http://www.starwars.com/news/stormtrooper-costume-by-anovos-preview

Is it 501st approvable? TBD. But I think they've covered all the bases at least in terms of the meeting basic CRL (Costume Reference Library) requirements.

My first impression is that it's pretty good, and it's priced very attractively (pre-order at least). $350 for a completed helmet and kit armor.

I can't help but wonder if setting the price that low is a competitive shot across the bow from Disney aimed at RS Propmasters. If so, better I say to battle it out in the free marketplace rather than a courtroom. Put the choice in the hands of consumers to evaluate cost vs. ease of assembly, accuracy, wearability (troop-ability?), durability, etc.

WoW! $350 for the armor kit, am I reading that correctly??

There are rumors that Anovos recasted a RS suit combined with recasted Troopermaster parts...that would be really a shame. Beside from that the price of 350 USD is just a sensation...even if its cleaned and not 100%.

As said, if you want to buy a recasted RS suit, go and look on ebay for makerofthings.LOL.
Sorry but i can't see any super great details on that Anovos suit.
It's the fist licened mass produced OT Trooper armour which have the look , yes.

The 350 USD is a loss leader nothing less.
Look at the normal rating price and it's the same price as a RS/TM suit.

This Anovos stuff get hyped by all the 501st guys.
If i would wear a 10 year old FX armour i also would be happy for that kind of stuff for 350 bucks.

Doesn't their sales pitch state that they scanned actual LFL suits from the archive and printed and cleaned them up for idealized purposes?

If there's any truth to the rumors about it being recast RS Props I'd find that very sad.

I could not be more agree with you. I would call that a cheap shot, no doubt.

Cheers

A

From the product description on the ANOVOS website:
"Utilizing various references made available to ANOVOS[REGISTERED SIGN], including those from private collections and Lucasfilm archives, our development team created unique sculpts for each piece. Each sculpt was carefully studied with efforts to either improve or maintain certain key features..."

I know. I'm digging up a dead horse, but based on the bolded quote, I find this fascinating.

How did Anovos go from this "prototype lid"




To this... whacked out lid?





Everything about the eye details is so....off. They were neither maintained, much less improved upon - I can spot these lids from a mile away. At $350 for the early ordering price of an entire kit, for a cheap trooping suit, I would have been perfectly happy. But as a budding collector wanting pieces that have a fairly true lineage to the movie, I originally ordered this helmet last December, based on the Prototype photo. So glad I cancelled and ordered my RS lid. I'd have been miffed if Anovos shipped that thing to me.

Everthing as expected for me.
First hyped to the best of the best what ever was and will be made , with lineage of sceen used stuff, touched from the inside and later you get this what you see now.
Business as usual.

I not will buy any licenced stuff anymore, cause it was and will be always the same how it turns out in the end.

Th eyes and the frown are horrendous on Anovos

I can only imagine how bad their ESB Vader helmet it going to be. Surprised there hasn't been a discussion yet - based on the prototype photos. Then again, if Anovos changed the Stormtrooper this much, I expect Vader's eyes to be square.

I think there's no big discussion, cause for the most of the guys this stuff looks great, it's cheap and easy to get.
There are just a few hardcore nuts like us, which see the imperfections.

So let the "flock" buy all this stuff, as there is than less waiting time for me to get my stuff at the "other" sources.

Problem is, if you're a rather newb hardcore nut like me, it's tough to get good stuff from the "other" sources - as those "other" sources are tough to get a hold of.

Some of the licensed collectors won't even look at the accurate stuff, which we, the "rivet counters", are interested in buying. They are happy with their licensed stuff, with a nice edition plaque, shiny display case, and COAs. They want to play safe, and to be sure what they own holds value for resale. They are not even slightly interested in the idea of researching for a more accurate prop, or how that screen used prop was made in the first place.

They might even consider the unlicensed stuff inferior, due to the lack of those shiny trinkets listed above. If you show them a good accurate fan made helmet, a nice blaster/lightsaber/prop made with original parts, or a true studio scale they simply don't connect with them the same we do.

All this fine by me. More good stuff to remain to the people who care about them

I did get this at the pre-order price. Immediately went to work on the helmet. The rest of the armor still sits wrapped up in the big ole box it arrived in... in the middle of my living room.

The helmet is certainly derivative, likely from multiple sources just as ANOVOS said. No expert would mistake this as being a screen-used helmet or cast from a screen-used helmet. The prominent sharp point at the bottom of the eyes where it meets the cheek, and from there the straight line up to the nose when it should be curved, lacking even an indentation of a 5th tooth in the frown, and other shape details make it both unique and difficult to modify to make convincingly accurate. But like many licensed replicas, some of these changes may have been required by Lucasfilm, to be able to to identify recasts of them and to make it very difficult for anyone to pass one off as an original helmet.


And I hope availability of the authentic pieces continues, both for the benefit of collectors and to the community at large in terms of historical preservation, lest we forget what a "real" prop should look like.

Some minor changes to the ANOVOS can make a big difference in the look. There's more wiggle-room in customizing the look of a Stormtrooper helmet compared to a Vader helmet since there was so much variation across each screen-used Stormtrooper helmet (frown, brow height, eye trim, ear trim and location, etc.).

Here's a comparison photo between my helmet out-of-the-box and my modifications to it and another of the modified helmet from different angles. I raised the brow, trimmed the eyes, repainted the frown, and applied some instamorph along the bottom of the helmet where the ABS was extremely thin and susceptible to cracking.





All-in-all, I'm satisfied with what ANOVOS did with this OT stormtrooper and that they actually made good on producing substantially what they advertised. It's been a long bumpy road in the licensed stormtrooper helmet timeline to get to even this degree of accuracy. I at least spared myself from buying the Rubies version!: