to the original film helmets, but I don't care. It's boring and ugly and I want something better on the inside of mine, so most of that will get cut away to leave enough for the nosepiece to be mounted to and for vision blocking inside the side vents.

The "traps and tears" are fine as they are, but they and the lower lens surround will get hit with Rust-Oleum's professional grade gloss black.

And the hex mesh portion I'm going to replace with laser-cut, black-anodized aluminum with black panty-hose behind it for some better airflow.

One more butchered beauty shot, almost ready for painting:

I'm-a leave off here for tonight. I've got more things I want to get done over the next few days. Stay tuned.

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

lmgill, from the pics I have of the film suits, echoed by the pics you posted upthread of your prototypes, does this look like the right approximate location and curvature of the inside seams (the Sharpie lines)?

It looked, to my eye, to follow the same path as the outside seam line(s) -- the same graceful S-curve from bottom to top. I wanted to check with you, in part, because that would mean shifting the angle of the shin piece slightly, as you can see. One thing I could never see clearly, due to the oblique angles is that the inside calf seam doesn't look like it's exactly the same as the outside one. I'm trying to get this as close as I can before I commit to cutting plastic.

 

[lmgill]

Here is a profile image of the legs we made, based on high quality photos of the original.

BTW- did you cut off the rib at the bottom of the greave? That holds the "spat" in place.
The original pieces were not as nice as what we made, so don't get too carried away with "perfection".

 

[Inquisitor Peregrinus]

BTW- did you cut off the rib at the bottom of the greave? That holds the "spat" in place.
The original pieces were not as nice as what we made, so don't get too carried away with "perfection".

I'm not aiming so much for perfection as "how much better than the film costume can I make this?" I want something that doesn't look like crap when seen up close.

Where does the greave rib originate. It's not on any of the film costumes that I've been able to see that portion of:

I've done a lot of photo comparisons with similarly close and clear pictures, and the spat mounts over the greave noticeably above the bottom edge of the greave (about a quarter-inch down from the inset oval detail). Holding the kit parts I have against one another to check positioning, I can see how the rib would work, but I'm aiming for something closer to an improved version of the film suit. And also the indented part between the greave and the rib presses uncomfortably on my leg when the front and back are held closed to where they're supposed to be.

That aside, from your pictures and my pictures, I think I have a good cut line for the inner-leg seams, and I have a decent sense of where that line falls on the inner greave "clip" detail. I know how far down from the top of the thigh that inner "clip" detail is, and how much is on the front piece, but none of the pictures I have show the back piece clearly enough. Should I just make it the same length as the greave detail?