Up until I received my DJ armor I was under the impression the raised sections on the bells were not fully painted over Grey. With the Kermit photos I just assumed the b&w made them look Grey. But Mike painted them full on Grey.

Here they are black.



And here are several Grey shots.




Exposed shoulder bells seems really hard to find for ANH. But from what I could see I come to the conclusion that the ( ) started off black but eventually became Grey.

I always assumed they were black with light gunmetal application - similar to the black areas on the main armor - where the paint was lightly applied or wiped off afterwards, which will leave the metallic sheen and make them appear gunmetal in certain light conditions.

I think that would leave a slight difference in shade of color in every photo we see them in. Like how the left hand side of the mouth vent is in between black and gun metal and appears off shade to the rest of the face in every photo. Those last two appear perfectly matched giving the bells one shade of gunmetal especially in the dressing footage. There is heavy stage light but the bell looks solid Grey. B&W shots are a diiferent story. Thats where the black and Grey blend together. Thats why I used colored photos.

I artificially colored this photo through an app to see if it picked up any color difference on the bell. No it looks solid Grey with a light source beaming right on it while the front sections on the plate are apparent in color differences.

The on-set photos are the best reference. The uncloaked photo really looks like the raised parts are black, but in the dressing video it looks like it is all gunmetal. Perhaps during paint touch-ups mid-production, the crew decided to just cover the bell with the one color of gunmetal since the bells weren't being seen anyway. That last TigerBeat photo is post production (Eller not Prowse?) so may not be an accurate version as the costume was repainted during promotion.

Interesting, I've only ever seen that Tiger Beat photo in B&W and it looks like it might be colorized (not 100% on that). Either way it give me the impression that the bell is gray except in the middle.

I've been reading Paul Duncan's Star Wars Archives book and there were a lot of changes made to things on the fly based on how things looked in the dailies. -- especially of interest, but not pertinent to the subject at hand, is that they started out with Vader's stunt saber having a rotating blade but they decided that it looked better with a static blade so they changed it -- It wouldn't surprise me that on the whim of the day they were painted one way then, after looking at the film, they decided to change it and then change it back on another day. Which is particularly weird for the shoulder bells since you never really see them.

Dave

Control room scene with Leia and Tarkin. Looks like black raised parts to me. Also looks to be pretty banged up, so would likely need repaint. This scene was filmed about two weeks before the hangar scenes of the costuming video with the bells that appear to be all gunmetal. Also could be two sets of armor but probably not.

I would say both is accurate.

Or I'll throw out a really wacky option- a different paint scheme on each bell- all gunmetal on his right and black stripes on his left?

Thats the same armor at least as the other 2 photos in this thread that shows black. It has the same paint chip on the left hand bell's raised section.

Metallic paints can have this effect. Even when wiped off to completely show the original black paint underneath. Black in one picture. Gunmetal in the next.

When wiping it off it leaves a sheen that can show the color in certain conditions, even though it looks completely removed to the naked eye.

I’ll have to dig through my pics, but I seem to remember the bells in the Tie cockpit scenes are black with silver stripes..just to confuse things further.


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Odd stuff.

Wow it looks both in that photo.