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Walt in indeed a great guy, has a sterling reputation here and is indeed on our vetted seller list. I too was not aware that he is now selling FOTK kits but I get the feeling they will be top-notch and am also looking forward to seeing a build thread and a set of finished armor!

Merry Christmas to all you Troopers out there. I hope to meet you someday soon. You've all been so helpful and inspirational to me and I appreciate all you Fighting 501st members. Vaders Fist. I hope to one day join your ranks as a member of the 501st. Thank you.

Slate - (Soon to be TK-####) Swedish Member Alright let's start of with an introduction. Hello! My name is Angus and I'm 17 years old. I was born in Sweden, Gothenburg and it is still my home town. I have been since a kid always had the dream to join the 501st legion as a Stormtrooper. And now that I'm almost old enough to join my local garrison, I think its time for me to chase that dream for real. Ever since that first convention, when I saw those troopers, following the Dark Lord. I told myself that I would be one of them. And that's why I'm here finally on the Whitearmor forum. I hope that I'll be welcomed here, you all seem so nice.

Got the top cover strips glued on the shins.

Hey! Thanks so much for the kind comments, I'm glad you like how the build came out and hope it may inspire people to do similar things with their buckets as well. Cheers and thanks again.

Come on troopers get in here with the cool guys

I will say that some of Walts kit are notorious for not going together easily, so I am interested to see our first build thread on his FOTK. Just because a maker produces something new doesn't give them automatic approved vendor status for that kit, it will come under peer review just like all before it. Looking forward to some build threads and positive feedback from those working on them.

Been meaning to chime in on this for a while, now... There are multiple things at work that need addressing. I can hear some of you groaning already, but I promise I'll at least try to be concise. • The original sculpting. I see a lot of the wonkiness and asymmetry of the original helmets and armor defended as "organic" and "what happens when you sculpt something by hand". And I know from my own experience, but also from ceramic and sclupture artists I've known for ages... If you want symmetry, it's not that hard. Even just eyeballing things from various angles, you can get the supposedly-mirrored sides to agree a lot more than Liz's original Stormtrooper helmet sculpt. The truth is most likely a combination of rushed schedule, tight budget, and no one involved with the project thinking it would go anywhere -- including George himself. These were for costumes meant to be seen going past on-screen from ten to twenty feet away for a second or two. There was no push for everything to be "perfect". Now the folks making these movies know the fanbase, the costumers, the existence of home-video that will allow freeze-framed, high-definition perusal of every facet of the movie. • The execution of the redesign. Some things I agree with, such as the mirrored/symmetrical traps and tears and evened out frown. Other things bug me, like the tears' rear edges/upper corners moved back to be in line with the corners of the lens openings. That makes them look way too big. Also the black lines in them and the rear traps, and the cheek tube markings, being slits now, instead of something more topical. There's a military adage that almost certainly goes back to before English even existed as a language family: "If there is an opening, dirt will get in it." I have a much longer breakdown of the real-world and in-universe reasons why I feel they aren't and shouldn't be slits. Also the new earcap greeblies -- neat, but unnecessary. Also, why weren't they leveled as part of the "idealizing" of the design. Some of the OT ones were more level than others, so them being angled is not a hard and fast design feature so much as an artifact of construction. All the way down to minor niggles like the larger "Hero" style neck opening, the slightly shorter brow trim, the "low brow" being the look they went with for everything (I prefer 1/8" to 3/16" of brow showing to better visually separate the lenses from the brow trim), the high-detail "II" on the back box (I always figured those were raised details covering some internal stuff that couldn't be completely flattened out on whatever was in that location -- and after the Clone Trooper armor's version, I started thinking the "II" could be covers plugged into openings {see military adage, above} for linkages/power feeds to backpacks. Also wish they'd kept the chelsea boots and smooth undersuits of the OT, even if they'd "bulked up" the undersuits to imply something more substantial than a lycra unitard. • I have similar thoughts about the new Rebel flight suits in R1. Gone are the treated cotton twill racing suits, in favor of too-contemporary nylon zip-zop suits. The material's more appropriate for the thermal jackets they all seem to be wearing in this outing (versus just in cold-weather surface ops). On which they got the sleeve pleating wrong. Updating things to make use of better materials and technology, cool. But not to the extent it changes the "look" of the thing. One of my cousins is a casual fan, at most, but glanced over when I had a R1 stormtrooper helmet up for comparison as I worked on something, then looked back and said "Is there something wrong with that helmet...?" They couldn't put their finger on it, couldn't tell you the differences between ANH, ESB, ROTJ, Hero Stunt, etc. But something subconscious was "off" to his eye. And I've heard the same thing from others regarding various bits of "recreated" OT designs with their new take on materials or construction. It's frustrating that the U-Wing pilot flight suit I'm working on will never be approvable. Because I'm using the treated cotton twill for the bodysuit, using the OT pattern (none of the zippered pockets of the new ones). Weatherproof nylon for the jacket, with ESB-accurate pleating on the sleeve trim. Accurate Snowspeeder pilot gloves. And so on and so on. It bugs me that it would have been so easy to just "clean up" a lot of these iconic costumes and props and vehicles and such, but they went too far, IMO, to put their own stamp on it.