Chopper's Shoretrooper Captain Build

[Chopper]

Hey everyone, so I decided to join the Shoretrooper club and started working on a Captain build.

Armor: KW Designs with Mr. Paul belt boxes

Skirt: Mr. Paul

Helmet Anovos with Mr. Paul lens

I haven't started my armor build yet. Mostly I've been working on the helmet. I've got it repainted with a base coat of Rustoleum Dark Walnut and a topcoat of Montana Gold Sahara Beige. Major thanks to Mr. Paul for the helmet paint tutorial.

To my eyes, I think the helmet is ready for weathering, once I paint the circle decal. Anyone see anything else I should address before beating it up?

Images linked to hi-res below.

I'll probably have a lot of armor fit questions, so I'll keep this updated as I progress.Thanks!

[ScaryGuy]

Good to see you joining the Shoretroopers Corey!

Helmet looks great, go weather it 😀! What color are you using for the circle symbol?

[Chopper]

Thanks dude! I'm stoked to work on this kit!

For the circle symbol I have the Montana Gold Red-Orange. From what I've read, that's supposed to be pretty close?

[ScaryGuy]

13 hours ago, Chopper said:

Thanks dude! I'm stoked to work on this kit!

For the circle symbol I have the Montana Gold Red-Orange. From what I've read, that's supposed to be pretty close?

Yes, that one is very close to the pantone color required for Vanguard.

[Chopper]

Approximately 4 hours of weathering later...this is the result.

The lighting always washes out some of the more subtle effects, so here's some close ups.

I had to take the original Anovos lining out, which unfortunately didn't come out easily. Thinking about maybe coating it in black plastidip, as I don't relish the idea of having raw fiberglass on my face. Other ideas are welcome.

[KOtrooper]

Your bucket could use some more weathering in the creases. Maybe some scuffs here and there (via light sanding). Up to you on how much though. Just make sure it is consistent with your entire armor.

I brushed on a few layers of plastidip inside my bucket for the same reason. The black also helped hide the black fans I installed later on too. Just make sure it degasses really well before wearing it.

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[Chopper]

Thanks all, for the feedback so far.

Spent this weekend trimming parts and dry fitting prior to any gluing. I'm going to start with the ab and chest/back armor sections first.

Ended up doing some reinforcement work on the lower back connectors of the back armor. The ABS is super thin around the ridge, so I beefed it up with a bit of heat moulded styrene to fit.

Shouldn't be noticeable on the inside, plus it'll be painted black along with everything else.

I also punched out the lower "disk drive" slot entirely and made a new mount out of styrene..

On a down note, I realized that I'm missing two pieces from my kit.

1) Small back greebs circled in green from Mickey's build thread.

2) Shin armor mounting plates (not my photo).

Not sure what happened there, as I've looked through everything I have and they're definitely not in the box. I bought my kit untrimmed from a fellow legion member, but he didn't have them either.

I reached out to KW about the back greebs and bought a replacement set, but I don't know what's up with the mounting plates. Maybe KW started using those after my kit was pulled?

Hmmmm

 

[Chopper]

A lot of filling and sanding going on. Joined the front and back portions of the ab armor and filled in the gaps with ABS paste.

Hours of sanding later...I think we're in business.

I'll cut the t-section out of the back later. In the meantime, I can do some final surfacing with the joined parts using Rusto High Build Primer.

[Chopper]

First rough fitting using a lot of masking tape to hold everything together.

Just looking it over myself, looks like I need to pull the chest plate up further, when I actually attach it, and I might want to bring in the undershirt sleeves a bit?

How does the bicep and forearm armor look? Wanted to double check before I glue anything and potentially have to rip it back apart again.

[ScaryGuy]

48 minutes ago, Chopper said:

First rough fitting using a lot of masking tape to hold everything together.

Just looking it over myself, looks like I need to pull the chest plate up further, when I actually attach it, and I might want to bring in the undershirt sleeves a bit?

How does the bicep and forearm armor look? Wanted to double check before I glue anything and potentially have to rip it back apart again.

 

Yes, I think the chest can be a bit closer to the neck seal. When you have the belt you can also check if the ab section is not too low. When you pull the belt tight you should still be able to bend reasonably.

Forearms and biceps size look good. I shortened the sleeves a lot to make room for the gloves. I think I made it 2 to 3 inch shorter then the forearm.

[Chopper]

Thanks dude. I'll def keep working the fit.

[Chopper]

Progress continues. I'm finishing up on gluing the bicep and forearm armor, which should be done shortly.

Right now, I'm looking at how to mount the buckles and straps on the chest armor.

I'm assuming this is the correct orientation for the strap, and the ramped portion goes into the slot on the back armor?

I'm still uncertain how to mount the strap and buckle properly?

The underside of the buckle has a ridge in the middle that gets in the way when trying to mount the two together in a flush manner. Am I supposed to trim part of the shoulder strap to help them fit, or is there another way to mount them that I'm not seeing?

Thanks everyone.

[BikerScout007]

That's pretty much what I did.  You can see here

Not really in love with how this part of the armor was sculpted.  

[Chopper]

Thanks Mickey. Yeah I've definitely been using your build thread as a guide. 

I think I'm going to try to both dremel down that ridge a bit and also cut a notch in the strap. Hoping that'll get the buckle to sit a bit more flush with the armor. 

[Chopper]

Assembly progress continues. Lots of snap gluing and elastic rigging. Also a lot of sanding and seam filling. SO MUCH SEAM FILLING.

Here's what I see, so far --

Bring in the shoulder bells more. They're out too far and it's making me look like a tank.

Slightly trim down the return edge on the bottom of the chest armor. I don't have a lot of leeway here, due to the collar size, but it's pushing off the center chest greeb a bit.

Back plate needs to sit more flush against my back. This should be fixed once I put some velcro on the side connectors and I'll worry about that after painting. Also, yes one does look shorter than the other -- they're actually the same length! The back plate is sitting unevenly. Again, this will be fixed once the connections are rigged.

Anything else I missed? Thanks everyone.

[ScaryGuy]

Looking good Corey! 

I agree the shoulder bells can be a bit closer to the straps. There is some variation on the screen used costumes. For some they are next to the straps while other still have a gap, I think like 1 inch max.

I have added some foam near the bottom of the chest the prevent the return edge from scraping that greeblie. It’s hard to see how thick the return edge is with all the black, but I think you can still remove 1 - 2 mm.

The back will sort itself out when you connect the sides. Any gaps will near the chest or back will be hidden by the foam along the edge.

[Chopper]

Those shoulders were irking me, so I brought them in a half inch and I dropped the ab armor a half inch as well. Funny how such small adjustments can make the whole costume look better...at least it does to my eyes.

(Sorry about the mirror shot. Not great for details, but it should show the better positioning)

Another thing I did this past week was to reduce the width of my undershirt sleeves, as well as to hem the cuffs. Looks and fits a lot better.

I also heated up the shoulder straps and set them up for gluing once they cool down in place.

[Aradun]

Love your attention to detail Corey!


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[Chopper]

Ab armor back zipper -- DONE!

[BikerScout007]

On 3/14/2020 at 6:18 PM, Chopper said:

Ab armor back zipper -- DONE!

Looks great!  

Oh and I moved this to the Shoretrooper WIP forum

[Chopper]

Some more progress. Straps are heat formed and glued to the mounts. Working on finding the proper fitting for the buckles now, before I glue them on.

Hard to take a good photo of it, but a big challenge is the angled nature of the collarbone area where the buckles sit on the KW armor. It's not a flush place for the buckle to sit, so there isn't a lot of contact area. This is a little concerning for when it comes time to glue it on.

There have been a number of challenges with putting this kit together so far, but for anyone else building this particular kit, I think fiddling with the strapping and buckle mounting is probably the biggest one.

I found an underside photo of one of the screen shoretrooper costumes, which shows some shimming underneath. I'm going to try and make some shims out of foam to put underneath, but given how this armor is set up, it's going to have to be slightly angled in order to make everything flush.

[BikerScout007]

Could you try curving the bottom of it with a belt sander?  Sounds like a good idea in my head anyway.  I don't have a belt sander

But yes, this was one of the big challenges of this kit.  

[Chopper]

Hah I don't have a belt sander either -- just a dremel. 😁

[BikerScout007]

Okay just dug mine out because I couldn't remember what I did. I shimmed them.

[Chopper]

Ok, yeah, that looks pretty similar to how it's rigged on the screen used photo. I'll try and carve something out of scrap plastic.