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[Falke]

Hello everyone,

Usually I'm posting my WiPs in our Clan forum to be a role model for my recruits and I will still be posting a WiP in the Clan section, but not as detailed as this one. For this Canon build without a CRL some input from other Ruus'alore, App team members and other people working on this costume could be very helpful. Therefor I decided to post it internationally. I will do my best to describe everything as detailed as possible, but english is not my native language so my spelling and grammar might not be the best.

When I first decided that I want to make a Star Wars Cosplay, I didn't know that the Mando Mercs existed, so I researched some Cosplays for the 501st. As I really like the Mandos I planned to do a Bo Katan for the 501st. Fortunaly I found the Mercs shortly after, before getting serious with a specific Cosplay.

But when I saw Bo Katan in The Mandalorian I instaniously fell in love with the costume and I new, this would be my chance to fullfill my long time dream of a Canon Mandalorian.

I started in January with serious research and about a month ago with the kit itself, so it's time to reach out and present what I have done.

Gloves:

Luckily someone else found the exact model of gloves used for filming, so of course I ordered them:



Vest and Flightsuit

I already started the soft parts with the help of my mother. I will do a two piece flightsuit as I like them more. But I will connect both pieces with elastic straps to ensure correct positioning. For the base we found a great dark grey fabric I really like. Finding the correct pleather was way harder. The one I used is the forth pleather I ordered. It took several hours of research to find this one.

The trousers are almost finished. Only the leather patch on the side and one detail between the Boots and the Knee plate, which I will add when I have the shoes.





I know most people use black pleather for the long leather patch at the front, which originated from this picture:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NmNNiHUsFDwPJxwRjTeGxYjGTMvDjUih/view

But I looked closely at the screen shots and it looks brown to me. As I don't know how the strong light from the front modified the colours in the promo picture, I decided to go with what I've seen on screen. So I used brown leather. If this is a problem with the app, I can easily switch to black pleather.



The shirt is still in a very rough state:


I'm currently waiting for my shoulder plates, so I can see how long the short sleeve will be.

The vest is in a rough state as well:


Here I'm waiting for the shoulder plates as well.

Boots:

I will propably order the ones from Crowprops. They will be the most expensieve piece of the costume if I order them. But I haven't decided yet.

Belt:

I will try to build it myself out of my ordered pleather. I have some of the details pieces here, which have been printed, but maybe I'll order them from JJ industries.

Wig and headband

I will wait on the CRL before planning them. If they are optional I may leave them be. They are not my priority at the moment. I can still add them, when I have everything else finished.

Hard parts:

A clan mate of mine is printing them in ABS and the detail pieces in Resin. At first we used some files that weren't completly accurate so we switched the files. Some helmet details, the shoulders and Shins need to be reprinted, as I can't modify them that easily. We haven't printed the Gauntlets, handplates and Westars before the switch, so they were not affected. The rest of the pieces look okay to me, so I will keep them. I have reinforced the Chest and Helmet with fiberglass resin as the walls were very thin.

I'm currently getting rid of all the print lines. I made the most progress with my chest piece. I will describe my way of work once, it's the same with all the plates. I started with a delta sander on the big surfaces and handsanded the details with 100 sandpaper. Then I used some bondo on the few places where it was needed. I sanded the bondo with 120 sandpaper. Then I used some sprayable bondo and sanded everthing with 240 sandpaper, sprayable bondo, 320 sandpaper. I then glued the resin diamond on the chest. That's the state it is currently in. I will use one last layer of sprayable bondo und than sand it with 600 sandpaper. After this it should be ready to paint.



The helmet details of my files were incorrect. I will use the keyslots and the Rangefinder of another designer, but the earcaps will be modified by me. I already started.  The earcaps are supposed to look like this:


On the left you can see the original earcap. I sanded the raised section down. And constructed a raised edge section of scrap ABS around it. After using some bondo and painting it, it will look like the rectangle that was once is now decreased.


After glueing the it together the earcaps look like this:


The other inaccuracy is at the bottom of the earcaps:


I first sanded the print lines on the white pieces and removed the raised edges on the side of the resin part. I then glued the white piece to the resin part. Now I have to sand the bottom edge of the white piece to create a flat surface and add the triangle on top.


That's all I have for now. I will update this as soon as I have something to show.

[Aneira Velca'rusc]

Nice to see you working on this
And such a lucky find with those gloves!
I would think those pieces would be brown,  of course, lights and edits can make colours look different. But if you compare it with the colour of her gloves I would also believe the pants pieces are more brown than black.

[Falke]

I'm glad that you also think that the leather on the pants is brown!

In the mean time I continued modifying the earcaps. The right earcap is currently with a clanmate, as he is adjusting the RF stalk to it. So I have only pictures of the left earcap, but they are at the same state. I've build the triangle at the bottom. Now I only need to clean up the mess 




I've collected all my plates on Saturday, so I could started with sewing the arms. I started with the short arms and already completed the stitching:


I will wait with sewing the arms on to the rest of the flightsuit until I've made some more progress with the top part of the flightsuit.

The next part I will sew, will be the longer arms. I've spend hours studying pictures, as I've noticed some patches on the arms, that are similar to the patches on the legs. I'm still not 100 % sure, how they are, but I've drawn some sketches and I'm think I'm very close. Here is my sketch for the arm:



In the picture you can see the right arm on the right side is the front of the arm and on the left the back. I know it's not very pretty, just some lines I drew with paint, but it helps a lot with figuring out where the patches go. Here I have some references, to explain the colours. I will always post the unedited Photo first and then the one with my coloured lines.

The red line at the top is where the shorter arm ends, the red at the bottom, is where the gauntlet starts. The green is the rectangular patch with some stitching that I don't care about for now  The yellow lines are the stitching with the diagonal part at the back, that's way to complicated for my liking.




So far so good, these are the parts I've seen on every suit that cosplayers used for Bo Katan so far. No onto the difficult part. I first noticed the patch at this picture:


In blue we have the edges of the patch and in purple the seam of the arms. As you can see the edges of the patch touch the seam at different heights. Also the lines I coloured yellow are not visible on the patch, that comes from the back. So they vanish at some point.


After looking at this picture, I'm confident, that yellow lines vanish when they reach the seam. With this picture I also believe, that the two patches are sewn on when the arm is still flat and the arm will be closed after all the patches were sewn on, because you can follow the seam the whole time.



Let's take a look at my sketch again. The dark blue lines are the positions of the edges of the patches I'm sure of. The lighter blue (almost white) lines are my best guess. I think I can construct the light blue line at the top pretty much like I want, as we will never see it with the shorter arm atop of it. The light blue line the the bottom is giving me headaches. You can cleary see it, when she bends her arm, but not when her arm is extended. So I think I need to move the seam a bit more downwards as I've drawn it in my sketch, so that it is covered by the gauntlet, when the arm is extendend, but visible, when the arme is flexed.


I hope you can all follow my ramblings. I would love to get some more opinions on my thoughts. Do you think I got everything correctly?

[Aneira Velca'rusc]

Trying to follow those lines hurt my brain I tried to follow your sketch and quickly sketched it as well.
I do think you are correct, the yellow lines stop at that one seam .


Something different I noticed on this picture, don't know if you saw it already, but I also spotted this on Din Djarin's suit.
The short sleeve is not completely stitched to the suit, to give extra movementspace. (In Medieval clothes you often had gussets in the armpit area for movement, here they seem to just leave that gusset space open) Only the shoulder part it stitched, the armpit part is open.

Tried to circle the open part, and the red lines show the pulling of the fabric of the suit under the short sleeve.

[Falke]

Thanks for the Feedback!!

I've noticed the wrinkle your circled in blue, but I thought it was just one location, where the arm wasn't sewn on. But if the arm is only sewn on at the shoulder, a lot changes. I have to check it again. Thanks for showing me this detail! 

[Falke]

I've made a first mock up of the patches on the arms:





What do you think about it?

I also added some more decorative stitching and the leather patches on the pants. I declare them as finished for now.


Here I taped the plates to the pants to see how everything fits together:



The next project is the top of the flightsuit and the arms. I will keep you updated.

[Falke]

I started sewing the collar. It's almost finished, I only need to add the decorative stitching.

[Falke]

I finished the decorative Stitching on the collar



During the last week I also researched the colours I will need for this kit. And I want to share my plans with you. Maybe it will help some one else who is building this kit. From what I know, the colours that were  used on set are the Montana Gold colours. So I will mostly use these spray cans. My clan mates told me, that the metallic colours from Montana are not really good, so will use other products for the metallic parts.

Let's start with the basics. I wll use Liquid chrome from Belton as my base colours as my clan mates told me, that it is compatible with the Montana colours. On the edges of the chipping you can see two different darker colours, I determined Stealth and Balck as the most fitting colours and will use them on the appropriate parts.
The community discussed that a combination of Sky Blue and Blue Magic will be the best to create the shade of blue. I will try to mist Blue Magic over a base of Sky Blue.


The paint job of the helmet was discussed a lot in the community, so I'm quite sure with my approach.


I'm not sure which colour the inside of the Rangefinder is painted in, but I think it is either Silver or white.


The detail colours of the shoulders are the same as the ones on the helmet, so this was another easy part.


The Chest, Cod and Thighs have a metall colours, so no Montana Colours on these parts.


The Backplate and handplates were harder to dertermine. It still looks a little like metall, but you can also see two different shades of grey. So I decided to mist those two colours on Liquid chrome.


The right gauntlet only hase two little details that are silver.


The left gauntlet has the black keypad and the copper Whistling birds, where I again won't use Montana colours.


In comparison to the backplate the base colour of the Jetpack is lighte, so I will only msit Wall over Liquid Chrome. You have also the yellow triangles and some small metall details.


And last but not least the paint job of the two Westars.


It took some time to create all those pictures, but it helps me a lot with planning the painting stage. Hopefully I can help someone else with these.

[Fenn Beviin]

Amazing research and nice work so far!

Not going to lie..... the female Nite Owls are by far the best costumes to come out of The Mandalorian Tv series.

Following along with interest and keep up the good work!

[Falke]

Thank you!

I have another update to show you. I've sewn on the collar to the Flightsuit Top:







I've also finished all the patches and detail stitching around the waist and the one stitching near the collar.





Next up will be the patch behind the armholes and then the arms.
 
I also decided to modify some boots instead of buying the ones from Crowprops. So I bought a base that was recommended from a 501st member.

[Falke]

I finished another detail on the top, the patch behind the armholes:

[Geila Alo]

Impressing work so far, will follow your process with interest 

[Arco'thyel Wyshla]

This thread is inspiring, I'm in love with your attention to detail and faithfulness to the references! I hope to get on your level someday.

I have a noob question: when adding that last detail, are you just laying another patch of fabric and sewing it on top? How do you make the edges so nice and clean?

[Falke]

Thank you!

I'm plannign to do an explaination with pictures soon. I still have one patch on the arm and several patches on the vest to do. I will explain my process with one of them as an example. But yes, they are an extra layer of fabric sewn on top.

[Arco'thyel Wyshla]

I'm looking forward to it! You're doing great work, we can definitely learn from you!

[Falke]

I did the patches on my arms before my last post here. So I will do the tutorial with other patches as example. Don't worry, there are still many patches left that I can use as an example.

But for now I will show you the progress I made with the arm details. I started with the ground patches:



And added the horizontal lines:



To get a better understanding of the criss cross pattern on the ellbow, I drew a small sketch of it. It has fewer lines than I thought at first:



I used some chalk to draw the pattern on the arm:



Finally I was able to sew on the lines for this pattern:



The chalk will be easy to remove with some water.

Now, I only need to add the rectangular patch before I can attach the arms to the Flightsuit top.

Today I was able to paint the first shoulder plate silver





All the other plates still need some sanding before I can start painting.

[Aneira Velca'rusc]

That is so freaking smoooooth  love it
Stitching looks A+ as Well 

[Arco'thyel Wyshla]

Those stitching details are looking good!

What paint did you use on the shoulder plate? It's gorgeous!

[Falke]

The silver is Liquid chrome from Benton.

I'm glad that my workflow of smoothing the print lines works so well

[Ally93]

In love with all this hard work your doing. Those stitch lines do look amazing. Your bo-katan will be rocking

[Falke]

I have some good news, I finished the step by step guide of the patches! 

My example is the recangular patch on the arm:


Please excuse the bad quality of some of the pictures. I mostly sew late in the evenings when it is dark outside. So the lightning is suboptimal.

Every patch starts with the creration of the pattern. I usually make a sketch with some chalk on the piece I'm working on to get a better understanding of the placement and dimensions.


When cutting the fabric for the patch it is important to leave some excess fabric around the egdes:


Afterwards I finish the edges of the patch:



Now it's time to sew the patch on the piece:




So far I have used some normal black thread. I won't remove this stitching as the black thread is barely visible after adding the decorative stitching with the thicker thread.

I usually start with the stitching that is closest to the edges.


No I work my way from the edges to the middle, stitching by stitching, At the start I adjust the gap betweent he presser foot and the previous stitching, so that the gap between the two stitchings is correct. While sewing I try to keep the gap between the presser foot and the previous stitching as consistent as possible.


After each turn I controll the gap again.


Sometimes it's necessary to add some chalk-markings to show where the stitching is supposed to be. I use those markings in addition to the gap between the presser foot and the previous stitching.



Now the complicated part of the decorative stitching is done.


But now comes the tedious part of finishing all the loose ends by hand. Going forward and backwards at the end of each stitching would look awful with the thicker thread, so I need to take care of each end by hand. I use a needle to pull the loose end to the backside.


When a line is supposed to end while meeting another line, I end with the last stitch that doesn't cross the line. Then I make an additional stitch by hand to ensure that the two lines meet perfectly.




On the inside I make a knot with the two threads that were used to make the stitching.


After cutting all the excess threads the inside looks like this.


And here is the finished patch.


I hope this guide is helpfull. I'm currently working on attaching the sleeves to the flightsuit.

[Bel Tay'haai]

Gorgeous! I can't wait to see the rest of your work!

[Arco'thyel Wyshla]

Thank you so much, this is tremendously useful! Especially the explanations about the detail stitching -- I was wondering how you keep the threads from unraveling without backstitching.

Keep up the good work! And feel free to keep sharing any and all pictures.

[AlyCat Cosplay]

This is all looking so amazing! I'm skipping a few of the inside sleeve seams where the added patch seems to be, skipping the added patches on the back of the undershirt that kinda looks like a yolk, and trying to decide if I should add the topstitching on the bottom of the shirt. Seeing yours looks great tho so I love to see it all!

[Falke]

Thank you for the positive feedback!

@AlyCat Adding all of the patches was a lot of work, so I can understand that you don't want to add them on the parts where you won't see them very well. I think adding all of the detail stitching would be enough to create the effect. My problem is, I can't unsee all those patches once I've noticed them and I want to make my Bo Katan as accurate as possible, which is a pain sometimes. But seeing the finished pieces is so rewarding.

In the last week I finished the flightsuit, by attaching the sleeves to the top and finishing the bottom edge of the sleeves.


As discussed in an previous post, the lower half of the shorter sleeve is not attached to the top.


I also started some painting tests with the left shoulder. I will add the logo later. I'm still testing some techniques, but if you want a full explaination of my painting process, tell me and I will explain it with my helmet as the example.


I'm currently working on the vest. I have already started with the patches on the back. Before I can continue I need to check their positions in regards to the leather patch on the shoulder, so this will be my next project.

I counted 16 lines on the patch, with the first and last line being made with the light grey detail stitching-thread on the side covers of the patch.