Here you will find all the steps to make a proper set of Female Mandolorian Armor.

I started out with a design in mind, and we’ll discuss how to get to the final product.

Original Design

So to make the plates feminine i duct taped the subject into a tight fitting t-shirt.

Than cut out the shapes you’ve drawn onto the tape, and use those to trace out your template onto your sheet of metal. Than cut those out and start “dishing” your plates.

and planishing

The next step you don’t HAVE to do, but you could use a grinder wheel and use the brush side to polish up your plates to a high shine.

I than painted the plates…

Test fitting

Starting to Weather

HELMET

I decided to repaint one of my other custom helmets into this one.

VEST

Started with this simple design. Side enclosures which vary from my original design on a 3/4 zipper in the back. This way should make it easier for the hunter to get in and out of armor.

I dropped the helmet while painting it and i broke the range finder off on accident. so it was suggested by the hunter the make it look like it was blown off.

ARMOR PLATES

now that these are done, I decided to not roll the edges, but actually build a ballistic platform for the plates to give the vest a bit more aggressive look.

 

Lower Armor

On to the lower armor.
Started out with some templates. And cut them out of 18g aluminum.

Started to paint them…

However…these didn’t look very good…so I made bigger ones…

Gauntlet build

Version 2.0

I’ve started the knees, but the hunter trooped in this design.

But here’s version 1.0 for reference side by side.

After a few years, I decided that it was finally necessary to build a proper set of shoulder armor.

I used 18g steel.

Unfortunately i don’t have too many pictures reviewing this process. But here’s what i have.

We can see here how the plates curve

And here we can see how they look from straight on.

I than primed them with automotive self etching primer, and coated them, like the other plates with several colors before top coating them with yellow.

I don’t have too many details surrounding the creation of these parts, but perhaps i can explain what’s going on by looking at some detailed pictures.

Here we see the left shoulder pad. It is built out of .9mil ABS. It was primed and painted with several varying colors of paint than a vinyl decal was added. I than weathered the plate by using an angle grinder and some sandpaper.

The same was done with the above plate, just with a different design.

Upper Armor

Here we can see the detail on the weathering used on the left chest plate. It was painted in a similar pattern as the shoulder plates. Multiple colors followed up by a heavy weathering technique which, in this case ONLY included an angle grinder. You can imagine which angles where used to hit the plates briefly or for a long time to achieve the resulting details.

And as a happy accident i happened to notice the armor showed the detail exaggerated under a blacklight, so perhaps this can help as well as a guide.

Fast forwards four and half months to a few weeks ago … After months of being unhappy that I never got to fully finish my costume, it was time to start work on the costume again. The first step was to start masking off the hard armor for the final coat of paint, which as to be a dark brown similar to the brown material used on the vest and the cape.

Masking off the armor for third coat of paint …

Once masked, it was time to paint the armor brown …

And after a long, long, long task of masking the armor with tape and then peeling the tape after the final coat was applied, I had finally achieved the 3-color tiger stripe camouflage pattern that I had inked in my original marker renderings.

So although I wasn’t able to get the third coat of paint on for the 3-color tiger stripe camouflage pattern, I decided to wear the costume out on Halloween anyway. Needless to say, I had several comments that I looked like a zebra or even a cow. And although this may be true, it also lends itself to creating even more back story to the character of the costume. Perhaps the color scheme matched the skin of a Krayyt dragon species that roamed the deserts of Tatooine. And just maybe this particular Mando had to paint his armor that way to appear as young Krayyt while out in the field … to blend in to avoid detection while sniping Tusken Raiders off in the distance …

But before it was ready to wear I still needed to do some weathering to the hard armor parts. This was done by bashing the armor against rocks and concrete walls, as well as taking razor blades and scraping through the coats of paint to allow the metal to show through. This was done rather haphazardly so as to replicate battle damage.

Here I am wearing the costume to the annual Halloween party at Fender …

So this would be the state the costume would stay in for the next four and a half months …