So as a late sorta birthday present the wife got me Disney+ and of course the first thing I did was get caught up on the Star Wars stuff to include of course…. The Mandalorian.
So one thing leads to another and I decide, why not make my own Mandalorian Armor? Sounds simple enough, plenty of resources out there to include the Mandalorian Mercs group and Dented Helm which have all the templates one could ever want for making themselves into damn near any sort of Mandalorian they wanted.
Well about that.
I found thousands of images, literally, male, female, multi-coloured, etc.. All different types but they were all the same basically…. except this one image. This one singular image stood out against all of them.
I found another image which better shows the armor but is also a rendering and not an actual photo:
A Samurai Mandalorian… That’s right. I land on the most obscure Mandalorian armor out there and now I’m going to hell because I’m not only going to make it… I’m going to put some SERIOUS stank on it.
It’s not enough that I want to make a Samurai Mandalorian… nope, I want to make it even more unique by tossing in a bit of Sucker Punch to the mix.
Now add to this mix that Bandai also created a toy of the Ronin Boba Fett:
Now I have even more fuel for this creation. But wait, I mentioned something about Sucker Punch. Yeah you remember the movie with the hot little blonde fighting the 3 big Samurai. That movie… well the Samurai in the middle is wearing a type of hat or helmet called a Jingasa… and I want to put it on top of a Mandalorian helmet… with a bit more stank than that.
The Samurai often wore a sort of armoured half mask with their helmets called a mempo. So yeah, you guessed it… jingasa and mempo on a Mandalorian helmet.
I’ve already created the 3D model for this so that’s done. I think this will be the hardest part of the whole build and will make or break this cosplay.
The jingasa is going to be made from plastic and covered with a bamboo mat then I’ll set some reinforcing rings with rivets around it and weather the whole thing. The helmet and mempo will be one piece and 3D printed starting later tonight.
The rest… well you know me… we’re going to just wing it as we go along. I’ve already made a couple sets of Samurai armour in the past, including one that my oldest son wore for fighting in and I did a ton of research on the process and materials…. but we gotta keep it cheap so a lot of 3D printed parts will be used throughout the build. I’ll try to video as much of it as I can but this is going to take a long time to do and a lot of it will be little bits here and there when I am off of work and not otherwise working on things.
So…. let’s see where this goes shall we?
UPDATE 5-22-20: So work has begun on the soft parts of the suit. Anyone who knows about Samurai armor knows there’s a ton of soft parts that go on before the armor and that’s what I’ve started working on.
I opted to go with a blue and black theme for my rally master, don’t know why but I like the idea of tying in a bit with the original Boba Fett colouring of his undersuit.
The materials I have thus far are some moving blankets from Harbor Fright. I went with these because of the cost and also the “not so natural” look of the material. It has a kind of sheen to it combined with the pattern of the fabric almost looks like a type of carbon fiber.
The pants were made from some spare bits of fabric I had laying around and dyed them with a sapphire blue synthetic dye.
The next thing I cut out and sewed the backing onto were the haidate. This is sort of a skirt that sits over top of the thighs and gives a secondary layer or protection and further helps to disperse any concussive energy that the outer plates should take. To these pieces I am in the process of 3D printing some small pyramids that I’ll attach to the lower portion of the haidate. This will give it a lot more character and further the Samurai appearance.
I’ve got the pyramids for one thigh done, working on the others as I type. I have not however decided on whether or not to paint them gloss black or gloss blue yet…. it could go either way.
Anyhows, it looks like I have another 3 days in a row off and I do have a bit of money to toss at this project so I will be able to get some more work finished on this and hope to actually get a few parts actually finished. Templates for the rest of the soft kit are completed and I just need to cut them out, back them, and edge them. Longest part of this is the 3D printing of the “metal” pieces… actually it’s just PLA but they’ll look like metal when I’m done.
You must be logged in to post a comment.