Hello all! Excited to be part of this awesome community! I've honestly been on the fringes for quite a few years...I've hung out at a number of trooping events while I was living in California. Good friend of mine had 4 or 5 different costumes, and his garrison was nice enough to let me tag along in his extra TK suit a few times. My sis is also a very active cosplayer in the Heroic group, and has been bugging me to get involved with something like this forever. It's just, y'know, moving, buying a house, job changes, new baby, life, etc...keeps ya busy.
But, the local garrison here held a meet and greet about two blocks from where I live, so naturally I had to go. And naturally I couldn't resist signing up! I'm (hoping) to start with a classic TK (ANH stunt I guess? Didn't know there were so many different ones before...), but depending on speed, complexity, price, etc of obtaining such a build, might go with something cloth in the meantime.
Here's the fun part...I'm thinking of taking a go at building armor from scratch. I've been lurking around reading a lot of threads, and I definitely see it's a very big undertaking. On the plus side, I'm not planning on doing this alone! A number of my friends got super excited when I mentioned I'm joining the 501st, and all want to join up to. We've a good range of mechanical / shop / design / molding / nerdy skill sets amongst us, so we'll see how it goes!