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bantha hunters TD building thread


bantha hunter
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Hey guys!

I'm currently in the midst of building my TD, and I thought it would be a good idea to create this build thread to post about my progress. A couple of months ago I created another thread on whitearmor.net (Click me!), but now that I am starting with strapping the pieces together, I have decided to continue here...  :)
My armor is an ANH stunt kit from RS propmasters, and I had a lot of fun with it so far. I really want to recreate a specific TD to aim for SWAT down the road (waaay down the road), and settled on this guy right here:

a4L2xL2.png

I really love the look of the RT-97C in combination with cheese-graters. I also discovered that my arms are slighty longer than average, which means that there is an unsightly gap between my wrist-openings and the regular hand guards. I think cheese-graters can help me hide that gap better, so this is what I'm going to try.
Because I'm not exactly "70's stuntman sized" (I'm 6'2", 95 kg) I had to modify a couple of parts to make them fit me. Man, that was a bit scary at times. This is where I thank the dude who first discovered how to make ABS-paste. Thanks buddy! I couldn't have done it without you. :D:salute:
I somehow managed to shim the back of my thighs and calves without completely ruining them, and have just finished shimming the kidney-armor as well. Lots of sanding and applying ABS-paste. And then more sanding... And more paste... And sanding again...
This process has literally taken weeks, but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Fm6Og5N.jpg  opbjK50.jpg

This is what my shimmed kidney looks like when I wear it with the chest and abs armor. I think I only added a 2,5 cm wide strip of ABS and tried to blend it with the original part as best as possible. I'm generally happy with the result, but I'm currently pondering if the gap between abs and kidney is still too wide, or if I'm overthinking it? I could probably bite the bullet and try to add another 1/2" on each side, to completely eliminate the gap, but I'm debating if it is worth the trouble. As I mentioned, I'm ultimately trying to aim for SWAT, even if that is still a long way off, so I really want this thing to look "right". What do you think? :confused:

Anyway, once I have decided how to proceed with the kidney I'm going to continue with the strapping. I'll keep you posted. :)

Cheers! 

 

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Hello Lukas, I am happy to read from you here. It will be an interesting post for me, especially since I did SWAT on the same Trooper. SWAT is a worthwhile goal, stick to it! I think the gap is ok, it shouldn't be bigger than 1/2" inch. You can still reduce it if you take the right, wide belt. I'm looking forward to your progress, keep us posted!

Regards, bigwam

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  • 2 months later...

Hey folks!
It's been two months, and I owe you another update! 
Between a vacation and the holidays I didn't get too much free time to spend working on the TD, but I can finally get going again. I spent the last few weeks with a lot of strapping and trying to get the clamp-shell to work. It's now finally getting there. I hope to share pictures of that soon!
I also managed to make the gap between the abs and kidney a bit smaller by completely re-working the shim, and I think I have now closed it completely once the canvas belt sits nice and tight.

In the meantime I made a few orders and got a few shiny toys in the mail that I can't wait to share :D

This beauty was made by Angry Ape Props, and if I understood correctly it might have been the last of its kind. It is the RT-97C master that he used to produce all his kits. I promised to give it a good home:

zO4k6a4.jpg


It has a brass scope and all. Really beautiful work. I still have to attach the scope to the barrel and will have to 3d print a few parts for that, but in the end I want it to be detachable and put a grub-screw in there to fix it in place.

JRzO9C3.jpg


I also bought these wonderful pauldrons from trooper1 and couldn't be happier! He puts a lot of effort into his products, and it truly shows! The quality is superb. I went a bit overboard and bought all the colors :D

X9HlxZW.jpg


I also managed to snag this extremely well-preserved Giostyle Safari600 bottle. It was actually still wrapped in plastic when I got it! The thing has never seen action and looks factory fresh. It sat in the basement of a German Ebay seller since the 70's... :icon_eek::icon_eek::icon_eek: 

eXNvSNk.jpg

And finally... Pouches! I bought the two spanish pouches from our own bigwam (I love them! :) ) and the others are from Trooperbay.

vKJvDEn.jpg


That's all from me for now. I have some strapping to do! :salute:

 

On 11/5/2022 at 8:40 AM, bigwam said:

Hello Lukas, I am happy to read from you here. It will be an interesting post for me, especially since I did SWAT on the same Trooper. SWAT is a worthwhile goal, stick to it! I think the gap is ok, it shouldn't be bigger than 1/2" inch. You can still reduce it if you take the right, wide belt. I'm looking forward to your progress, keep us posted!

Regards, bigwam

Thanks Thomas! Your SWAT trooper not only looks excellent, but the whole submission process was of great help to understand this particular trooper. I have to admit that I went back to your post a couple of times to get my bearings.  :D 

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Hello Luke, you are on the right track. So far you have only bought top quality. The Blaster from AAP is recommended, and it was my first choice. Likewise Trooper1's pauldrons. I don't know any better ones.

Regards bigwam

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Thanks guys :D 

Quick update... I finished my thighs and attached the knee ammo belt today. The clam-shell still needs some work, but I snapped a few mirror selfies to see how everything looks so far. The back piece is still missing, and I need to fix my butt-plate.
I used elastic straps to fix the butt-plate to the kidney, and I think the elastics are too short, as it is constantly trying to slide over the kidney. The butt on the RS kit seems to flare out at the sides a bit, so ideally I want the outer straps to pull that back in. 
I will probably exchange the elastics for black canvas material and see if that works better. :) 


EEzLDSb.jpg

As you can see, the shoes are not completely finished either. :D 
They are brown riding boots from Euroriding that I painted with Angelus white leather paint. At one point they were completely white, but then the brown coloring of the boots "seeped" through and the boots yellowed.
I will probably have to re-paint them a couple of times. I thought about spray painting them, but I figure that would just result in flaky paint. 

 

Cheers! :D 



 

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Yeah, I also think that it's going to look fine as soon as you've added some dirt. That's the cool thing about being a sandtrooper.:lol:

But if you still want to add another coat, there's also spraypaint for leather which I have used on my boots and it's brilliant. However, of course it's hard to say how it will react with the paint that's already on the boots. 

For the butt plate: it's possible that the problem might be solved when you put on the belt. Might be worth a try. 

Otherwise it looks really good already, you have done a great job in fitting those thighs and shins.:duim:

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 months later...

Hey guys! Long time no see... I was caught up with other things these past months, but I managed to fix some strapping issues and finally finished the clamshell and shoulder-bells.
I tried everything on yesterday, and this is how it looks now. The shins were sliding up in these pictures, and I still need to think of a good way of attaching them to the shoes. I was thinking of experimenting with velcro that I can stick to the top of the boots. I have rather long legs, so I figured I want the shins to sit as high up as possible without sliding over the boots... 

I was a bit concerned with the look of the shoulder-bells, because I'm a bit "wide" in the shoulders, but seeing the photos I think this might look good as is? In these photos the right bell is detached from the shoulder-strap. I think this was done on the "move along" trooper, and it might not be accurate for the trooper I'm replicating. :D 

As always, I'm happy about any comments you can give me. If you see something that looks off, I'd be glad to hear it. :D 

jtactKJ.jpg

S6c9dPI.jpg

8m6JT3d.jpg

UjyEAEh.jpg

BRoHrH7.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

Next up... The teeth! I have to admit, this step was scary. 

x5th9l8.jpg 

BO4bvHR.jpg


I did a quick mockup and added grey paint in Photoshop to simulate how it might look with a paintjob. When you compare my helmet to the movie version you can see that I got carried away with the two gaps in the middle. They are higher than in the movie version. I think a good paintjob can fix this to a degree, but do you think this is still "close enough" to be considered accurate? :sweat:

TusxLBq.jpg

 

On 8/28/2023 at 8:39 AM, bigwam said:

Hi,

It's really looking good. But I agree with you, you could cut away a little bit. But not much.

Regards bigwam

I shaved down the last bit of "lip" at the edge of the eyes, and I like it a lot better now! :)
Unfortunately it's not visible in the photos above because I did it after I took them. :D 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks Thomas! :D

Something a bit different from me...
I'm currently waiting for some RAL 7034 spraypaint to arrive so I can convert my helmet into a "totally not ABS" HDPE version, and I had some time on my hands.
I wanted to see if I could digitally rotate the breastplate of my trooper to make the dirt pattern more visible, and I think I made a discovery that could be relevant.
For this I 3d-scanned the breastplate to get a rough digital model and aligned it with a screenshot of the roadblock scene. I then used Blender to project the scene through the camera onto the breastplate. This enabled me to rotate the armor and view it from the front. 

To my surprise I discovered that the chestplate is the same one that was used for the captain in the Garinden scene! The "scratches" in the middle are partly hidden from view and there is some distortion, but the dirt stains on the left are a perfect match.

This means that for the RT-97C private, the clamshell of the Garinden captain can be used as reference for the weathering, and there is less guesswork involved. From the looks of it the right shoulder bell is a match too, so I guess it was permanently connected to this particular clamshell during the shoot.

1Kb3SpR.jpg

 

f8NEVCX.jpg

 

Also, this right here is ready for printing! Any idea what it could be? :D 
.... (okay, it says what it is in the image, haha)

iiPAcXw.png

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Good morning,
You're really getting into it. You're right, the armor pieces as well as the helmets and the accessories were swapped several times. This means you can always see new variations and details in the individual scenes. Thumbs up, the trooper will definitely be great. I'm really excited about the end result.
Below, this will be a "cheesegrater". Do you want to cast it yourself out of latex?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Bucket time! :D 
I attached the helmet and tried to get the brow height to look as close to the Davin Felth original as possible. For my built I decided against rivets and went with screws... I'm not sure if this will hold up to trooping, but it seems sturdy enough.
I now know why people say that attaching the ears is the most difficult step in building a helmet. It's good that RS propmasters give you two pairs of ears to work with, because I definitely trashed one pair in the process. But I think in the end it turned out alright and I'm happy with them for now. 

Because I am replicating the Davin Felth helmet I tried to add some of the little flaws as well. In the original helmet the left ear seems to be positioned slightly lower and you can see a bit of the underlying HDPE-plastic "semicircle" peak out on the top. I made sure to get the same effect in my helmet. 

Oh, and I made a cheap helmet stand as well. It's a PVC pipe with a cheap toilet plunger (A fresh one!!!) shoved inside of it to cradle the helmet. :D
It's actually super effective, and you can easily reposition the helmet on the plunger. Because it's rubber it nicely grabs on to the plastic of the helmet. Maybe not something to display it long term (Especially because there will be stuff inside the helmet later on), but for painting it works great!

DpW7Eye.jpg  nGnpLWH.jpg

 

uJvirbT.jpg  L9xIH1j.jpg

 

gygNqTP.jpg  dIPMkPH.jpg

 

 

On 9/12/2023 at 7:02 AM, bigwam said:

Do you want to cast it yourself out of latex?

Yep! :D 
I will try to resin-print a mold and cast the cheesegraters myself. Not sure if it will work, but maybe worth a try.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey guys!
The bucket is now finished and all it's missing is some good weathering. :D 

To recreate the tube-stripes I again worked with a rough 3d-mesh onto which I projected the images of the original helmet.
From this I was able to create a detailed pattern that I'm happy to share with the community here. So if anyone is recreating the Davin Felth helmet in the future and wants a template... Here ya go! :) 

v1Pb4Up.jpg

 

And here is my finished bucket

 

y9bmoPe.jpg   GqlZPIG.jpg

 

O4kA4ek.jpg   xN7Bt2y.jpg

 

fCKwu2M.jpg   GsLe9Vd.jpg

 

F8P7BC5.jpg   uko5Rko.jpg

 

m6FELjl.jpg

 

LycZz0T.jpg

 

 

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