Thanks everyone for the positive feedback. I neglected to start a build thread
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It took about six months to build - and much of the time was experimenting with different materials to mimic the look. Armour was from basic foam floor mats coated with white glue and covered with field grey fabric (a close examination of high rez images revealed his amour has a fabric layer rather than having been painted). The tubes are medical surplus tubes as is the mask. Hard armour bits are made from sintra. The arms are also sintra heated and bent into 'rings' and applied over 8 and 6 inch plastic ducts coated with flexible grey/green vinyl paint. Polished metal pieces and seals on the arms and wrist seals are aluminium duct tape stretched over sintra strips heated and bent using a heat gun. Main foam armour was also bent to shape using a heat gun, along with the large shoulder bell. The small bell on his left should is mesh reinforced worbla bent to shape over a ball, then fabric coated. The flight suit was picked up from a thrift shop along with a kid's fall coat made from grey pleather and silver fabric... it was used to create the detailing. The shoulder bell shield, neck seal and 'artificial foot' are also layered, then painted sintra cut and bent with a heat gun, along with most other hard surface greeblies. Trim detailing on the body armour is from stretch grey elastic material carefully added around amour panels... And then I have junk boxes filled with interesting shaped plastic bits collected overtime. It was interesting to scavenge for junk to mimic various components. Chrome trim on arms and legs is trimmed down automotive door trim. Total cost of materials was about $150 dollars - the real 'cost' was the labor of love
. Belt is made from thrift store web belts of various textures - buckle is made again from sintra to be screen accurate, similarly, holster is sintra and detailed with various types of webbing. I want to add I have a friend with a sign business who gave me sintra scraps, which help keep the cost way down. An of course, it does include the kitchen sink (drain cap) - lower vent is made from a drain cap, sintra and detailed with paper clips, again to appear as screen accurate as possible... the list goes on... the only thing that is 'authentic' from the film is the release clip and US military webbing across the chest plate. A lot of other details not seen in the image include the flag and breathing apparatus.
Costume has been submitted to the Rebel Legion for approval - and with a little luck, perhaps the CRL standard (fingers crossed).
Since these pictures, the breathing and armour tubes have been shortened and small shoulder cover trimmed to be more screen accurate. Also the arm trim has been narrowed slightly narrowed, also to be more screen accurate and make the arms easier to move. the right arm has been slightly shortened to make the screen accurate glove more visible, and finally a small green lighting system added to enhance the screen accurate look of the armour in the appropriate spots. Oh, and walking stick has been lengthened to be a little higher... walking stick is metal broom handle with a pepper shaker screwed to the top. It is covered with a plastic wire restraining tube and weathered. Costume cabling are grey and yellow network cables...
As you can tell, I was obsessed with the finer details... I did all this for a friend's son who is the same height and appearance as Forest Whitaker (he is younger, so we applied temporary grey die highlights to his hair and beard and roughed up his complexion with fake scare and battle damage).
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