The Stormtrooper Project

For 14 years, I’ve schemed, planned, yearned, learned, studied, and plotted to make myself a “real” set of Stormtrooper armor, from scratch. Finally, I’m at a point in life, skill level, patience, and focus that I feel ready to tackle this project.

This project is IN PROGRESS.

This is a meta-post that collates all of the individual blog posts I make on this topic.

1. A Beginning at Long Last (2013-08-26)
2. Slow and Steady (2013-08-31)
3. Two-by-two with emergency surgery (2013-09-19)
4. Progress and Regress (2013-11-07)
5. A New, More Accurate Direction (2014-06-21)
6. Not Quite Accurate Enough (2014-06-22)
7. A Change in Materials (2014-10-14)
8. Sub-post: Sensor calibration woes (2014-11-05)
9. Pivot #3 (2015-08-11)
10. Time And Relative Dimensions In Stormtroopers (2015-08-20)
11. Full Guinea Pig (2015-08-20)
12. Adventures in Camera Calibration and Photo Modeling (2015-09-11)
13. The Sizing Prototype (2015-10-15)
14. A New Level Of Detail (2015-10-26)
15. The Face Of The Future (2016-03-15)
16. Full Speed, A Head! (2017-01-10)

Tools
I already had the tools listed here, so their cost is not factored in. If you’re doing this and starting from nothing, the upfront investment is obviously going to be higher. Every tool on this list is well worth it, though.

• Dremel⁸
• Box cutter
• Pencil(s)
• Pen⁹
• Blender (3D software)
• Photoshop (or GIMP)
• Printer¹⁰
• Printer paper¹¹
• 18″ Ruler
• Glass/hard plastic cutting board
• Newspaper (for workspace tidiness)
• Safety goggles
• Air filter mask
• Apron (to keep clothes clean while working)
• Vacuum (to clean up after using the Dremel on cardboard)
• Elmer’s glue

1. As of 2013-11-07 [↩]
2. Unused so far [↩]
3. Unused so far [↩]
4. Unused so far [↩]
5. Unused so far [↩]
6. This was $3 off with a CVS coupon I had [↩]
7. Old pizza boxes and discarded boxes from Lowe's that they were just going to throw away. [↩]
8. A Dremel isn’t strictly necessary. Everything I’ve used the Dremel for could be done with the box cutter. The Dremel just makes it a lot easier. [↩]
9. For labeling the cardboard cross-sections [↩]
10. To print out the cross-sections [↩]
11. To print out the cross-sections [↩]