Rogue One - Bodhi Rook costume (+ identified parts)

Hi!

I'm trying to do a Bodhi Rook costume for the upcoming Rogue One premiere. (Initially, because I imagined the costume to be a quite simple one...)
While analyzing the few available pics, I was really excited to find out that the part I thought was the hardest to do is actually a complete 'real-world' item:
The harness he is wearing seems to be a pretty unchanged SARVIP aircrew survival vest, used by the US military in the 90s.



The only obvious modification I was able to spot so far is the color of the straps. Looks like they tried to re-dye the whole vest in a darker brown. The straps and linings might have taken up more of it than the mesh-vest, which makes them appear darker. (The outer linings of the vest are dark brown, too - I don't think they painted those manually...)


Second item are his goggles. On first glance, they look like ordinary welding-goggles (with the switchable safety-shades removed). BUT after browsing through virtually hundreds of pictures, I wasn't able to find a single pair which is transparent! Of course, there are ordinary transparent safety-goggles, that do have these button-like vents. But those all have a single plane front...



I thought, I might order normal transparent goggles and welding goggles from the same brand and could then try to interchange the glasses. If I then painted the ringlike rims of the glasses, it would at least look a little closer. (but not perfect...)
Or maybe, they just glued magnifying glasses to the front of the safety goggles?? What do you guys think?

I could hardly imagine they did recasts of simple goggles, just to have them in transparent.
If anyone is able to come up with a matching pair (and info where to buy) , I'd be really happy!

Last but not least: the jumpsuit! Unfortunately, chances are high it's completely custom-tailored. At least, wasn't able to find anything even remotely close. (Problem: the collar. Looks like a formula-1-overall. But those are usually made of fireproof, insulated materials. His looks like simple cotton.) Of course, I could just buy a regular jumpsuit which is close in color and fabric and then try to retailor it. Still hoping, anyone is able to identify that one.




So far. Comments welcome!

Waah! Stupid me! The jumpsuit he is wearing is just a badly worn-off TIE-fighter-pilot-suit!
(How obvious that should have been... He's the pilot of the gang!)
Fortunately, there are several cosplay-tailors who offer TIE-fighter-suits that seem accurate enough for my purposes.
I'm getting one! (Just to wash and weather it...)

Still hoping for help on the goggles... Anyone?

The profile pic definitely shows the goggles as being magnified. I'm leaning towards custom made, but I could be wrong

Hi!

Now a little update on my WIP...

First: The Rogue One exhibition on the Star Wars celebration in London also showed Bodhi's costume! By the shots I've seen so far I am now absolutely sure that he's wearing a SARVIP survival vest. (Good thing I already found one on ebay!)
If anyone who attended the convention happens to have any more close-up shots, please post them here! (Especially the comm-pad on his left wrist looks different from the usual pilot-setup. If anyone's got more of that - would be really helpful!)

But now for my building progress: Did some start on the goggles. I bought TECTOR safety goggles and welding goggles, because those have vents in the perfect shape. The overall style of the goggles is not a 100%-match, but they were about the closest I was able to find - at least over here in Europe...



Exchanging the vents for the black ones was no problem. They fit snugly.



But the lenses gave me some worries. Putting in the whole lensfront of the welding goggles just looked wrong (besides the fact that it's opaque black), so I donned that idea. I then tried to just glue in the lenses of the welding goggles, which at least seem to have the right diameter. But they are far too flat and don't show any refraction (which seems to be the case with the original ones - thanks to tubachris for pointing that out!)



But I was lucky to find toy magnifying-glasses that have the same diameter. After some sawing and sanding they were ready to be glued in. (Also put in a comparison pic with the welding glasses just to show the difference in thickness).



One advice on the glue: Use some form of elastic glue! I went for super glue gel which is designed for soft-PVC and rubber. Because the frame of the goggles is rather soft and will slightly deform when putting on your head, there is a risk that the magnifying glasses will come off if you use more rigid types of glue.




So that's my result so far. I will exchange the headband with an all-black one (though it bothers me that it's a little too slim in width).
I still think, the overall look is close enough.
Next step will be the TIE-Fighter-suit and the vest. (Whatever arrives first...)

Will keep you up-to-date!

Maybe a slighly better shape - googles without the edges on the fron, and with the slope to the faceside:

http://www.ebay.de/itm/Vollsicht-Sc...310931018?clk_rvr_id=1062594527617&rmvSB=true

The clear plastic has a light green tint, but maybe that model is avalable in full clear, too?

Thanks Michael!

Yeah, already seen those. But so far I wasn't able to find anyone who sells them in colorless clear. And couldn't think of any pracitcal way to remove the green tint...
Still hoping to find the exact original ones someday. And I'm surely gonna "upgrade" whenever I stumble across something more accurate!

Greetings too and have a nice weekend!


By the way: Anyone with other closeup-shots of Bodhi's costume from the Celebration exhibit?

Finally got my SARVIP vest! It's a used one, so I have to do less weathering...

I have to redye it though.
Also got my TIE-pilotsuit (by megakos).

That one is pretty accurate. Just have to redo the velcro-parts on the collar.
And I'll have to heavily bleach it.

Just put the two parts together for a first impression.

(For fun I just imagined this to be Bodhi's brand-new uniform when he joined the empire...)

Parts of Star Wars on Facebook has the goggles as being "HF105-3 Safety Goggles - Jinhua Hengfa Industry And Trade Co., Ltd."

http://www.hengfatools.com/html-e/pro-detail-210.html

The pants on the jumpsuit look in some pictures as if they don't have any knee pockets...
In one picture of the heroes on the U-wing, the knee pocket's chevron flaps are visible but they are very high up on the thighs. It might be that the side pockets are not as big as in the OT allowing the knee pockets to be higher up.

The comm pad is reminiscent of a Scanning Crew comm pad, but instead of painted circles (or decals) on rectangular buttons there are circular greeblies.
The details don't quite line up in size and position with the OT design however. If you want accuracy to R1, it might be better do build it from scratch. One greeblie looks like a finishing washer or maybe a LED bezel like one of the two bezels found in Anakin's AOTC lightsaber. Another round greeblie looks like a ANH Rebel rank bar pip but I'm not sure of the scale.

Wow! Thanks for all the detailed feedback!
@Howlrunner: I've been searching for so long for exactly that piece of information! Great! (Looks like I should've checked parts-of-Star-Wars earlier...).
Already done some research. So far I only found industrial suppliers, who only sell those in a minimum lot of 1000pcs...
But at least I know now what to look for. Thanks!

@Darth Lars: The knee-pockets worried me a bit, too. All the X-Wing-suits have two pairs of leg pockets. The TIE-suit I ordered came along with only the upper pair of pockets. Surprisingly this design matches Bodhi's dress as can be seen on the costume-displays:

I'm not sure, if the TIE-Fighter-Pilots always used to follow that design...

As for the commpad: I also thought that the layout is closest to the technician-setup (though rotated 90°).




I'll build it from scratch and try to stay as close as possible to the available R1-material. For all the parts that are not shown clearly enough I can then come back to the EP IV pics as reference.

Another issue is the chevron-shaped pocket on the right arm.

Bodhi got it (my TIE-suit, too). But in EP IV the technicians's overall had a rectangular top...


I don't know, if there are any TIE-pilot-fans onboard who know what their pockets where shaped like in EP IV??
(Nevertheless, I'll stick with Bodhi's triangular pockets).

Now, in that picture the pockets don't look like they are so high up...

In ANH, the same style of jump suits were used both for Imperials and Rebels, differing only in colour: these have rectangular pocket flaps.
In ESB, a new style emerged for Imperials only: the style with chevron pocket flaps and lacking lower leg pockets.
Both styles of black jumpsuits have been spotted at once in one or two scenes in ROTJ.

Have you bleached your jumpsuit yet?
If you could remove a small piece of material that is not important and test-bleach that, then I would recommend that you do that before you decide to bleach the whole thing.
Not all black fabric bleaches to a lighter grey colour... It could just as well turn out brown.

I can't find a higher res to be sure-- but this gadget here looks to be a piece of vintage photogear, which is very Star Wars! I THINK this is a Leica/Leitz flashgun. I just made one into a lightsaber in the custom lightssber thread. There's a few on ebay-- ranging from $15 to $200 because people are insane. They come in different lengths with slight variations.



here it is unaltered, second from right.

Hi SethS! Thanks for the info. (I'm a bit jealous seeing all your cool parts though...)
I'd rather go with the third from left - upper row. Especially the two vertical contacts seem to fit.
Already got another thread running on just these items:

http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=264510&highlight=droid+callers

Maybe we could rather move your post there? Would that be okay?
( I don't know how to do it though... Admin! Your my only hope!)

Sure! The third from the left is super common and cheap. It's called an argus, ebay is full of them. But i think it's a lot smaller than the one in the pic.

@ Darth Lars: Thanks for adding the comment regarding the bleaching! I will try to test it. But if my suit turns out to become brownish, I don't have too many options. I can't afford to buy another one, so I can only try to heavily bleach it, until most of the red taint is gone an then try to redye a little blue in. We'll see...
I'll keep you up to date!

Thank you for this thread Muddler. So far I got the vest. Plan I getting a light grey suit and dying down to the darker grey wish me luck. As for closeups of the compad you probably all ready found this but heres a link https://www.flickr.com/photos/84750793@N08/sets/72157671597791335

Fox said:

Thank you for this thread Muddler. So far I got the vest. Plan I getting a light grey suit and dying down to the darker grey wish me luck. As for closeups of the compad you probably all ready found this but heres a link https://www.flickr.com/photos/84750793@N08/sets/72157671597791335

Click to expand...

Cool! Thanks for that close-up-shot of the commpad! That one is surely detailed enough to ensure an accurate build!
Good luck with your suit! I'm already curious how that approach turns out.

After I put a serious amount of effort into changing the color of the jumpsuit and the vest (I think the medical term must be "dyeing agony"...), I thought it's now time to share my experience:

Changing the vest to a darker brown was essentially not too hard - but making the color stay gave me some headaches...
Since the vest is green already, there's no need to use brown dye. I chose a deep bordeaux-red, which resulted in a nice, red-brown. When I took the vest out of the coloring bin, I was quite satisfied - BUT as soon as I rinsed the whole thing under water (which was recommended in the instruction), most of the color was gone!
I tried putting in more of the dyeing-color.
I tried to leave it in the color longer.
Same result.
So I decided to let it dry directly without rinsing which finally seemed to work. The color might not be too durable, but I think I can live with that. (I'm not planning to put the vest into the washing-machine anyway. Running around outside in the rain isn't planned either).
So that's what it looks like now:



It still needs more weathering and a serious amount of dirt (planning to try used machine-oil. Somehow that seems to fit). And I have to remove the velcro on the left upper pocket, so the speaker-magnet-greeblie-thingie can be shown accurately.

Now for the real frustrating part:
Thanks to Darth Lars, I tried test-bleaching my suit in a "safe spot".
After some research I found out that there are basically two ways of removing color from fabric:
First there's "bleaching" which uses any kind of chlorine-based detergent.
And second there is "decolorant", which is usually some kind of lye containing mainly sodium-sulfate or similar.
While the bleaching resulted in a bright orange tone (waaahhh!), the decolorant left me with some "cooler", more tan-like color. Unfortunately, none of it gave me the bluish look I wanted...
So I chose to try the decolorant first. After one cycle that's what my formerly black suit looked like:



I then tried to dye blue back in. I chose "navy-blue" because I thought that was the closest color.

And the suit turned - black! Great! I was left where I started...
So I used the decolorant again. I tried two cycles of decoloring, but on some point there seemed to be no more effect. Unfortunately there was still much yellow left in. I then tried dyeing in pure blue (no navy or other mixes, just clear "Azure"-blue). After two cycles of dyeing, the blue finally dominated:



I'd rather have the color a bit lighter. But as soon as I try to bleach it again, it only turns green instead of grey, so I left it the way it looks now. I'm going to use some external light-grey fabric-paint to manually apply some highlights.
Still, I think the costume is finally taking shape:





After this personal horror-trip, I can understand that some guys would want to use a grey technician-suit and just dye it darker. Of course this might work out easier. But I'm kind of fanatic, and by the color of the stitchings on the production-photos it can be clearly seen, that Bodhi's suit had to be black once. So that's what I had to go with...

Hope this post wasn't too long and boring for you all, but I simply had to share my sorrow...

Stay tuned!

Nice update, I ended up getting a black suit instead of tan because they ran out of stock for my size. My attempt at dying the vest didn't work probably because of the fire retardant coating. So I ended up just using my airbrush with some acrylics paints (chocolate brown and flat brown) that I use on miniature models. I will probably hold off on messing with my flight suit until after the convention this weekend if it gave you that much trouble.

Fox: nice assembly! Got some action-shots from the convention??