Still a lot to do:

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Armor is pretty much done too... not much left to do on that one.

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That helmet looks AMAZING ! Hard to believe it fits a 12 inch doll.

Now that the ESB parts has been shipped out, I'm working steadily on the body prints. I shipped along the ANH torso, as further shaping of the armor was needed, but I was afraid of ruining it in the process, so I think the armor will be molded as-is, and then the cast will be formed over the torso - after cooling the mold can then potentially be added onto the armor again and a jacket can be formed to ensure perfectly shaped armors every time. At least that's how I would do it, but seeing as the mold maker is more experienced than I am, he may do it differently and better. Anyway... things are progressing slowly, but it's really shaping up. It's actually interesting to add in the little movie specific idiosyncrasies into the bodies, regarding pose and such.

Can't wait to show it off.

Now the sculpting part of the project is happening. Did a small cheat test to see how best to attack the leather suit look. It gave me some thoughts on how to tackle it for the rest of the body. The trick is to let the apoxie sculpt cure to the point where it becomes elastic making it much easier to press the tool onto it and getting the desired effect. Seeing as that is a limited window, I definitely have to make sure only to work on a small area at a tim. Seeing as the arms and chest are small areas and will be easy to work on - the real trouble comes with the legs. At least now I know I'm able to produce a pleasing leather suit look, but the approach on the rest of the body will be different than this test effort.

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The work on the ESB Prowse body paired with the dud helmet cast, a broken reworked chest armor and a makeshift cape I was using to determine the length and look of the cape for my Dracula figure (you can just barely spot him behind the Frankenstein's monster). The Vader cape will be longer and in a much better material than this bed sheet, which is rather stiff fabric, but works well for testing.

This is basically the status of the project at this point. I've taken a long break from Vader as working on the pieces were beginning to annoy me to the point of carelessness (result: the broken chest armor and other pieces), so I had to step away from it before I ended up destroying it. The Turtles are a welcome side project to work on when I get too frustrated with Vader. Still a long way to go.

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Wow, would love to have a painted version of just the helmet. Very cool.

The second part of the project - that will complete the ANH and the special projects and other projects - will be printed as soon as the last item has been re-scanned as the first scan ended up with areas missing, due to lack of time. It's gonna be great.

A small teaser:

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Drooling over this already!

seconded!

There is also the project of making the Vader face mask into an averaged symmetrical version - just to see how it will look in 3D space. If it looks cool, then we might print that one as well and possibly do something in 1:1 scale too. We'll see. The whole thing that started my quest for an averaged symmetrical helmet was of all things the news of the RotS Vader being made symmetrical - of course, they royally screwed up with how they achieved the symmetry, by cutting a regular face mask into pieces and mirroring the parts they liked and glued it back together, basically making a helmet out of pieces and not using the whole mask.

I did an effort in photoshop where I used the ESB poster helmet, mirrored it and layered it on top of itself and then changed the opacity to 50% on the top layer and that made the two layers come together and create a pretty convincing averaged symmetrical helmet. Though not perfectly created, with areas that didn't line up perfectly, it still created a much better symmetrical effort than the RotS, and at the same time retaining the essence of the OT Vader.

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Not exactly perfect, but decent result. Still a few areas that needs work, but less than I thought. At least that's something. It's interesting to see the face mask like that after having seen it in WIP mode for so long. I will likely be able to ship it to the mold maker sometime this month, which means only 1 item remains to be finished for the ANH version.

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Wow. How does that look that good?!!!!!!!!

The closest thing to magic as I have ever experienced in my life.

I've got to say - if I end up lucky enough to acquire one of your heads I will see what it looks like on the deluxe sideshow Vader. The head comes on/ off on that piece but I am really starting to like it. The body, the drapery, the working lights. I know that your figure is much more of a cast/ static pose but just for fun.

Have you seen the new sideshow piece yet?