Natalie

They look pretty close to me (granted I've only been comparing images) The differences I see are simply softened details because their suits are vacuum formed. Vacuum forming isn't really suitable for making film quality costumes these days. I've seen people claiming all sorts of things about how the originals were produced. Having spent a few years in the film industry, designing and making armour, my opinion is the majority of parts were cast or sprayed PU, taken from moulds that would have been pulled off masters that were machined on cnc mills from 3D models. Some of the masters would have been 3D printed, like the snaps and forearm track details. The suits themselves would not have been 3D printed. I can't think of any printer that's capable of printing such large components and financially, that would be totally bananas. Milling has no such limitation. Vacuum forming these suits, to me, seems wasteful, expensive, overly laborious, harder for a non professional to work with and kind of pointless due to the loss of detail but, I'm not on their design team so, what would I know?

If you're adding talc, use the thinner version but, ultimately it doesn't matter too much

You can get ok results by mixing talc into cyanoacrylate glue to make a paste (this is basically what "bondo" is, except bondo has a polyester base) then hitting it with some spray kicker. It's not going to work on bigger seams but for smaller stuff it's fine. The problem with ABS is its chemical resistance.. Nothing really likes to stick with it chemically. You could try some epoxy with aerogel mixed in but, I think cracking is always going to be an issue on these suits though

I'm sure they did it the way they did for good reason My personal opinion is vacuum forming isn't really suitable for some things. Just an opinion though Perhaps by vacuum forming they felt they could produce parts that could be more modifiable to fit a range of body types whereas on films it's easy, you just choose extras that fit the suits

Thanks guys my aim is that the forearm part only have a seam where the flat inner section sits, so it would be two parts, with the sunken centre trak detail and clasp details added after. I'm trying to make this in a more similar fashion to the cast production armour than the vacuum formed ANOVOS suits. Ideally the bicep will be cast as one part also (with clasps added after) (Edit, the seam line on the model is just where the surface was trimmed, it wouldn't show up on a milled part... The models aren't anywhere near ready to mill yet, still loooooots of modelling to be done on even the most basic parts)

I'm glad they seem to be keeping them mostly white. I wasn't a huge fan of all the colourful ones in the prequels

slowly plodding away... playing with rough shapes and proportion.. ------------

Hmmm. It sounds to me like people confusing language. Propshop is a fabrication facility at Pinewood studios. Off topic but, props get broken on films all the time. 3D printing has less to do with it than the fact that props aren't designed to be hard wearing by industrial designers, they're designed to look cool by concept artists.

I see. I was just curious as it would a be a strange thing to do unless you wanted to make at least hundreds of them.. The only "official" information I've been able to find says the helmets (and armour) were moulded polyurethane so, the could be meaning reaction injection moulding but even then.. that would be a weird thing to do, unless of course you wanted hundreds..

Can anyone link me to an article or source about the costume parts being injection moulded? It would be really cool to see

Looks really great so far good luck with it

Vambrace still needs looots of work.. The overall shape is too boxy, detail proportion and shapes are miles off, as is the curvature on the outer part.. I could probably get away with some of this stuff being off on a printed figure, being so small but, its miles out for a full size part... lots to do...

Do you mind me asking, the little faux snap-clasp details all over the suit, are they all the same size? (also, you really have done a wonderful job, the suit looks great!)

soooo much pretty plastic!

oodles of noodles

Lovely thanks for posting

derp de doooooo

more noodling... again, nothing approaching final geometry here, its all just quick scribbles I work from as a base to figure out correct proportions etc then start extracting some more finalised parts....

Thanks for the encouraging posts also, thanks heaps for the pictures of the cuirass, that's very helpful (Nicky, yes I'm aware the chest (and none of the other forms) is nothing like what I had sketched in the first quick drawing, modelling forms like these armour components, requires a lot of intermediary steps, the first of which is essentially large forms that are used to derive more and more refined shapes. I liken it to subractive sculpture. In this case it's harder than making a costume from concept art because I'm starting from a finished product and trying to reverse engineer it. So, it will never be perfect, and I'm aware that very soon a company will probably make collectable statues and costumes produced using the original film data. I'm simply doing this because I enjoy the process, not because I want to own or wear the final product

another hour doodling.. the rear mounted tube detail.. (90% "place holder" forms as its difficult to properly replicate angle and proportion without adjacent geometry to work with .. more soon)

Hi, My name is Natalie, I'm a professional prop maker and have spent the last few years modelling and manufacturing hard surface components of costumes, like guns and armour etc, for various films. I raided your lovely gallery of images for reference of the new stormtrooper in the new star wars film with the aim to create machine files for some armour. While my immediate goal is to simply noodle about and print myself a stormtrooper paper weight, I also plan on machining full size armour components for fun. This wont be a fast project by any means as, I work silly hours and sneaking in time between jobs on machines is sometimes tricky.. anyway, I thought I'd start a thread here in the hopes some of you guys might find the process interesting without further rambling... Post 1 when the first trailer came out, I spent an hour sketching some quick forms based on what little reference there was available (hint, there was not enough).. So, in the grand tradition of "pics or gtfo" I present meaningless sketches that aren't good for anyone or anything.... (yet)