work on the clone trooper belt…

The belt was a little of a challenge. Its made from a kind of foam rubber that i got from clonetrooper.net. The quality was pretty much okay but required a little extra work. The hardest  part was actually finding the proper paint to use because the material is very flexable. I ended up using flat black car bumper paint which actually turned out great. I may even add on some places some extra black trimmings of the same foam rubber that I used on the helmets brim. I’m even considering to use the same paint on my entire armour kit which also came last week. That will require a lot of work to fix and can’t be done alone. Anywy here are a few pictures:

the improvements continue…

Did some work on the helmet and the shoes over the past week and this is how they turned out. On the shoes I just added the gray foam rubber which really made a difference. The helmet as you can see is painted accordingly and the visor material I found ridged clear red plastic at a local arts and crafts store. It cost’s practically nothing. I have a mirror film on order from ebay which was also very very inexpensive. It will be sitting behind the red visor. Note that on the helmet I also used the same gray foam rubber on the back the goes from ear to ear. It gives it that extra touch than just painting it gray.

body suit from ebay…

Of course a body suit is needed. Normaly prices can range from $50 upward. Lucky enough I found a great shop on ebay that makes a spandex-suit according to you height and weight for only $15 including matching face hood and boot socks. For an extra $2-$3 they include matching gloves. And best of all you can pick the color of your liking. Because the shadow clone has a grayish body suit it was a challenge to find this but it looks great. The picture below is the black version but you get the idea

working on the clone trooper helmet

The next process of this project is the working on the helmet. The helmet itself was in pretty good starting condition all I had to do was sand and fill a few imperfections. I the cut out the face part which was a little scary t first. After that I attached super magnets on both parts. I wasa little unsure it this technique was the best way to go but to y surprise it actually works pretty good, allowing me to keep the Star Wars CGI look. After the glue dried, the next day, I started painting the inside of the helmet. No real issues there. Once the paint dried I added the padding with my hot glue gun. The foam padding is from builder knee-protectors. Its costs practically nothing and works like a charm. I’m using a flat black spray paint by “Dupli-Color”. This is my progress so far:

creating the shoes…

It took me a few days to find the right pair of shoes or close to it. The major issue was that the sole of the shoes have to be grayish. I finally found a pair that had potential and it only cost 11-12 dollars. I then bought some fake black non-glossy leather at a local material store. It was about $6 for a half meter, which was more than enough. I then made a template with paper and just cut out the parts in the leather. For gluing I used a hot glue gun. These are the results. It takes about 3-4 hours per shoe. I’m not 100% satisfied with the shoe but I will use these until I find a better model. All thats left to do is make the side buttons. Here are the pictures of my progress so far:

every new project has a starting point….

I guess I just have a lot of free time on my hands to start a second blog, but my R2–D2 blog is already full, lol. I’ve actually already ordered for a bunch of parts and well as fabricating other parts. I will begin posting the first built parts in a few days. So sit back and enjoy this empty blog for a while