I am the Charity and Event Coordinator for the 501st and the Empire City Garrison, a Star Wars costume organization that troops to support various charities and promote our love of the Star Wars universe. My designation is TK6744 and completed my set of Stormtrooper Armor back in 2008. I also have an extensive Star Wars collection and costumes for a few other Star Wars characters as well. Below that are some shots of events I attended in 2008 with the Empire City Garrison. The first three are from the ICONS Convention in April at Stonybrook University and the next 9 are from Free Comic Book day at Serious Comics in Massapequa LI on May 3rd 2008, The next 12 are from the Troy Denning Book Signing at the Book revue in Huntington LI May 18th 2008. The next 21 are from The Big Apple Con in NYC June 7th, 2008. The last 6 are from the Weird Al Concert at Westbury Music Fair on LI, on July 10th 2008. There is also some video of the event on YouTube, I was the third Stormtrooper from the right. Check out Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, and Page 5 for some action shots at recent events I have attended in the armor. Check out Page 6 for details on some further upgrades to make the armor more movie accurate.

    

                                    

A Stormtrooper FX Kit is about $500, but it comes unassembled and without many of the required accessories. The kit has over 50 pieces of abs plastic, some small connecting parts, abs glue, screws, and Velcro. The instructions are pretty good, but the helmet is a real challenge to get right. The basic construction took me almost a full month, 3-5 hrs a day, plus another month to do the finishing work, fitting, and to get all the accessories together. There was a lot of careful measuring, cutting, gluing, and waiting, but nothing an average model builder could not do. I used a bunch of online resources to improve the suit and help with the construction. I used snaps and a strap system ($50) to connect almost everything, rather that just all Velcro. This way the suit is always fitted perfectly and the connectors don't wear out. I used some rivets ($20) as well for the knee plate and ammo pack. I cut out vent holes in the helmet nose section, put in a Voice Changer, and used some foam in the arm and leg pieces stop them moving around. I also had to buy the white boots ($60), a toy Blaster ($25), a Dive suit ($40), Dive Gloves ($25), Neck seal ($25), Dremel tool ($30), Clamps ($15), some model paints ($10) , and industrial Velcro ($15). So you're talking about another $250-300 to finish the suit and about 2-3 months to put everything together. All I can tell you is when it's all done, it looks incredible and you can wear it comfortably. Check out Page 5 for details on some further upgrades to make the armor more movie accurate.