| Armor |
For my E3 premiere, I made new shoulder guards to match the new suit. I cut a toy army helmet in half, trimmed off the brim, and added a raised ridge made out of vinyl placemat. Attached the ridge with the Manco carpet tape, and painted. My guards don't match up exactly right with the armor. It should look like it's all one big piece of armor. But, hey...it's not bad considering I didn't have to leave the house! I used what materials I had laying around for that "you never know when you're gonna need this" moment. |
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| Vader suffered severe wounds while in a past battle or two and must now wear protective durasteel armor on his upper chest, shoulders and shins. Note the gloss black and contrasting gun metal grey areas easily seen in these photographs. |
| Helmet Armor Chest Box Belt Buckle Belt Boxes Lighting up Belt Boxes Outer Cape Inner Cloak Gloves and Boots Body Suit Sound Effects My Costume Evolution of my Suit Acknowledgements Links E-Mail me |
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| A rare rear view |
| <<<<----Ok, here's the new and improved version of my armor using placemats, Manco, Inc indoor/outdoor carpet tape, and coat hanger wire to maintain the shape from the underside. It took roughly a week to complete, working on it only a couple of hours each day, and that includes the paint job and drying time. ( I painted it with spray paint using flexible primer, gloss black and dark charcoal metallic flexible bumper trim by Plasti-Kote #1898. (Pep Boys) |
| The armor you see in the photos of me wearing my costume on this site were made from 99 cent vinyl placemats over 15 years ago, and were in desperate need of a makeover. I'd considered various ideas, but with Episode 2 just around the corner, and the possibility of dressing up for the flick, I decided I needed to do a temporary armor makeover in a hurry. Rather than slow myself down trying out new poducts, I decided to go with materials that I was familiar with, and thought, perhaps, I could do a better job this time around, if I only put more effort into it. The result is in the photo below. I think it worked. *******More info in vinyl placemats at bottom of page.********* |
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| I've since remade my shin armor using the same placemat material as the chest armor, plus a few other odds and ends. On the left is my placemat shin guard and on the right is the best photo of Vader's shin guard that I can find for you. These pictures came out crappy, but I plan to take some newer ones in the near future. |
| Upper Body Armor |
| Shin Armor |
| Pic of Vader's elusive shin armor |
| More information on Vinyl Placemats: I have gotten a lot of questions about what they are and/or where to find them. What is a Vinyl Placemat??? A placemat is simply a ~rectangular mat that a table setting goes on to keep the table cloth clean. You can find ones made of vinyl in just about any cheapo department store. They are made from approx 1/8"-1/16" thick spongy foam with a smooth/shiny vinyl coating on one side. Their dimensions are roughly 14" by 18". Size varies with the brands, styles, etc... Which kind should I get??? Try to find the largest rectangles that you can, so that you have the most surface area to work with. Avoid ones that have designs cut out of them, or raised/embossed/textured areas. You want smooth..flat. The color makes no difference at all. You will be painting them with flexible paints made for plastics. (Paint details are in the written instructions) Where can I find some??? K-mart carries a brand called Home Essentials. These ran me about 99 cents a piece. They can be found in the general vicinity of the towel/curtain/table cloth section of the store. They are sort of rectangular with the corners cut off.(The best I could find at the time that I bought them) Recently, I've found slightly larger , full blown rectangles at Wal-Mart and Target. They have cartoon characters on them like sponge bob and strawberry shortcake. They weren't in with the nicey-nice cloth placemats, but in a rack on the end of a nearby aisle. These went for approx $1.59-$1.99 . Remember, shoot for the largest rectangles that you can find. Some have squiggly edges or rounded corners.. Skip them. Straight sides will give you more material to work with. Get extras to practice on. Test glues and paints if you need to deviate from my suggested supplies. My small stature enables me to use two placemats side-by-side to make the armor. You may need to come up with a different layout for your template.. I suggest that if you need more width than two placemats, have your seams fall underneath the outer raised ridges, that way the seams will be hidden. . (You'll get it when you read the directions) OK..now go and click on the link for the written instructions (Above). And don't forget, at the bottom of the wriitten instructions pages are more links to get to the illustrations that go with the directions!!! |
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| New pictures of armor with E3 version shoulder guards on. |
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| front |
| side/back with straps |
| elastic clipped to shaping wire |
| black tape peeled back to show you .... |
| ...thin strips of wood. They create a rigid bridge from shoulder guard to armor. Attached with industrial strength velcro. The E3 shoulder guards are more oversized and stay in a semi-fixed postion, as opposed to the Original Trilogy version that is more flush to the deltoid. |
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| My Original Trilogy shoulder guards were simply black hockey shoulder guards wired to the underside of the armor. Maurice V. from Chicago used halves of toy fireman hats for his shoulder armor. What a great idea! |