Peregrinus

And you have to be able to fit in it how it comes. *heh* --Jonah

I've got a lot of parts ordered, and everything else tallied and budgeted and ready to roll. I just got Jen's and my TE2 bucket kits in the mail today. Thanks, Tony -- they're awesome! Everything's likely to take a bit longer, because I'm doing two ANH TKs to high degree of anal-ness. With a third for another friend of mine later this fall. And this isn't counting all the other costumes in every stage from R&D to done but being tweaked. *lol* This time next year, expect to have had three more TKs added to the Elite ranks. --Jonah

I intend to use my TKID on the various Detachment and Garrison (and Legion) boards as a reflector of whichever costume I deem most relevent to that community. Thus, when I have my TK finished, on here I will be TK-####, whilst on the Royal Guard Detachment boards I will be TR-####, and so forth for all the costumes I end up with. For general boards I will go with my TR Legion designator, as my primary costume. But "in-universe" Royal Guards' records are heavily classified and my ID# wouldn't be slathered around like that. --Jonah

One thing I'd like to add to this. For any smallish paint containers one uses -- Humbrol, Testors, Polly 'S', whatever -- I recommend picking up one of these. --Jonah

Icon love, Javier. --Jonah

Citrus oil is what I've always used to break down adhesives and decals. It smells nice, too, unlike acetone. I don't know what the base of Oops is. But citrus oil doesn't do anything to plastic or vinyl. --Jonah

Clean the cleaner off with citrus oil, then scrub with dish soap and warm water with a soft brush. New glue will stick fine. --Jonah

Oh, that's just fine, Tony. Fortunately, I wasn't ready to order the rest yet, but I would like the info I asked for. :P --Jonah (P.S. You did get the helmet kits mailed, right...?)

What do I have left? Still waiting for armour to work on. I'm targetting end of the year for me and Jen. ANH, all the way. Including fully-detailed E-11s. --Jonah

*cough* I plead the 5th... --Jonah

--Jonah

You didn't list my TR so . --Jonah

There's a lot to be read. And it takes time to process it all. Sometimes, it takes a lifetime. I've loved Imperial trappings since before I can remember. My parents took me to see Star Wars with them at Cinerama here in Seattle when I was 2½ years old. Got the action figure assortments through the Sears catalogue for Christmas many years running. By the time The Empire Strikes Back came out, I was thoroughly caught up in the story, and the appearance of Vader's fleet and flagship broke my brain. By the end of 1981 I had quite a collection going -- almost all "good guys" so I could pursue and capture them with my Vader and his bounty hunters. When Return of the Jedi came out I was instantly besotted with the Royal Guards. When I found out about the 501st in late 2001 (hey, I was in Japan in '97), I knew which costume I wanted to do (which I wanted to do first, as it would turn out). I spent the next year and a half researching, gathering materials, and getting to know my local Garrison. I attended several events as a squire -- I helped dress and undress, I spotted, I did things and ran errands for the folks who were in costume or couldn't get away. I made myself useful. I got to know MaraJadesFather and TrooperExpert on the Dewback Wing boards, hung out at the RPF... Then I moved to Vegas and had a hellacious fall as my heath issues got worse. Things turned around enough in early '05 that I was able to contact and start squiring for the Neon City Garrison at the Episode III premiere. Then I came up here to Washington to visit my parents for their birthdays and my health bottomed out. Six months later I was okay enough again to resume researching and accumulating materials. My Royal Guard costume was finally wearably done back in November. I'm still working on my own Crimson Empire armour, and gong to make a new inner tunic tailored to fit over that, and I am working on red suede Crimson Empire thigh boots with CA Boots. My helmet project is likely to take a little longer. In the meantime, I've also been working on other costumes of interest, again researching and gathering materials. I got my sweetie's Biker Scout to almost-Lancer quality in time for her to wear it at CIV, and she's been learning and is ready to take a more active role in her costuming. I now have started on my TE2 Stormtrooper costume. Because I knew TE back when he was still doing this and knew that some form of that was what I wanted. I have seen and worked on AP and FX. I have seen a lot of pictures of GF and TM. They all have their pros and cons, but the TE2 is my choice and the man is a sweetheart to deal with. This is not a hobby for the impatient or the easily-discouraged. It was six years from my finding out about the 501st to my having a wearable-but-not-finished Royal Guard costume. And longer until I have a finished TK. I've used that time to expand my knowledge base, and have much of the research and a lot of the matériel-gathering underway for the other two dozen costumes I've decided to do. So far I haven't bought anything off eBay. I've scoured the message boards, gotten to know the communities, asked questions when I needed to -- without naming names, PMed as much as possble to keep it off the public boards... And I also intend to make my knowledge and skill available to the rest of my community. Heck, only eight or nine of those costumes are for me. The rest are for friends. I'm going to be making small runs of my Crimson Empire armour for that comm. Probably a run twice as large as those combined for my Storm Commando, with help from a couple other armourers. Once I have the mix right, I'm going to be offering raw yardage of custom-dyed olive-khaki wool gabardine for people doing the grey-green Imperial Officer uniforms. *shrug* It's kind of a two-axis graph -- the further away from a finished product, and/or the further away from the movies themselves, the less likely to attract official notice. Keep all that in mind (!) during your wanderings in here. --Jonah

Arthur, it's not rhetoric. After the first few C&Ds, LFL and the fan armourers reached a tacit understanding that's expanded to the rest of the 501st over time -- we don't advertise our wares and they aren't forced to take official notice of us. THis is further helped by the fact that each set of armour requires trimming and fitting before being worn, and isn't sold (usually) with all the accessories. Thus, "some assembly required". A buyer still has to take it into their workshop and customize it in order ot make it wearable. I'm sorry it sounds like a BS reason to you, but that's really the way it works. As long as we keep it to initials and oblique references and private messages and e-mails, there's nothing that will pop up on a web search (ideally), and they can pretend not to know we're doing this. They want us doing this. They like our enthusiasm and the quality of our work and the people doing this. And if we did something public enough for a licensed seller to complain to them, or otherwise make us impossible to ignore, they'd have to sic their lawyers on us and risk souring relations. Those are the rules the owners of the intellectual rights have laid down, albeit unofficially. We play by them, so they let us keep playing. As with all things, you break the rules, you get kicked out. We don't want to get kicked out. --Jonah

Just home from my six-week follow-up (and getting a filling -- yay), and I've been cleared for physical therapy. With luck and hard work, before the end of the month I'll have my core strength rebuilt to the point that I can wear that costume for more than three minutes without (literally) busting a gut. --Jonah

I like pushing electrons, but I'll be using the ROM at the core of all my fiddling/tricking-out endeavours but the Royal Guard. I have no p/a planned for that -- just external audio input and maybe a radio. We're about as chatty as the Buckingham Palace guards. --Jonah

With the teeth is it just a matter of the extra teeth being filled in? Or are they spaced differently, too? --Jonah

Depending on how long we're talking... A long, curved hair clip or barrette, convex side toward your neck, clip your hair, then flip it up and use more barettes or bobby pins to hold it in place. That gives you the flattest noggin. Then a balaclava over all to hide it. --Jonah

Non sequitur: Hoy, Tony -- you have an e-mail you need to respond to. --Jonah

Data points for clarity, for those who know what to make of them. ABS versus HIPS. And note that there are optional additives that can give HIPS better impact resilience, but it costs more. Also, I scare myself with what I'm going to be doing with my armour. It'll be a foundation to build on, rather than "simply" trimming it and hanging it on me. So HIPS is more appealing to me in this instance than ABS. --Jonah

The TE2 is HIPS, which is nearly the same resilience as ABS, while being lighter and easier to work. And as seen in the TE2 helmet tutorial, Rustoleum makes a spray enamel that gives a finish identical to polished ABS. So to me, that's no concern. --Jonah

I won't name names, but two of my great loves are as into this as I am. As in multiple costumes. And the other is into professional theatre, and spends enough time in, around, and making costumes for work to do it in her spare time, too. *heh* But she approves of what the 501st does, and that averts her annoyance with "amateurs". I don't really think I could love someone that completely if they didn't at least have a peripheral interst in this sort of thing. Whatever other interests we had in common, or not. --Jonah

Our esteemed LMO was asked about the Shadow Guards specifically, and his response indicated that LFL considers FU a canon source, and thus so will the Legion. But it will take more sources to get full Legion approval for the variants that appear therein. I think the Stormtrooper Commander variants belong with the FISD. THey aren't alternate terrain or special operations mass-production variants. They're one-off individuals that are part of the regular Stormtrooper Corps -- a last gasp of the diversity that arose during the Clone Wars. And something that didn't survive to the time of the Battle of Yavin. --Jonah

I've been at the extreme far right of that scale since somewhere in the late '80s-early'90s. Of course, what is my ideal or impression of the Stormtrooper as icon... probably won't be everybody's ideal. My philosophy has always been "more accurate than the film version", no matter the genre. Basically, making the "real" item the prop was a quick-and-dirty representation of. Of course, my Stormtrooper armour won't be made of plastoid composite, but you know what I mean. --Jonah

From where I'm standing, there are several things abou tthe currently accepted costume standards that need revising, but as with most things of this nature, there's a difference between passing an updated standard and enforcing it. The intervening time is spent educating the public (as we're doing here and on other Detachment boards). Part of the reason it took me five years to get my initial 501st costume done is that I didn't want to waste time and money on a "passable" costume that I'd end up either discarding once I got the one I wanted, or discarding once I upgraded to a higher-quality version of what I had. I'd rather wait twice as long and get a TE2 than get an FX sooner. This is not a hobby for the impatient, and I'm more than willing to delay gratification if it means I am able to do the best damn costume I can when I'm all done. --Jonah