Darth Vader Supreme Costume

I have a vader sound board available its a flash file, but it includes a nice breathing effect, as well as tons of sayings.

Let me know if youd lke the link.

 

Heres a piture of my first coat of the star wars movie paint I bought.

If your interested in the paint and where you can get it, let me know!

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/945/masksideview0nj.jpg

 

Darth Melevelous - Can you pm me the paint details?

Thanks! And Happy Easter guys!
Huzz

 

PM sent.

 

Hi Everyone,

Firstly, Yes Huzz, I did enhance the light saber using photoshop. In day light even the MR saber doesn't quite hit the mark, I'm thinking of making a red transparent sleeve to slide over the saber, which would hopefully enhance the led's. Darth Maul will always have the same glazed look expression, it's a Rubies mask, but it's not that bad. I think it would take him too long if he had to apply make up and horns, the event would be over by the time he's ready! lol.

I've but my shoulder armour and bells back to original design with hinges, I gave it a try without, but didn't work for me. I've decided come summer I will paint it, or hopefully get my painter mate to paint it, to match my helmet. Another thing I had problems with is the gloves, I find they are too big and get very hot and sweaty after a while. I have two pairs so I can change them after a while, but I tried tonight the gloves on with another pair of cotton cloth gloves on first. These were cheap gardening gloves, about £5 for three pairs. I think this will help a lot next time, it will keep my hands dry, it fills the Vader gloves out and makes them nice and tight, plus it makes your hands look bigger to the kids, even more menacing.

I'm going to modify my voice equipment, I've decided to keep the MP3 player with the amp, aroung the back attached to my belt. I will just have the player playing all the time looped. I then only have one wire trailing up my back from the helmet. I'm thinking of making a slit in the inner cloak so the wire can go under this, hidding it even more, I noticed on the Saturday in some of the photos, you could see wires down my back when the cape blew around, spoils the effect I think.

Hummerth

Some more images of the day. You may notice in some images my helmet is high at the front. I didn't know this till after the event finished, I had no mirror to check the helmet, and someone else put my helmet on for me, so I didn't know it wasn't quite on right. Still not to worry, no one didn't notice. Must remember to pack a mirror next time!

[image=http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/5460/darthvader050pl.jpg]
[image=http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/453/darthvader043ba.jpg]
[image=http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/8758/darthvader068ok.jpg]

 

Just curious H2

How in the hell do you bowl in the vader costume without falling on your face! Especially in a rubies! LOL

 

Hi,

We only posed for the bowling pic. I'm not that good at bowling out of costume! One thing I didn't mention about Saturdays appearance that was fun was, this little boy came up to me and I had to sign his autograph book. I put 'best wishes Darth Vader', it made me laugh, he believed I was the real person, Vader himself. He was only about 5 years old, he's gonna be gutted in another 5 years when he realised I was a fake, and so's his autograph!

Just tweaked my voice equipment, it all fits in the pouch now, on the belt. Now all I need to do is get a slit in the costume for the wire to feed through. I might even get my Mum to stitch one to the inside of the inner robe, it could run in a sleeve down the centre of the costume.

Hummerth

 

Sweet, send me the link! Also if any of you guys have, or plan to upgrade pieces of the Rubies such as chest box or belt boxes, I'm interested taking the originals off your hands, or buying these items. let me know or shoot me a PM. thanks much

 

PM sent

 

A few posts back I talked about a 501st guy I met while costuming together at a kid's birthday party. He offered to paint my pieces and we're doing it Saturday. He'll be doing a complete automotive paint job on all of my pieces (mask, dome, chest armor and shin guards). I'm looking forward to the results and I will post pics as soon as I can. I fixed the neck flare and filled in the extra rib on the nose bridge as well as the divot at the top of the dome.

I also finished the audio set up similar to Hummerth's. I have the MP3 player and amp on the belt. I spliced both channels into one speaker since I didn't have enough room in the mask for both speakers. All 4 wires are attached to a male mini plug as soon as they come out of the amp. The female end is attached to two wires that run up into the helmet to the speaker. This allows for easy connection/disconnection during dress up. All wires are covered with a black plastic cover I found in the auto section at Walmart making the installation nice and clean. I have about an hour's worth of breathing with a movie quote every 3 minutes (20 different quotes in all).

With my luck I'll finish the mods and have no occasion to wear it until Halloween.

 

I have come up with a method to fix the neck flare that doesnt involve burning your hands at all!

Let me know if your interested.

DM

 

Please share.

 

Its easy,

Take a screw, or a small drill bit, and drill 3 or 4 small holes along the back lower edge of each side of the mask (this can be easily and quickly fixed later).

Then get your self an empty 5 pound coffee can and large pot.

Using a shoe lace, and the coffe can now put the can inside the neck area, and then use the shoe lace to lace up the holes from the bottom to the top like you would your shoes.

Get that lace really tight.
Boil the water, place the mask in it and leave it there for 5 to ten minutes.

After that place the mask in ice water and leave it there until the entire mask is cooler than the surrounding air temp.
Unlace and your done.

Alittle epoxy and some black model paint and those holes are gone. plus its at the rear of the mask where it will barely ever be seen.

I did it, and it worked great!

 

Man, that page is awesome! The only thing is how to save them so I can use them with my sound system? Any help with that would be great. thanks for the link!

 

get fraps. http://www.fraps.com/

You can record anything with it, even live online game play. But you can select the frame rate , sample rate and wether you want a/v, or just video, or just audio. Ive used that program for years, and love it.

No problem M8, glad I could help.

 

So now that I've downloaded and installed fraps, how do I record the sound clips? I've read the help sections, but it doesn't really explain much.

 

you have to assign a key that is your record, and stop button in one. First hit on the key starts the recording, second stops it.

Either on the bottom of the fraps window, or in the setting where you set up your video framrate and audio sampling quality, you should have the ability to turn off, or de-select the video (Depending on the fraps version). when you play the sound file, by clicking with your mouse. at the same time hit the record button youve assigned, when its finished, then hit it again to stop recording. It will save it as what ever file type you want. avi, mp3, wav ect. If you have any more problems let me know. Im up to my eyeballs in work today (nice for a change). But Ill try to check in once in awhile.

Another way to kinda "cheat" the system is connect a minidisk, or MP3 player to the headphone output, adjust the volume and hit record, then click on the sound file you want to play, then stop the recording as soon as its done. Its not as easy, but still works.

 

Sprayed my armor and bucket today and I must say, WOW! The difference is like night and day and we haven't even done the clearcoat yet.

 

so... has anyone taken any of thier helmets or armor to an autobody shop? How much do you guys think that would cost?

 

It is goning to vary depending on the body shop but I think you will find the price range to be between $25 - $50. It is a good investment to get a professional finish, no offense to anyone who has painted thier own because the pics have been great but face it not everyone can paint.

 

Hi,

I think most who have been posting for a while will know my helmet was painted professionally. I was lucky though, having worked in the motor trade for many years in body shops, I knew people who would be able to paint my costume parts for a lot less than retail price. I don't know how much in the US, but I would expect to pay £50 to £100 to paint parts. This could be even higher if you get them to prep and mask everything. You would be looking at several hours labour (£35 average an hour) and paint is perhaps £30 - £40 per litre, but you would only be charged by the 10th of a litre (well it use to be, several years now since I was in the motor trade).

I'm in the process now about arranging to have the rest of my parts painted by my mate, that will be shoulder guard and my reveal helmet and mask. I will prep the items first and mask, also between spraying black and the gun metal colour. I don't know what to do about my helmet, it may be ROTJ, because I will more than likely sell it once it is done.

If you can afford it, and as Do-Clo said, no offense to anyone painting with aerosol, I would recommend having you parts painted professionally. Aerosol cans can't achieve the coverage like a professional air gun, the cans just dont have the spray fan size on the nozzle, and the pressure like an air fed gun, this is why they always have this orange peel effect alot more than an air fed gun, cans produces more overspray, requiring a lot of post work flatting and polishing.

First images of a freshly painted helmet.
[image=http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/2575/dscf51343ml.jpg]
[image=http://img468.imageshack.us/img468/6083/dscf51281lh.jpg]

I didn't even touch my helmet, it is gun finish, as with my shin parts finish. In fact I wasn't going to have my helmet and mask painted originally, it was only because I had to have my shin parts painted because they dulled so much, I had my helmet painted. My mate done such a good job on them, that I said I can't but not have my helmet painted now, and I'm so pleased I did.

Before painting
[image=http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4010/rubiesvader060mn.jpg]
After painting
[image=http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/4058/darthvader027bf.jpg]

I'm now in the process of working out the measurement to have some belt buckles made in brushed aluminium, ROTS style. They don't know yet what radius they can machine in the alloy for the slots, but they have told me they will use a harder grade alloy, because this machines a lot better when doing a tight radius. I will have made just the alloy parts, to the size of the Rubies costume buckle. If they come out well, and the price is right, I will perhaps sell some. To fix on, I'm will just stick on with Araldite. Will keep you posted.

[image=http://img327.imageshack.us/img327/2299/buckle024sj.jpg]

What's happened to Portumac? He doesn't seem to have anything on eBay lately. Has George caught up (D'Oh!) with him or is he making a new batch of pieces to sell?

Hummerth

 

My parts are being professionally painted for free by a member of the 501st no less!

Hummerth, do you still plan on selling some neck seals?

 

yes..im famous now...that was me on ESPN...LOL

 

I didn't get to see the clip yet but when I saw pics of just your costume I knew it was you. My 1st thought before knowing it was you was that's a nice looking vader costume. Now I know that my rubies will turn out great once I get off my lazy A$$ to start working on the helmet.

 

I asked a local body shop where Im at, and they told me 700 to 1000 USD for it. I laughed at them and said,... AH, NO!