Blue Leader
Sr Member
The Dark Troopers from the Star Wars Expanded Universe have always been some of my favorite Star Wars things, especially the Phase Three (how can you deny its awesomeness?) and building a costume of one has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember, so when Oota Goota Workshop made a limited run of Phase Zero Dark Trooper armor I jumped at the chance and got a set. Finally my dream is able to come true! It may not be my beloved Phase Three but it's still pretty epic, and the blue color scheme is definitely classy. And even better, it's a suit of stormtrooper armor that actually looks good on a bigger guy like me!
So over the last few months I've been putting the armor together. It's my first ever armor costume so it's been a big learning experience for me, and I've certainly made my share of mistakes along the way, but it's slowly coming together piece by piece. It took me quite a while to find a good spray paint as the color was really hard to match, and it's still not perfect but it's fairly close. I modeled and 3D printed some greeblies to replace some parts on the armor to make it even more accurate. And if I was going all the way then I figured I should make an arc caster, too, so I've also been working on that. It's been quite the experience and I can't wait to get it finished!
Without further ado here are a few pictures of my progress. I've actually done a bit more than what's shown, I've got a lot of the armor painted and some of the detailing done, and the arc caster is nearly complete, but I still need to get some pictures of them.
Here's the unmodified helmet.
And here it is after a few small tweaks. I replaced the ear greeblies, opened up and added some brackets for the aerator tips to glue onto (they'll have a red glowing light inside) and I put on the back and cheek vents and the brow plates-- yup, they're supposed to be raised similar to the stormtrooper helmets in Rogue One, I realized that after studying the Battlefront character texture long and hard. (Note that I have actually resized the cheek vents a bit, making them a slightly smaller.)
The assembled (but not yet sanded) jetpack. And my cat, Egon.
The arc caster is built with a Rubies stormtrooper blaster that I cut apart, printed out a bunch of pieces for and added electronics to. Zap zap!
And here's a shot of the jetpack thrusters. I wanted them to look used and dirty and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. Silly as it might sound, I actually used some glitter paint on them to make them shine more like metal.
Here are the aerator/microphone tips and the knee bolts and chest bolts (or chest "nipples" if you prefer
).
The first test fitting. Yes, some of the armor rotated and the thigh armor slid down, the tape I used would not stay stuck!
And this is all of the armor assembled, sanded and ready for painting...
So over the last few months I've been putting the armor together. It's my first ever armor costume so it's been a big learning experience for me, and I've certainly made my share of mistakes along the way, but it's slowly coming together piece by piece. It took me quite a while to find a good spray paint as the color was really hard to match, and it's still not perfect but it's fairly close. I modeled and 3D printed some greeblies to replace some parts on the armor to make it even more accurate. And if I was going all the way then I figured I should make an arc caster, too, so I've also been working on that. It's been quite the experience and I can't wait to get it finished!
Without further ado here are a few pictures of my progress. I've actually done a bit more than what's shown, I've got a lot of the armor painted and some of the detailing done, and the arc caster is nearly complete, but I still need to get some pictures of them.
Here's the unmodified helmet.
And here it is after a few small tweaks. I replaced the ear greeblies, opened up and added some brackets for the aerator tips to glue onto (they'll have a red glowing light inside) and I put on the back and cheek vents and the brow plates-- yup, they're supposed to be raised similar to the stormtrooper helmets in Rogue One, I realized that after studying the Battlefront character texture long and hard. (Note that I have actually resized the cheek vents a bit, making them a slightly smaller.)
The assembled (but not yet sanded) jetpack. And my cat, Egon.
The arc caster is built with a Rubies stormtrooper blaster that I cut apart, printed out a bunch of pieces for and added electronics to. Zap zap!
And here's a shot of the jetpack thrusters. I wanted them to look used and dirty and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. Silly as it might sound, I actually used some glitter paint on them to make them shine more like metal.
Here are the aerator/microphone tips and the knee bolts and chest bolts (or chest "nipples" if you prefer
).The first test fitting. Yes, some of the armor rotated and the thigh armor slid down, the tape I used would not stay stuck!
And this is all of the armor assembled, sanded and ready for painting...
