Female Street Judge

I'm working on building a female Street Judge with the intention of dispensing justice at GenCon this August. Since the turn of the new year, I've realized just how quickly the deadline is approaching, so I better get a move on!

Here's what I have so far:

LEATHERS:
I've seen the Reel Images Street Law leathers and have lusted after a pair for many weeks. But in the end, I just can't afford to drop the money on something I'll probably wear only a couple of times a year (no matter how AWESOME they look). So I've gone store-bought "close enough" instead. I found an Alpinestars Stella Tyla jacket on CraigsList for $100, and was lucky to scoop it up. It has some embroidered logos, but those should be covered by the armored vest.

I haven't had as much luck with the pants, but I picked up a pair of BiLT Spirit pants while they were on sale for about $115. The only similarities here are the accordion leather panels at the knees and on the back. Otherwise, they are not as snug as the movie version, and they are lacking the stretch kevlar. But it's better than walking around pantsless, so there we are.

I found something that was A LOT more similar, but unfortunately they have been discontinued, and the distributor was sold out of my size before I could snatch up a pair. They're called Sedici Misano pants. I'm still keeping an eye out in case any pop up on Craigslist or eBay, but no luck so far. Let me know if you see some floating around in your neck of the woods, would you?


VEST:
This I'm working on now. The female vest is shaped quite differently for the male vest, and I haven't seen any patterns or measurements out there, so I am working on making my own vector patterns that can be easily scaled. When I get them done, I'll make them available here for input and any other female judges looking to craft their own armor. My idea is to make some patterns out of wood and vacuform the pieces, then hand sew them to a vest.

BELT:
This I ordered from chuckyAPP, and it looks amazing!

BELT ACCESSORIES:
There are a couple of threads floating around here with patterns and ideas. I'm thinking that I'll make the various holsters, and the other items will be mostly store bought.

LAWGIVER:
I've ordered a Lanard Shell Shock X-6 off Amazon. A coat of paint and some weathering, and I'll call it a day.


HELMET:
The plan is to make one out of camp foam and plastic coat it. Then again, I might spring for a kit. Haven't decided yet.

BOOTS:
This is my biggest hurdle to date... I've done a lot of looking and haven't found any boots that I can buy that are "close enough". The biggest problem is finding boots small enough to fit my feet.. I wear a women's size 8 or 8.5, which is usually about a 6 in men's. No luck finding a good pair of boots in a size that small

GLOVES:
I ordered the LeatherNext ones. They look pretty awesome. If I have time, maybe I'll make a little pocket for my iphone to act as the display screen.

Anyway, I guess I don't have too much progress yet. But having this page as a sort of journal will help me organize my thoughts and keep me motivated to get it all done in time. Well, that's the hope anyway!

Watching this with keen interest. Good going btw

Okay, so I did a bit of work in Illustrator today, and I've made some templates for the armor pieces, minus the shoulders. These pieces will be cut out of some cheap, 1/4 inch wood, with the raised details being added on with some air-dry clay, then vacuformed. The paper copies look pretty good on the jacket, I think, so they should fit a vest just fine.


I made the female templates based on the male templates on this website: StudioCreations They did all the hard work getting measurements and drawing out the shapes for the male armor, so a big THANK YOU goes to them. Using their templates as a base, I spent a while staring at all the great source images they have over there and eyeballing the differences between the male and female armor. Then I drew it out as a vector in Illustrator and scaled it up to what I guessed it should be. The breastplate is about 7x5 inches (seam allowance included), and the side is about 10x8.5 with seam allowance. The back plates are about 7x10.5, 7.25x10.25, and 4x6.75 inches, again with seam allowance. This allows each piece to be printed out on a single piece of printer paper, so yay!

So here are the templates if anyone wants them. Feel free to use them, and if you're interested in the Illustrator files, just let me know.

Nice to see a female build in the works, looking good.

i'm about to make a set of plates for a 2 year old girl... might as well use the lady-armor pattern for her

thanks for sharing these!

I've been lurking for a few days now, this looks like it's going to be a sweet build I'm doing a budget judge for EM-con in march and will follow your progress with eager eyes

HELMET:
The plan is to make one out of camp foam and plastic coat it. Then again, I might spring for a kit. Haven't decided yet.

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There is a great PEP file available by 'Dung0Beetle_and_Blaxmyth' and a good foam Pep by them too (I think its by them). Can't put my fingers on the foam one at the moment, will have a look on the forums.

EDIT: If you are interested, Dredd Helm Foam Pep file can be found in this really good thread (a long way down the first post).
jfcustoms-foam-files

This week was an exciting week! A lot of the supplies I ordered came in the mail (and I always like getting mail ). I did a bit of shopping around and found this mesh online. It looks pretty close, if not exactly, like what's described for the vests seen in the movie, and best of of all, it was cheaper than I expected. I got a 24x56 inch piece for about $25 after shipping. It is 6mm, about 1/4 inch thick, and very springy. You can order it here: mesh fabrics


My "Lawgiver" also came in the mail, but I haven't done anything but peel off all the little decals yet. That's because I've been focusing on sculpting the shoulder bits for my armored vest. Here's what I've got so far:


I didn't have any measurements for these, so I just eyeballed it. The eagle wings are a bit uneven, but oh well. :unsure It's not incredibly noticable, I guess. I made a little duct tape dummy of my shoulder an upper arm, and that's what I've been sculpting on. Seems to work pretty well... Hopefully the clay will hold up to vacuforming... Anyone have any experience with this? I've never actually done any vacuforming before.

I also ordered all the notions that I need for the small details at this site: HardwareElf.Com
They are the sister company to the Ohio Travel Bag company that carries the little rubber tabs at the bottom of each shoulder, as well as a bunch of other cool stuff. The tabs come on a replacement bag handle, part number L-2842. They also have oblong grommets, which are used on the bottoms of the shoulder armor and the tops of the breast plates, part number C-1692.
The only notion I couldn't find anywhere was black suede trim... I went ahead and grabbed a cheap leather jacket from Goodwill. I figure I can use the leather for both the trim and the collar, whenever I get around to that.

Lastly, thanks everyone for stopping by, and thanks Uridium for the link to the pep file! I think I'll probably end up using it!

You still doing this? I thought you gave up...

impressive work. loving the sculpture. i'm just going the route of buying from more talented people than me and putting it together.

wildething said:

impressive work. loving the sculpture. i'm just going the route of buying from more talented people than me and putting it together.

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Thanks! Though, I just found out last night that someone with much more talent and resources than I is about to finish up their work on a run of female armor and will soon be putting the full sets up for sale... Now I'm reconsidering, since the total cost will be about the same or even lower than the cost of me making my own, haha. So I may go the buying route, too. Though I have to admit, I've always wanted to have my own vacuform table to play around with, so I was looking forward to making my own.... Oh well! The sculpting was so fun!

Barricade said:

You still doing this? I thought you gave up...

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I just started! Way too early to give up!


In other news, my order from Hardware Elf came in today (that was fast!) with the tabs for the bottom of the shoulder pieces, my 2 inch snap (or "parachute") buckles, webbing, and oblong grommets came in today. I love getting mail.

Keep at it's more satisfying. The Brit-Cit Judges on facebook have started Oh good god how much money have i dumped into this and i ain't even finish yet thread.

Yeah sorry that was my bad... People sink silly money into anything they enjoy tho, be it football season passes, golf or Larp. If it makes you happy then isn't that why we go to work? To pay for our fun.
I wish I had enough cash for a screen accurate set up, but it's been fun trying to modify and make the things I need....

I'm trying to make as much as I can for my Judge build. I could buy from others, but I get too much enjoyment from the build process.

Saying that, there is a reason that I'm NOT going to sit down and total up my purchases of tools and supplies for this project.

Uridium said:

I'm trying to make as much as I can for my Judge build. I could buy from others, but I get too much enjoyment from the build process.

Saying that, there is a reason that I'm NOT going to sit down and total up my purchases of tools and supplies for this project.

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I hear that.... You go girl!!

Uridium said:

I'm trying to make as much as I can for my Judge build. I could buy from others, but I get too much enjoyment from the build process.

Saying that, there is a reason that I'm NOT going to sit down and total up my purchases of tools and supplies for this project.

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Haha, I thought about keeping a running tally with how much money was going toward this project, but ended up deciding against it.

Torirat said:

Yeah sorry that was my bad... People sink silly money into anything they enjoy tho, be it football season passes, golf or Larp. If it makes you happy then isn't that why we go to work? To pay for our fun.
I wish I had enough cash for a screen accurate set up, but it's been fun trying to modify and make the things I need....

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You are absolutely right! As long as the money is going toward something fun and enjoyable there's no reason to feel bad.