Boba Fett costume

This is my Boba Fett costume I made as a surprise for Halloween the year of 1993 (wow) I believe. All of it was hand-made and scratch built in my one-bedroom apartment in North Hollywood. Now this was before the Internet, before DVDs (WHAT?), before you could buy a full costume from some guy sellin 'em. The whole thing was built from nothing! Which is why there is no rocket-pack... for alas- I ran out of time!

The helmet was sculpted in front of my laser disc player in pause mode. "Return of the Jedi" was my main reference, along with pictures from books and trading cards I had. Eric(Thomas) helped me make a plaster "cast" of my head and I sculpted the helmet on top of it with green plasticine (I think) clay. I figured this would be the safest way to make sure that it fit on my head.

When the helmet sculpt was done- I needed help. A friend arranged for another friend of his to help me mold and cast the helmet. I need to buy everything and just bring it to his shop. I had to ask one of my friends to help me get it there. I wanted to surprise everyone at Simpsons with it so no one would know who it was until I took off the helmet, but I had to let someone in on it. Paul Wee and I had kind of talked about how cool it would be to "make-this-or-dress-up-as-that" for Halloween and once we were thinking how tough (but awesome) it would be to make a Boba Fett costume. When I told Paul what I had in my apartment and why I needed his help he nearly fell over. So at lunch one day we drove to my apartment and with Paul holding this green Fett helmet thing in his lap, off we went! When we got there, the guy thought we dropped it because of the "dent" on top. Right on!

The cast was made in a creamy brown fiberglass so it looked like it was made out of chocolate! I filled in any pits and air bubbles with epoxy putty and finished the helmet with lots of sanding and rebuilding. It was really fun to paint it in the flat colors and then mess it up with scrapes and chips and stuff. The macroscope ratchets down over the front and was built from the leg of a Transformer toy I found in an old toy box from home in North Dakota!

The armor and gauntlets and stuff were built and formed out of styrene sheets, cut and fitted together. Lots of Velcro and hot glue anchored it in place on the cloth uniform, which was made by a friend of my Mom's back home who happens to be a seamstress. She did a great job!

Now (of course) you can find unlimited reference for Boba but back then it was hard to find really detailed pics of all his gadgets and his paint schemes and stuff. I think I got pretty close.

Everybody at worked loved it! Paul was inspired with the styrene sheets approach that he borrowed my heat-gun and made his own armor and came as a Colonial Marine from "Aliens"!
Eric was working at Universal ( I think he was just starting designs on the Popeye ride in Orlando), so I drove over at lunch to show him. This is where the pics of me in the full outfit (sans rocket-pack) were taken. Eric was dressed in full-on Pirate mode that year.

That year I didn't win anything in the costume contest back at Simpsons... Pete Michaels beat everybody! He dressed up as a trashy hoochie-girl. Can't beat that! (He looked so HOT...!) It was fun getting big reactions at all the parties that year. Good times!