SDS TIE Pilot statue, work in progress

[Themodelshopman]

I ordered a tailored screen accurate flightsuit, belt, gloves, from argentina. It will arrive in 3 weeks. The boots are fireman boots with the same cut as the kobelbeckers.

I made the base from 30mm mdf and plexiglass.

 

[lolo080]

I ordered a tailored screen accurate flightsuit, belt, gloves, from argentina. It will arrive in 3 weeks. The boots are fireman boots with the same cut as the kobelbeckers.

I made the base from 30mm mdf and plexiglass.

good idea : a pilot display :love, it looks great, i found the mannequin used a little too thin
do you plan to modify something ?

 

[Themodelshopman]

Oh, yes - the entire upper body is padded and buffed with bubble plastic foil (not the arms yet). The sam will be done with the legs. The entire manequin need massive "reconfiguration". The arms are cut, filled and repositioned. The hands was like childrens hands and had to be cut entirely to pieces and redone.

 

[Star Wars Helmets]

I received my TIE flight suit from Costumebase in Singapore (they were VERY quick to deliver BTW) and I'm impressed.

Here's my progress so far.

Its an SDS Helmet with Laws chest box and armor. I need to replace the tubes (I have some SDS ones which IMO are fairly accurate), then I need a belt, gloves etc.

Its on a 6ft1 manequin (the one I use for my Alien) so is a bit too tall but good progress so far.

Cheers

Jez

 

[NAZGÛL]

Nice! Thats looking like the real thing!
Are you gonna paint silver areas?

 

[Themodelshopman]

That is really nice! Now i can`t wait to get my "soft parts"!!!:love

 

[sskunky]

That's looking great Jez!

 

[frosty]

that looks great Jez
I allways loved this costume, very impressed.

 

[Star Wars Helmets]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Frosty, pm sent.

Nazgul - yeah I'm just summoning up the courage to do it. The silver is actually a graphite/gun metal colour and I'm sure Humbrol do one quite similar. There were some all-black ones in RotJ but I agree the highlghted ones look cooler.

Cheers

Jez

 

[Zenwalker]

Jez, any reason you chose to use the Laws chestbox over the SDS one? Which do you think is more screen accurate? Looks great btw.

 

[Star Wars Helmets]

Only because I never got an SDS chestbox. Timing-wise IIRC he did the TIE helmet after the Stormtrooper helmet. Then LFL got "involved" so I backed away.

I'd already bought a laws helmet, armor and chestbox combo from Dan so I put the SDS helmet with the laws chestbox and armor as I thought it worked better.

It was after that AA did the Stormtrooper armor and then the TIE chestbox and armor some time after that.

Accuracy-wise I think the SDS chest box casting is good and probably a cast off an original, however it looks to me like he's flipped it front to back (ie its the wrong way round). He's also added the coffee cup holders on the top which werent part of the original casting but may have been "o" rings or something similar added to them after (or some of them or the prototype). Its hard to say whether ALL the chest boxes were "flipped", since only 1 chest box seems to have survivided, which is currently in the LFL archives, but that is certainly a different way round to Ainsworths.

Hope that makes sense!

Cheers

Jez

 

[Zenwalker]

Jez, what you say makes sense. I checked a high res photo I have of AA standing next to a pile of Tie Pilot helmets taken in a parking lot back during his production of them in '76 (i think that was the year anyway). There is one chest box in the photo also and it is flipped the same way as the one I got from SDS. Not only that but all the toggle switches are the same and even the little white strips (stickers) along the top are there.

So, it seems the SDS chestbox is correct to how he made them before giving them over to the SW prop dept. The discrepancies between the the LFL archives one and the current SDS chestbox is probably due to the SW prop dept. or Lucasfilm modifying them after they received them from SDS. Even the the toggle switches are different on the LFL archive box compared to how SDS originally made them.

And like you said LFL only has the one chestbox so who knows if the other screen-used chestboxes were like the LFL archive one, perhaps not, and perhaps they may have been identical to or closer to the original SDS version. The LFL version may even have been modified after the film, who knows?

 

[Star Wars Helmets]

Ha - you beat me to it. I was just looking at the same pics and yes the one completed chestbox shown does have it flipped the way SDS now has it.

So basically it looks like some were completed one way, some the other. Having assembled one myself (the Laws) I can see its easy to get it the wrong way round so I dont suppose theyreally thought that we'd be discussing this level of detail 30 years later :lol

Cheers

Jez

 

[Zenwalker]

My only conclusion is that great minds think alike.:lol

 

[freakengine]

Jez, I'd be interested in learning which Humbrol paint color you end up going with for the gunmetal/silver highlights since you've actually held a screen-used helmet. I've tried a couple of Humbrol colors and haven't been thrilled with either one so far.

 

[Yorkie Fett]

Jez, on the SDS site it looks like there are some pretty accurate metal greeblies on the ear pieces. Your pictures look like they are missing.
Did you remove yours or am I not looking closely enough?

 

[RBJ]

The only time a chest box is seen on screen in all three movies is in ROTJ ( using left over ANH footage) and it does have the "flipped" rockers , two white squares, and the third grey hose..however I haven't been able to tell how the top wedge is...

 

[Star Wars Helmets]

Jez, on the SDS site it looks like there are some pretty accurate metal greeblies on the ear pieces. Your pictures look like they are missing.
Did you remove yours or am I not looking closely enough?

Yes youre right - I have them in a pot on my desk - I really need to stick them on - and the mohawk greeblies too. Ive also got that knurled knob that SDS placed lower down but that doesnt seem to have been added to the screen used helmets (maybe just the proto featured in the 1976 SDS shots) - however I notice it did crop up on the AT-AT (connecting the shoulder bridges with the chest piece)

Freakengine - Ive not painted mine yet so need to check out the humbrol paint range.

It is surprising for such a "major" caracter how few decent on-set photos there are

Cheers

Jez

 

[Themodelshopman]

It is all there, look again

 

[1970si]

Great looking display! Are you going to add the side tube that goes to the Back armor plate making it ANH version?

J