Hello everybody! My name is Dirk and I roam from the land of giants. I bought an efx pcr helmet in December and while I was completing my movie accurate 1989 Batman costume I found myself wanting to do another project in between. I lucked out and found a reasonably priced Supreme Edition vader on eBay.

I wanted to turn it into an ANH Vader as much as I could. When I started I had no idea what had to be changed. I got up to speed very quickly, familiarised myself with this forum and the reference material.

As the costume got here I immediately repainted the chest armor to gunmetal grey.
Long story short here's some pictures.



I still want to change the beltbox a little more. I've gotten so used to working with putty and filler I almost want to try and work a more ANH shape into the Rubies boxes. I hope I can find a lead on more accurate green and red lights.

I opted to get the honeywell caps for the chestbox. And even though they are priced at $ 15 dollars in some places to get them shipped to Holland would have been around $50 per piece. Which I found a bit too much. My goal from the get go was use as much of the Rubies pieces as possible.



And here's me wearing it.


Now this week I started to work on the chest armor as it bothered me.
I will also reshape these:


And as you can see in the background I am simultaneously reworking the helmet/dome of the "deluxe" helmet that came with the costume.
Still a long way to go


So far the biggest thing ahead seems to be to get the chest armor to look better. I used two different types of Gunmetal Grey ( Humbrol enamel ) and Tamiya Gunmetal Grey acrylic. Both seem to end up way too light against the EFX helmet. So is there any knowledge on what kind of GMG they used? Or perhaps a different color? And on the ANH chestarmor the U shaped indents seemed to be a paint that is very close to the grey. It has hints of black in it but it doesn't seem as black as any of the other parts of the armor. I've seen some vaders that really nail that part in terms of color. Though a quick search didn't give me any info here.


I know I'm really late to the party on a forum in 2017 ;) but I hope to elevate this project to a higher level with the inspiration and input found here.

Thanks!

Wow! Nice job I see there. From a newbie and rookie from Europe, I wish the better and will follow your career with interest, young Skywalker!
As for the sections of chest armor, maybe the better way to increase the width of that section and the indented tongue, might be using 1mm thick polistyrene sheet?

Welcome to the forum and very nice Vader. The real paint used for Vader was Rolls Royce colors. I don't think it has been confirmed, but the best Rolls Royce black that looks the best is the one called Mason's Black. Sskunky, CFO, is testing which Rolls Royce gunmetal paint was used, but it may not have been the basic paint they used, but a gunmetal color mixed with black to darken it. I'm really looking forward to his tests.

Regarding the ANH armor, then they didn't just drybrush the gunmetal areas of the armor. They also lightly drybrushed the black center bars. The RotS chest armor is very differently shaped to the OT armor and it seems the two black center bars with the U marking is curving a lot more down towards the bottom than on the OT armors. I did a little quick illustration of how the difference between the OT and RotS armor black bars are. Not perfect, but can give you an idea of what the issue is.

Thanks so much! Yeah that is what I intended to do to it as well. I have quickplastic and polyester putty to work with

Yeah I read his thread yesterday. Perhaps there is a way to darken the Tamiya acrylic GMG (for the chestarmor) as well. I will look into the RR colors for the rubies lid Thanks for pointing that out again.

Been toying with the chest armor for a while now, but don't have enough time in between everything else so it's going very slowly.

I did manage to get a lead on the paint. I decided to go the safe route and have a paint shop match the paint EFX used on their PCR helmet. So I will have my helmet and chest armor matching in color . Now the tough part is to get the lights for the belt box.

I joined the SLD forum and asked a few people there but so far nobody wanted to sell just the lights.
Will contact the "parts of star wars" people next to see if they have any leads.

I believe Vaderdarth - or I think he's called Vaderdentist on this forum - was selling chest box lights at one time. He may still have a lead. I don't know who else does, but if he cannot help, then maybe try Mark, Sskunky, as he may know. I don't know if Chris - voice in the crowd - can help too... but it's worth checking - he's more into finding real found parts for TIE and AT-AT drivers, but may have leads on Vader stuff too. I can't really remember all the people who may know... but just one more... you can try and check with Paul - darthvaderv - as well. At least that's a few options.

thanks NHM,

I found some green lghts on the SLD ( $10 ) and Fenix Props has a very accurate looking red pilot light. And they also have better ANH chestbox caps as well. so looks like I lucked out.