Those look great! One of the better "wood" finishes I've seen on a non-textured print!
The Mando Project (S.A. Blaster, Metal Beskar Ingot and I guess maybe the whole darn suit...!)
- Thread starter JOATRASH FX
- Start date
AirMech74
New Member
Thanks!
Minor wall of text incoming!
I haven't had a chance to do more work on the blaster with electronics, but I did get a small start on the next phase of the project- the Beskar suit. Usually being a fit fanatical about fabrics (even though I don't really enjoy sewing), I've been trying to source a suitable wool for the cape and cotton duck for the undersuit. (The undervest, with the irregular striped weave, looks to be Indian cotton or linen.)
First up, the cape wool. Discussions in the various groups have been focusing on boiled wool blends, which I agree is a good start. However, looking at most felted wools of the boiled variety, the surface texture is fuzzy-smooth with longer strands of wool fur lying "flat" across it. Looking at the cape used with the Beskar suit (probably the same make as with the brown armor, just less weathering) there's a granular quality to the surface. The cape is also pretty thin, unlike a lot of boiled wools.
After ordering a large number of samples from all over the place, I found a fabric I was kinda-sorta OK with even though the surface wasn't perfect. Turns out it was out of stock when I went to order- go figure. After more searching, I happened upon a fabric that seemed perfect, in Finland, of all places! (Actually, Finland has been great for specialty fabrics... there's a place there where I got some awesome Batman Begins mesh, and industrial velcro a few years ago.) Being an impatient sort, and afraid this fabric too might run out, I skipped the sample and just placed an order. Cheap, it wasn't.
Unfortunately, as happens from time to time, the place had not been very thorough when photographing the fabric, so what looked like a very solid grey, turned out to be a deep jet black when it arrived (and the website being in Finnish didn't help, haha). D'oh! This happens sometimes, when fabric places take photos using flash and phones. Still, the surface and quality was nice, so I figured... what the hell... I'll see if I can lighten it. After more research on lightening wool blends (do NOT use bleach) I went out and got some hydrogen peroxide and a commercial fabric de-coloration. The peroxide did nothing to it... even at 12% concentration (the legal limit here without a license since it can be used to make explosives in higher concentrations). Granted, it may have needed more time and heat, but I decided to try the lightening agent. Now, I knew this was a risk and... err.. yeah... hmm. The lightening powder worked. Kind of. It made the fabric much lighter, but it also took just about all the blue out of it, leaving it a muddy rust-brown! Awesome for a scruffy Jedi tunic maybe, but not for our Mando's cape! More searching, including locally, revealed another couple promising leads and I finally found some stuff that I think matches very well. (So I've now dropped about $300 on just finding a cape wool that I like enough.)
Here's the brown wool. Bleccch! I think I'm gonna give it to the cats... loose fabric by the yard is more popular than ANY commercial "cat bed"!
And the "correct" wool (ignore the brightness... it's darker and more color-correct in real life.)
For the cotton duck, searching was a tad more difficult, mainly because of the inconsistency of information regarding duck/canvas. A lot of the time, you only find heavier weight fabrics of this type, used for bags and tarps. but when you look at how the fabric moves and hangs, as well as the closeups of the size of the weave, it seems clear to me that the flight suit uses a more lightweight material than most canvas types you find. This stuff should be the easiest to locate, but finding something lightweight enough proved difficult. As luck would have it, a local place actually had some that should work perfectly. And while I was prepared to throw it in dye if needed, it actually has a slightly blue-purple tint just like the suit has been described by one of the costume designers. And with some dye and lightly padded interfacing, it'll work well for the flak vest too. It was expensive though, at $25 per yard.
The same local place also has a few promising candidates for the linen undervest. Here's one (again, ignore the brightness.)
Small note, lest I get a ton of PMs and requests: From what I could gauge, these fabrics were all limited quantity types, mainly at local places over on the Old World side of the big pond, so I doubt I'd be able to hook y'all up with a supply of them, as much as I'd like to. IF I find any good online sources, I'll let you all know here!
Another thing some have wondered about- there has been questions about if the exterior decorative stitching was present on the Beskar suit as well, and after still-framing the entire darn season for good shots of the elbows, I concluded that it is present- just with a thread that is just a tad lighter than the fabric (i.e. not off-white like on the brown armor suit).
I'm most likely going to use a proper flight suit one-piece pattern for this. Seems like it might be the right way to go based on comments from folks close to the production. It'll be good practice for when I do the BSG flight suit eventually!
More soon...
I haven't had a chance to do more work on the blaster with electronics, but I did get a small start on the next phase of the project- the Beskar suit. Usually being a fit fanatical about fabrics (even though I don't really enjoy sewing), I've been trying to source a suitable wool for the cape and cotton duck for the undersuit. (The undervest, with the irregular striped weave, looks to be Indian cotton or linen.)
First up, the cape wool. Discussions in the various groups have been focusing on boiled wool blends, which I agree is a good start. However, looking at most felted wools of the boiled variety, the surface texture is fuzzy-smooth with longer strands of wool fur lying "flat" across it. Looking at the cape used with the Beskar suit (probably the same make as with the brown armor, just less weathering) there's a granular quality to the surface. The cape is also pretty thin, unlike a lot of boiled wools.
After ordering a large number of samples from all over the place, I found a fabric I was kinda-sorta OK with even though the surface wasn't perfect. Turns out it was out of stock when I went to order- go figure. After more searching, I happened upon a fabric that seemed perfect, in Finland, of all places! (Actually, Finland has been great for specialty fabrics... there's a place there where I got some awesome Batman Begins mesh, and industrial velcro a few years ago.) Being an impatient sort, and afraid this fabric too might run out, I skipped the sample and just placed an order. Cheap, it wasn't.
Unfortunately, as happens from time to time, the place had not been very thorough when photographing the fabric, so what looked like a very solid grey, turned out to be a deep jet black when it arrived (and the website being in Finnish didn't help, haha). D'oh! This happens sometimes, when fabric places take photos using flash and phones. Still, the surface and quality was nice, so I figured... what the hell... I'll see if I can lighten it. After more research on lightening wool blends (do NOT use bleach) I went out and got some hydrogen peroxide and a commercial fabric de-coloration. The peroxide did nothing to it... even at 12% concentration (the legal limit here without a license since it can be used to make explosives in higher concentrations). Granted, it may have needed more time and heat, but I decided to try the lightening agent. Now, I knew this was a risk and... err.. yeah... hmm. The lightening powder worked. Kind of. It made the fabric much lighter, but it also took just about all the blue out of it, leaving it a muddy rust-brown! Awesome for a scruffy Jedi tunic maybe, but not for our Mando's cape! More searching, including locally, revealed another couple promising leads and I finally found some stuff that I think matches very well. (So I've now dropped about $300 on just finding a cape wool that I like enough.)
Here's the brown wool. Bleccch! I think I'm gonna give it to the cats... loose fabric by the yard is more popular than ANY commercial "cat bed"!
And the "correct" wool (ignore the brightness... it's darker and more color-correct in real life.)
For the cotton duck, searching was a tad more difficult, mainly because of the inconsistency of information regarding duck/canvas. A lot of the time, you only find heavier weight fabrics of this type, used for bags and tarps. but when you look at how the fabric moves and hangs, as well as the closeups of the size of the weave, it seems clear to me that the flight suit uses a more lightweight material than most canvas types you find. This stuff should be the easiest to locate, but finding something lightweight enough proved difficult. As luck would have it, a local place actually had some that should work perfectly. And while I was prepared to throw it in dye if needed, it actually has a slightly blue-purple tint just like the suit has been described by one of the costume designers. And with some dye and lightly padded interfacing, it'll work well for the flak vest too. It was expensive though, at $25 per yard.
The same local place also has a few promising candidates for the linen undervest. Here's one (again, ignore the brightness.)
Small note, lest I get a ton of PMs and requests: From what I could gauge, these fabrics were all limited quantity types, mainly at local places over on the Old World side of the big pond, so I doubt I'd be able to hook y'all up with a supply of them, as much as I'd like to. IF I find any good online sources, I'll let you all know here!
Another thing some have wondered about- there has been questions about if the exterior decorative stitching was present on the Beskar suit as well, and after still-framing the entire darn season for good shots of the elbows, I concluded that it is present- just with a thread that is just a tad lighter than the fabric (i.e. not off-white like on the brown armor suit).
I'm most likely going to use a proper flight suit one-piece pattern for this. Seems like it might be the right way to go based on comments from folks close to the production. It'll be good practice for when I do the BSG flight suit eventually!
More soon...
Ok, so in between printing parts and finishing Beskar, I've been custom dying fabrics. As can happen sometimes... I've had a run of bad luck.
Yesterday it was back to the drawing board. I went out and got more fabric. This time, I was a little more careful and changed some settings on the washing machine. More water in the cycle and dissolved dye before starting the machine even though it was made to go in "dry", ensured a more even spread. This time, it came out a lot better. I also thought "screw it", I'm gonna add some tone to the new wool too... so I threw that in a tub with a mixture of black and brown. It's still drying as I type this, but I THINK it survived and came out in a better tone.
(I promise... I'll throw up some photos when i get the chance.)
Now I just have to take care of the undervest material. Bought some tan Indian cotton which had the correct weave and will be dying that tonight.
A note on color: Since Maria Sandoval, who worked on the production (with Cara's costumes I think?) pretty clearly confirmed that the Beskar suit is BROWN, I started doing some experimentation. We of course have the leaked on-set photo where the Beskar flight suit was very much brown and can assume that no color grading was applied to it, giving a close approximation of the right tone. With that in mind, I took a couple dozen screens from different scenes of the show and ran them through filters to "de-color-grade" them... essentially trying to take them back to "as shot" status. Now, it wasn't possible to eliminate all tint, but the results I got very clearly point to dark brown flak vest, slightly lighter, less saturated, undersuit (possibly with darker over-sleeves) and a medium chocolate-brown undervest. Cape seems to be more heavily grey based with just a tinge of brownish tone to it.
One reason the brown changes so much with grading is that it's just... strange... as colors go, illustrated in this vid:
When dying my undersuit fabric, I also added some light BLUE dye to it, because in certain light it's not really an "earthy" brown, but in fact gives off blue-purple tints while still looking brown overall.
Is all this overkill? Maybe...
- The cotton vest material I got can't be lightened.. and I've tried just about everything- dye removers, pure bleach, hydrogyn peroxide... never encountered dye this resilient!
- The cotton duck... I managed to dye a good color for the flak vest but when I went to lighten the rest for the undersuit... it was ruined.
Yesterday it was back to the drawing board. I went out and got more fabric. This time, I was a little more careful and changed some settings on the washing machine. More water in the cycle and dissolved dye before starting the machine even though it was made to go in "dry", ensured a more even spread. This time, it came out a lot better. I also thought "screw it", I'm gonna add some tone to the new wool too... so I threw that in a tub with a mixture of black and brown. It's still drying as I type this, but I THINK it survived and came out in a better tone.
(I promise... I'll throw up some photos when i get the chance.)
Now I just have to take care of the undervest material. Bought some tan Indian cotton which had the correct weave and will be dying that tonight.
A note on color: Since Maria Sandoval, who worked on the production (with Cara's costumes I think?) pretty clearly confirmed that the Beskar suit is BROWN, I started doing some experimentation. We of course have the leaked on-set photo where the Beskar flight suit was very much brown and can assume that no color grading was applied to it, giving a close approximation of the right tone. With that in mind, I took a couple dozen screens from different scenes of the show and ran them through filters to "de-color-grade" them... essentially trying to take them back to "as shot" status. Now, it wasn't possible to eliminate all tint, but the results I got very clearly point to dark brown flak vest, slightly lighter, less saturated, undersuit (possibly with darker over-sleeves) and a medium chocolate-brown undervest. Cape seems to be more heavily grey based with just a tinge of brownish tone to it.
One reason the brown changes so much with grading is that it's just... strange... as colors go, illustrated in this vid:
When dying my undersuit fabric, I also added some light BLUE dye to it, because in certain light it's not really an "earthy" brown, but in fact gives off blue-purple tints while still looking brown overall.
Is all this overkill? Maybe...
enterprise0216
Sr Member
Thanks for sharing the photos and mistakes do happen when handling dyes and fabrics. As for this being overkill?? HELL NO when you are creating your own take on particular project and your want to get it spot on right sometimes you have to engage in over kill to yield the highest results possible so i understand completely.
Several dye baths later. (Throwing fabric into the washing machine is all I've had time for the last couple of weeks!)
Left: flight suit
Middle: flak vest
Right: undervest
Bottom: cape
We'll see if I'm happy with this or if I decide to do more.
Left: flight suit
Middle: flak vest
Right: undervest
Bottom: cape
We'll see if I'm happy with this or if I decide to do more.
Hi mate, are we 100% sure it is brown, as there have been 2 people who said they either worked on the set or helped design the outfit. 1 says it is gray, with a blue/purple hue and the other said it is brown. The cape is definitely grey and looking at the description of the little figurine says the flight suit is grey as well. I am not here to argue of who is right or wrong...but if 2 people of who worked closely on the Mandalorian...how do we know who was right?
Well, we can't be 100% sure without seeing the suit in person, but the way I see it, we can't be reasonably sure due to a few reasons:
- The production crew member who stated it was brown, worked on the actual costumes and has seen it (presumably) in person. The crew member who stated it was grey-purple was a concept artist and may not have seen the actual on-set costume in person.
- The "leaked" on-set photos show brown tones, and it's unlikely that those were color graded, but are more "natural" in their color balance.
- Production material, such as the life size standee for example, are brown. Disney/Lucas Licensing has to approve all such materials before release, and it's logical to assume that they would not approve something that was grossly incorrect. (This isn't a fool-proof assumption though, because even if the Hot Toys show a brown tone, they have gotten the color wrong before- for example, their Star Lord Vol 1 coat was a burgundy red color, when the actual coat was more of a tan-orange-brown.
In addition, I have done a bit of "color de-grading" on screens from the show, essentially neutralizing the color grading a bit and doing some tests. Like so:
Now, we can assume that the scene was filmed using the Stagecraft tech (artificial light), but I would also assume that they dialed in the lighting to mimic natural sunlight in a cloudless sky (i.e. lots of BLUE, color temperature around 5500) since stage lights usually mimic that, unless they have a tungsten setting. So I did lots of testing on various images (the one above is just an example) and what I'm seeing seems to indicate that the suit is brown in tone. It's probably not a thick, chocolate brown like in the life size standee, but definitely not neutral grey.
If you watched the video linked above, you will have noticed that brown is a weird shade, in that colors we don't associate with brown actually ADD to the brown tone sometimes.
Am I absolutely certain that this is spot on? No, of course not. Keep in mind that I'm no expert in lighting, beyond having researched and read a bit for various work projects and basic knowledge of film and photography. But I think it's as close as we're likely to get until someone comes out with color-neutral photographs of the suit.
Small note on the cape: I have a hunch that it's grey, but with a slight brown tint, because it doesn't stand out a lot against the rest of the suit- in other words, not a pure charcoal color (which usually has a lot of blue in it). Something more taupe-colored.
Thanks for all the info. It is one of those things...this undersuit is driving me nuts. Especially after seeing how just plain gray can look brown, green or charcoal just by changing the lighting. So yes it may well be a brown undersuit, but more as a grey with brown hue to it...cause in some scenes it just like dark grey and in others like dark brown. I just wish they put up the costume somewhere for us to have a look at....
Sure thing. I know... it's kinda crazy. You want to get real nuts? Look at this one...
Top photos are of a taupe colored wool blend. A different material than the stuff in my previous post. It's grey-brown... reads as such real life BUT when you look closely at the fibers, some of them look PURPLE.
The lower three are the same flight suit fabrics. Note how the lighting makes them take on red-blue tones, but look more neutral otherwise.
These shots were all taken with my cell phone.
Thats freaking insane...no wonder this is pretty much impossible to get correct...unless we actually can have a look at the real one in various light conditions. From the bottom row I really like the most left one. Shaded outdoor sunlight. Are those colours bought, or did you dye all of them? And if they were straight of the bolt...would you have info about brand canvas, colour etc
Much appreciated mate.
They were all dyed special by me, using mixes of brown and blue. From the bottom row, the top fabric is linen-weave cotton for the undervest (what some refer to as the cummerbund), middle is for the flak vest and bottom is for the flight suit, both a medium-lightweight cotton canvas. (I feel that the thick 10-12oz duck canvases some are using will be too stiff.) Since I did the same type of color tests using screens from different episodes, I was able to arrive at a dye solution that I think matches up fairly well with what we saw on screen under various conditions.
I recon you nailed the colours, even for the cummerbund, which is such a weird colour brown. I have send you a PM. Thanks mate
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