Jaffa007
Well-Known Member
That's incredibly fantastic, but I have to ask:
How do you walk with only 5 points of articulation?
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1978 Kenner Star Wars Darth Vader Costume
- Thread starter camprandall
- Start date
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Star Wars Helmets
Sr Member
So cool. Just when you think you've seen everything - then sometching comes along as cool as this!
Cheers
Jez
Cheers
Jez
Wow, I wasn’t sure what I was going to see in this thread, but again WOW!! Awesome idea, and execution! You look like you just stepped out of a 1978 bubble pack!
Just finished C2E2 and had a lot of fun with this guy!
What did you decide to go with for the cape material and the leather suit? Those are the most mind-boggling parts to this suit as far as I'm concerned! :eek
Brilliant!
Ok, after being out of town for a while, I finally have a bit of time to continue the build thread a bit. Let's move on to the helmet.
With the helmet, I realized I was a bit out of my depth with 3D design so I decided to start with a rough normal Vader thingiverse model and modify the heck out of it vs starting from scratch. There were a number of things I noticed that were different with the toy - some of which I did in design and some of which I did afterwards. I wasn't worried about being flawless, but I wanted that more "dopey" look of the toy and not the more menacing look of the real deal.
Comparison of real vs toy
You can see a lot of differences. More cone-head shape, much softer features, filled helmet shell, more open and dopey eyes, etc. I decided to catch the proportional changes in 3D while attacking the softening and filling of it later in the bondo phases.
Updated 3D Model
For printing, I was in a bit of a hurry and I had no idea if this would fit so my buddy Jerry Budde of the 501st printed this in fast/low quality mode just so we could find out. It took so much time to get it to print successfully that I decided to just go with it for the final helmet, which was a ton of work but saved the problem of another 100 hours of printing and a lot of money.
Original raw print
From there, yeah - a lot to do.
Knowing I was going clamshell style - both to fit it on my head as well as follow the slanted seam of the toy - I sliced it with a hacksaw and removed all but the outside shell layers.
Next, I ground down alot of the edges and slathered with bondo so that I could get the much softer appearance.
And then, to get that solid effect - as well as to have an easy way to connect the two helmet halves together, I filled with fiberglass bondo.
And then lots of bondo glaze to smooth out imperfections. Have I mentioned how much I hate sanding PLA, especially in deep grooves? This minimizes that.
And now onto the back, which is much easier as I could do some minor sanding and then right to the glaze.
Now - here I was in a hurry and decided not to go very elegant. I used some pla support scrap and fiberglass bondo to reattach the neck piece to the helmet back to make it just strong enough without adding weight.
It looks like a mess, but I really wanted to keep the weight down on an already heavy helmet. So I cut a piece of abs to close the bottom, glued it, and stuffed it with paper towel so that I would have some backing to put my fiberglass bondo against. So it's essentially hollow, but it gave me support for the bondo until it cured.
And then after a few rounds of sanding and re-applying, I placed rare earth magnets to hold the helmet closed while wearing. The top is anchored with heavy elastic and this holds the front to the back.
And now onto seeing how everything goes together. Alignment was a bit of a pain since there are no interlocking pieces.
After a while, I get impatient and just want to see how close I am by using bondo filler spray. It fills in some imperfections and gives me a uniform look to see where I need to clean up.
More to do. I didn't capture every phase of this part, but it's the same routine of bondo glaze, sanding, priming, repeat.
So then I go to black because I think I'm getting close. Not quite though.
More glaze and smoothing.
Now I'm getting happy with it!
With the helmet, I realized I was a bit out of my depth with 3D design so I decided to start with a rough normal Vader thingiverse model and modify the heck out of it vs starting from scratch. There were a number of things I noticed that were different with the toy - some of which I did in design and some of which I did afterwards. I wasn't worried about being flawless, but I wanted that more "dopey" look of the toy and not the more menacing look of the real deal.
Comparison of real vs toy
You can see a lot of differences. More cone-head shape, much softer features, filled helmet shell, more open and dopey eyes, etc. I decided to catch the proportional changes in 3D while attacking the softening and filling of it later in the bondo phases.
Updated 3D Model
For printing, I was in a bit of a hurry and I had no idea if this would fit so my buddy Jerry Budde of the 501st printed this in fast/low quality mode just so we could find out. It took so much time to get it to print successfully that I decided to just go with it for the final helmet, which was a ton of work but saved the problem of another 100 hours of printing and a lot of money.
Original raw print
From there, yeah - a lot to do.
Knowing I was going clamshell style - both to fit it on my head as well as follow the slanted seam of the toy - I sliced it with a hacksaw and removed all but the outside shell layers.
Next, I ground down alot of the edges and slathered with bondo so that I could get the much softer appearance.
And then, to get that solid effect - as well as to have an easy way to connect the two helmet halves together, I filled with fiberglass bondo.
And then lots of bondo glaze to smooth out imperfections. Have I mentioned how much I hate sanding PLA, especially in deep grooves? This minimizes that.
And now onto the back, which is much easier as I could do some minor sanding and then right to the glaze.
Now - here I was in a hurry and decided not to go very elegant. I used some pla support scrap and fiberglass bondo to reattach the neck piece to the helmet back to make it just strong enough without adding weight.
It looks like a mess, but I really wanted to keep the weight down on an already heavy helmet. So I cut a piece of abs to close the bottom, glued it, and stuffed it with paper towel so that I would have some backing to put my fiberglass bondo against. So it's essentially hollow, but it gave me support for the bondo until it cured.
And then after a few rounds of sanding and re-applying, I placed rare earth magnets to hold the helmet closed while wearing. The top is anchored with heavy elastic and this holds the front to the back.
And now onto seeing how everything goes together. Alignment was a bit of a pain since there are no interlocking pieces.
After a while, I get impatient and just want to see how close I am by using bondo filler spray. It fills in some imperfections and gives me a uniform look to see where I need to clean up.
More to do. I didn't capture every phase of this part, but it's the same routine of bondo glaze, sanding, priming, repeat.
So then I go to black because I think I'm getting close. Not quite though.
More glaze and smoothing.
Now I'm getting happy with it!
Last edited:
dragonwind2000
New Member
Such an awesome build. I can remember playing with that figure for hours when I was a kid... brings back a lot of happy memories. You rock!
NakedMoleRat
Master Member
That is awesome!
Slate McLeod
New Member
That is really awesome work well done
Too Much Garlic
Master Member
This is looking really cool. The helmet almost has a Ralph McQuarrie feel to it. And the whole costume is superb. I especially like how you emulated the saber insert. Clever stuff and well made.
Hello! Thanks for the kind words. The problem with the 3D files in this case is that I kinda borked the mesh a bit so they all printed super thick and I had to hack the heck out of it to get it into a workable piece, including ripping out most of the inside layers and then replacing with bondo. It was a mess so the files are pretty much garbage. On top of that, the helmet needs to be bigger. Maybe someday I'll redo them, but it's a hard costume to wear anyways so I've stuck to just repairing as I go.
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