Rebel Pilot "Top Gun" Costume (Star Wars Celebration 2016)

[DirtyBrush]

Hi all!

This is my first proper attempt at making a costume, and my first post in this area of the RPF (I usually stick to modelling), so I hope I don't make a fool of myself...
Me and a friend are heading to Star Wars Celebration this year and, seeing it's our first convention, we figured we may as well go in costume for at least one day. So I came up with the idea of making a Rebel pilot costume but combining it with Maverick's style in Top Gun.

This way I wouldn't have to make an entirely accurate or complete Rebel pilot costume (which may happen in the future but for now- baby steps), and it would also be a (hopefully) fairly unique costume.

I drew up this sketch to get an idea of how it'll look, and it's kinda exploded from there-on-out. I figured I'd start a post on here to hopefully get some advice from you guys and so that we can all have a jolly old laugh at my efforts...

Anyway, here's the sketch-



So you can see it's basically a pilot costume minus the upper-body greeblies and chest box.

I did initially plan to forsake the helmet due to time constraints and finances, but pressure from my friends and my own stupidity led me to make a couple-

This was my first attempt (my helmet)-





And here's the second one that I still have to finish-






To make these I bought a couple of fancy dress fighter pilot helmets (which were slightly wrong in terms of their shape but they aren't intended to be 1005 accurate), removed the visors and visor covers, and created the shapes on top of the helmets with eva foam, which I then sanded, sealed, and primed before painting. Annoyingly I didn't take any pictures during this process, but I might be making another one for my cousin who's making a costume at the moment. So if I do I'll make a proper post about the process.

So that's the progress so far!

I have all the pieces of the costume, I just need to crack on and start making it, haha

I'd love to hear any feedback you might have on my idea or what I've done so far

Cheers, DB

 

[division 6]

If you have anything with writing use Aurebesh or one of the other star wars fonts to keep it "in Universe".

Check with MJF to see if he still does the pilot wings pins.
He has a set of Wraith and Rogue Squadron patches for sale in the Junkyard.
Also check with assorted and local Rebel Legion Bases to see if they have any squadron patches,

 

[DirtyBrush]

If you have anything with writing use Aurebesh or one of the other star wars fonts to keep it "in Universe".

Check with MJF to see if he still does the pilot wings pins.
He has a set of Wraith and Rogue Squadron patches for sale in the Junkyard.
Also check with assorted and local Rebel Legion Bases to see if they have any squadron patches,

Ah, thanks for the heads up but I've already bought most of the patches, some of which are in English because the Aurebesh ones tended to be more expensive, haha

I might change them out in the future to increase the accuracy of the costume but for now I'll stick to what I have. I read that the English/Latin alphabet does exist in the Star Wars universe as the "High Galactic Alphabet", so that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it

Here's my jacket with most of the patches sewn-on, might add a couple more though...



My friend decided to be in Wraith Squadron so I figured I'd go with good ol' Rogue, just to get some differences between our costumes.

I also made a couple of Captain rank pins to go on the collar tips with milliput and epoxy glue.

 

[DirtyBrush]

Well it's been a little while but I've got a fair bit more done on the costume with two weeks to go

My latest piece is a couple of cheap DL-44s, which I'll go over here



I bought a couple of really cheap chinese mauser toys, which aren't exactly accurate to the real pistol but they were only £4 or so, so hey, bargain! I also bought a length of 50x50mm PVC corner trim, two 4x20 cheap-o scopes, and a few gluesticks I found that had the right features needed for the flash-hider.

Here are the pieces before the process started-





I took the barrel off the toy pistol, and filled in the screwholes and magazine area with my most favourite thing in the world, milliput!



While that was setting, I cut the PVC trim into four pieces, and glued them one inside the other, making two sections of double thickness. Once the glue set I drew on the design of the scope bracket, and cut it out with my dremel tool. I used a section of these pieces as the other piece of the rail as well.



As for the scope, all I did was remove the forward lens housing (see the first pictures), which was enough to make it look pretty similar to the real deal (ish)

With the muzzle, I cut the base off of the glue stick and used this and the lid to make up the cylindrical section. For the actual flash-hider, after not being to find a suitable cone shape, I decided to make a vague cone out of milliput and, using a drill as a makeshift lathe, sanded it down to shape and drilled the holes in the sides. I then drilled a larger hole through the center of the milliput and screwed all the pieces together, using some wooden dowel as a filler inside the glue-stick lid.




Once the milliput on the pistol was set I sanded it down and used some more to make the muzzle wider, imitating the look of the bull-barrel and giving the glue-stick base something to grip on and screw into. I also sculpted the ribbed section on the front of the magazine as I couldn't find any suitable ribbed pipe.



I screwed the bottom rail of the scope mount onto the pistol, using washers to imitate the knurled bolts on the actual prop. once everything was put together I sprayed everything black, painting the main section of the scope mount separately. When everything was dry I screwed the mount on and attached the scope to the rail (which was a pain in the butt).



Then all I had to do was give it a good drybrushing of dark gunmetal, and use a silver permanent marker to simulate paint-chipping on the raised areas (and there were a lot of them!). The muzzle was painted dark-silver and weathered with black paint.

As for the grips I used different shades of brown to paint on lines that resembled an exotic wood grain (may as well be fancy!), and then gave them a thin coat of a reddish brown to dull the line colours and blend them into the black.



Once all this was done I gave everything a black wash followed by a coat of clear-coat to protect it.

 

[DirtyBrush]

And here it is all finished!



I'm pretty happy with how this came out to be honest. Considering how cheap it was to put together (probably about £20 in total), it looks solid enough for a cheap costume! I'll probably revisit the DL-44 in the future to make a more accurate piece, but for now, I'm content, haha

Cheers, DB.