shashachu

Congrats

Congrats!

Sorry, I noticed the pics are a bit wonky on mobile; fixing. - Done.

Hi Daniel, thanks for your submission and your patience as we reviewed your photos! CRL and EIB Application Requirements: All required submission photos have been posted, and I am very pleased to announce your armor displays all the necessary elements to qualify for ANH Stunt Expert Infantry. On behalf of Tony, Dan, Joseph and myself, congratulations!  Other-Armor Fit/Assembly: In this section we review observations made by your fellow troopers and ourselves. Some observations may lead to suggestions to improve the overall look of your armor. Not much to add beyond what's already been posted. Beautiful job on your build! Starting with your helmet, the left trap paint (or decal?) looks a bit cracked/wrinkled - is that just a reflection? If not, that might be an area worth cleaning up. Reference Image Continuing with the helmet paint job (which is, overall, very nice) one nit I'd point out is that the paint on the vocoder seems quite thick and shows some runs. It would really make the helmet look cleaner if that was touched up. Reference Image Moving along, as has been pointed out, the return edge on the bottom of your chest is a bit thick, and could be trimmed. That would also help it sit flush against your ab plate. Reference Image: As your fellow troopers have also already pointed out, you could adjust the strapping between your biceps and forearms so that the gaps on your arms are even. Reference Image: Moving down to your belt, as Joseph already mentioned, the canvas could use a haircut. Reference Image And another small item worth mentioning is that it looks like plastic of your belt wants to pull away a bit from the canvas. This might be corrected with a bit of heat bending of the plastic, or perhaps different/stronger fasteners connecting the plastic to the canvas. Reference Image: Rounding out the belt area, it's not a huge deal but if you want to go for ultimate screen accuracy, the ends of the TD clips should be squared off, not rounded. Reference Image Continuing on, I'm not sure if this is the overlap you mentioned in your application, but in some of your photos, your butt plate is overlapping your right thigh. You might be able to adjust the strapping, or trim one or both of the butt plate and top the thigh. This would also be a particularly painful area for armor bites. Reference Image: Moving down to your lower limbs, the sniper knee looks like it might be tucked under the thigh armor. Some foam on the back of the thigh and/or the front of the shin should help it stay properly positioned. Reference Image Centurion Suggestions:In this section we prepare you for Centurion. More photos are requested that allow us to make better decisions on possible adjustment etc. If there are any areas of concern they will be discussed here. Because Centurion photos show much more detail than EIB, items pertaining to Centurion might be seen there and not here. We try to point out all we can from what is seen but the final accuracy is the responsibility of the trooper. On the forearms, the CRL states: No return edge on the inside of the front of the forearm is allowed. It could just be the photo, but it looks like you could have a bit of return edge left, so I'd double check both forearms. Should be a simple fix. Reference Image For the shoulder bells, the CRL states: There should be a minimal gap between the shoulder armor and the chest/back plates. Your front gap looks great, but there's a bigger gap in the back. It could be a dressing issue, or you may be able to trim some return edge off the bottom of the shoulder bells to bring them in closer. And that's it! Congrats again, Daniel, and see you at Centurion!

Hi Daniel, thanks for your submission! We'll be with you shortly.

Congrats!!

Hi Paul, I'll only comment once as to not further hijack Rodney's thread. Also, I didn't see what you'd previously posted so I'll just respond to what's written now. Not everyone knows that despite a single person posting the review, all EIB and Centurion reviews are actually a collaboration amongst all DOs, and everyone needs to sign off on an approval before it's posted. Everything that was in my post was OKed by the others, and in fact I had a couple suggestions that Tony asked me to remove due to them not actually being consistent across armors. That all said, I will be the first to admit that I'm far from an expert on Stormtrooper armor (especially Hero armor), I just have a desire to give back to this community and a willingness to learn. Those particular suggestions on the helmet were based on my own observations and also from looking back at suggestions I'd seen in previous EIB/Centurion reviews. As I'm sure you know, what we know about armor is constantly evolving, and I was just suggesting something that I thought would improve the look of the armor based on my own knowledge. If that was incorrect, so be it, and I can only try to improve next time. None of these suggestions are ever meant to be an attack on the armor or builder. At the end of the day, we're all here for the same reason - our love of Star Wars and these cool plastic spacemen. I'm happy to discuss more over PM - like I said, I know I have a lot to learn still. Cheers, Sha Sha

Hi Rodney, Thank you for making all of the suggested changes so quickly! CRL and EIB Application Requirements: All required submission photos have been posted, and I am very pleased to announce your armor displays all the necessary elements to qualify for ANH Hero Expert Infantry. On behalf of Tony, Dan, Joseph and myself, congratulations!  Other-Armor Fit/Assembly: In this section we review observations made by your fellow troopers and ourselves. Some observations may lead to suggestions to improve the overall look of your armor. Beautiful job with your build - just a few suggestions to help you look your best. Starting with the helmet, your vocoder paint could be fixed up to create a bit more definition in the shape: Reference Image Finally, the brow trim, particularly on the left side, looks a bit short. Reference Image Getting into the *really* nitty gritty, the black rank bar is painted just a tad wide: Reference Image Moving along, as others have suggested, you could drop your forearms to even up the black gaps on the arms. You should be able to accomplish this by slightly lengthening the strapping between the bicep and forearm. Reference Image The ab/kidney rivets could also use a bit of touch up paint: The ab button plate shape/size is perfect, but the paint on the buttons themselves is a tad large: Reference Image As you can see, ideally the paint doesn't *quite* cover the entire ab button. Continuing down, your butt plate pops out a bit from under the kidney, but it should stay under the kidney. Reference Image You should be able to fix this with a strapping adjustment. Centurion Suggestions:In this section we prepare you for Centurion. More photos are requested that allow us to make better decisions on possible adjustment etc. If there are any areas of concern they will be discussed here. Per the L3 requirements: Drop boxes are vertically aligned with the end of the ammo belt with minimal gap between belt and box. Yours are close, but not quite aligned with the end of the plastic belt. Most folks put a dab of E6000 or CA glue to keep the belt box elastic in place. Reference Image As for the shoulder bells, the L3 CRL states: There should be a minimal gap between the shoulder armor and the chest/back plates. Your front gap looks great, but the rear is a bit large. It could just be a dressing issue, or you may be able to trim off some of the lower return edge from your shoulder bells to bring them in closer. Reference Image That's it for now! Congrats again, and we hope to see you at Centurion! Note: since I'm new at this, Dan aka @CableGuy is going to press all the buttons to make your status official, but you may consider yourself approved.

No worries! Appreciate your patience.

Aaallllmost there! If you could include a photo of the inside of the thigh ammo belt rivet, that should be the last thing we need - just to show the type of rivet connection. Thanks for your patience. Here is the pic from my EIB application for reference:

Hi Rodney, Almost there! Could you please include a photo of the inside of your thigh ammo belt connection? This is to check the EIB requirement: Thigh ammo belt is attached to thigh with a solid head rivet, painted white, in the upper corner and fastened to the lower thigh ridge. The rivets used shall be single cap, double cap or split rivets. No pop rivets allowed.

Hey Rodney! Good to see you here. You have the...honor? of being my first DO review. Thanks so much for making the suggested adjustments. We'll be with you shortly.

The kit does not come with the TD clips. I made my own from 1/8" aluminum flat bar from home depot but there are many places to buy them.

Shins look awesome to me. Like was suggested, I'd also trim the bottoms to match. Are the shins being held together with the tape or do they stay closed by themselves? One piece of advice I found helpful is that you'll have a much easier time with the shin closures if you're able to bend them into shape so that they stay closed naturally rather than having to be forced closed with Velcro, bra straps, etc. Side note: I recently got added to the DO team so I will be eagerly awaiting your EIB and Centurion submissions.

Another extremely happy WTF kit owner here. Like others said, it comes with everything you need for the helmet assembly, including the brow trim, neck trim, and green plastic for lenses. It also comes with tube stripe decals but I gave mine away since I wanted a painted helmet instead of decals. I bought my paint stencils from Trooperbay and was very happy with them. Note that if you want a hero, Walt does make hero helmets, so you should be able to request one.

Awesome to hear!

Nice! You seem to have very good mobility in this kit. It took me a while to learn to walk normally in my OTTK...

Aw, yiss. Time to start Fire Team Slanted Shoulders... Re: snap plates, I have not yet had to re-place them, but I'm also kind of terrified of doing anything even moderately irreversible on my kits, so I stuck (ha!) with E6000.

I was originally planning on a suspender system but ended up just using a nylon belt with the thighs strapped. The ab and kidney hang off the back and chest with elastic and snaps - I haven't felt the need to have anything holding up the ab. It's held up well for a year.

The ears look great! Remember - gaps are cannon!

That's a good thought - I hadn't really noticed the difference in shape, but looking at the CRL image, the shoulder bells do seem rounder. I'll probably give that a go - they are definitely large on me.

Thanks! Tbh I kind of forgot about the TD until I was looking at someone else's build the other day... But yes it's primarily the width I'm worried about.

Thanks for the encouragement, everyone!

A bit more progress. Finished assembling the left forearm. It went a bit more smoothly than the right, but still had to do weird brackets. I'll likely need to add more, or I might use a bit of milliput to fill some of the seams and help hold things together. With all arm pieces together, I tried the arms on with the shoulder gaskets. It was all right, but I think I'll need to take in the shoulder gasket a bit, because my bicep piece circumference is pretty small. And a shoulder bell for good measure: Moving along, I decided to go ahead and assemble the back and yoke. (Forgot to take many photos.) It actually wasn't as bad as people had made it out to be. I'll definitely have to do some heavy seam/gap filling, but overall it was relatively straightforward. I started by gluing the yoke to the connector piece, let that dry overnight, then glued everything to the back. I know the chest/yoke/back is going to be one of the most challenging parts of the build because it is just *so* big. KB claims it's meant for average sized people, but it's really quite barrel chested. The first thing I did is trim off a bunch of excess material from the...wings? I don't know what they're called: Next up, a *lot* of heat bending with my trusty heat gun. My goal was to wrap the wings more tightly around me, and greatly reduce the width of the back and chest. As with my TK, I set the heat gun around 450F-500F and slowly heated up the areas I wanted to bend. When the ABS just starts to lose it's springiness, I'd turn off the heat gun. Incidentally, the KB kit is much thinner than my WTF original TK, so I had to be careful not to overheat. Back before: Back after: No individual photos of the chest, but here's everything on me: This whole build has been kind of a rollercoaster for me - I flip flop between feeling really encouraged and being totally convinced it's impossible to fit this kit to someone my size, especially with how tough my GML is. For now I'll soldier on.

Woo! Congrats!!