Ahsoka Tano Season 3-5 Build (Clone Wars)

So I've been working on an Ahsoka Tano costume for about a year now and I think it's finally ready to submit for approval. Thing is, I realised that although I took a lot of progress shots, I never put together a build thread! WHOOPS!

So please excuse the bombardment of photos. I'll try to keep each post specific to a certain aspect of the costume.

DRESS


With some resourceful hunting, I managed to find a dress on eBay that was essentially a perfect base for Ahsoka's current dress. The fabric and colour were perfect. It even had the same neckline as Ahsoka's dress. It only cost about $30 too. Bargain!


Measuring the back dress hole. This fabric has great stretch, so I had to make the basic shape of the hole much smaller to allow for the fabric pull.


Back hole cut and ready for sewing.


Measuring the hole for over the chest.

NECKLACE


The necklace was very easy to make. I bought a thin gold torque band from eBay for a few bucks. I then cut the diamond shape out of worbla, painted it gold and glued it in place. Too easy!

BOOTS


These were another great eBay find. Again, for relatively cheap. I think they were only about $30-$40? Very comfy too and the colour is perfect. The only thing I needed to do was cut the little bows off either side.


Adding some weathering with sandpaper.

LIGHTSABERS


I love my sabers. They're Standard Issue Battle Sabers v3 from Ultrasabers. Not exactly the same as Ahsoka's sabers, but as close as I could get without having to pay over $500. I ordered one blade shorter to mimic her shoto saber length.

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LEGGINGS


I picked up a few pairs of leggings in the Ahsoka grey no problem from a local basics store. If you're in Australia, I got mine from Supre and they were about $10 a pair. I also bought some orange tights, because I'd toyed with the idea of wearing tights under the leggings, but I ended up scrapping that idea, purely because it would have made the outfit too hot to wear.


Measuring the diamonds for the leggings.


Testing out the size on the legs.


All drawn up. I had help from my awesome mum to do this. She had me lie on my side whilst she drew around the stencils we made.


Again, I had help from my awesome mum with the leg diamonds. We trial ran a few ideas, until she came up with the idea of using thick coat hangers sewn into the leggings to hold the diamond shapes.


And as you can see, it works a treat!

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BOOT SPATS


After sourcing some quotes for leatherwork, I realised it would be cheaper to make all of my leathers myself. I found this vinyl in Spotlight for a reasonable price (around $18/metre) and it was a really good colour match for my boots.


The boot spats ended up being the most difficult part to make, but they're also my favourite for the same reason. I'd never made boot spats before, so I ended up creating a template of my leg by wrapping it in cling wrap, then covering it in masking tape. First time I'd ever done it and it was weirdly hilarious!


Once I had my leg securely taped, I had my marvellous boyfriend draw the boot pattern onto it.


The cast of my leg, once I'd cut it off.


After I'd cut the cast into various pieces, I was able to make cleaner pattern pieces from it.


Pieces cut out of both vinyl and interfacing to give it a bit more stability.


Spats mostly sewn together. Just needed a few finishing touches. Really pleased with how they turned out!


99% complete boot spat with buckles, press studs, and elastic added.


Part of how I keep the spats wrapped around the boot is by using an elastic strap that connects the two sides and runs underneath the boot.


Final touch: adding some weathering and battle marks with sand paper.

These are seriously my favourite part of the whole outfit. I just love them to pieces.

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BUCKLES


I have absolutely no expertise with making working buckles, nor could I find any that matched Ahsoka's, so I decided to create ones that looked like buckles, but were really just covering press studs. To do this, I started with foam sheets.


I then roughly cut out a base for the buckle and a top layer that would give the pseudo buckle some depth.


All buckles cut and glued to shape.


I then added a layer of worbla over each buckle for stability and strength. Seriously, how great is worbla? I used a wooden skewer to push the worbla into the indentations whilst it was hot. Worked a treat!


All painted gold and shiny! You'll notice that I shaped each buckle to have a slight curve. I did this so that it would nicely hide each press stud underneath it.

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GAUNTLETS


I've made soft armour gauntlets for different costumes before, so this came quite easily to me. This is the pattern marked up on the same vinyl I used for the boot spats.


Again, I added interfacing on the inside just to give it a bit more stability, as vinyl is quite soft and can fold often.


Finished gauntlets, all scuffed with fake buckles and press studs.

ARM BANDS


Again, these were easy to make, just time consuming. Especially measuring out the pattern! You know how you think you'll never use Math outside of high school? Well, it came in handy for this!


Inside and outside of the arm bands once sewn. I decided to go with velcro to fasten it, but I may upgrade to press studs for more stability.

ELBOW GUARDS


I've seen other costumers make Ahsoka's elbow guards from a maroon material, but all of the reference pics I have show that they are a dark grey/charcoal colour. And seeing as I had left over material from my spare leggings, I decided to make them in the same colour.


Pattern all measured and cut from material and interfacing. Yes, I love interfacing, haha. Ahsoka's elbow guards come to a definitive point, so I needed a firm base in there.


Elbow guards all finished. These slide up my arms to my elbows and my gauntlets sit over the top of them. I ended up adding fabric to the inside of them too for those odd shots where the camera angle might see inside.

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BELT


Creating a template for the belt buckle and loin cloth.


I knew that the belt buckle would need to be sturdy, as it has four separate belt straps and a loin cloth attached to it. So I made it from a nice thick foam covered in worbla. Does anyone else love their heat gun?


To give the belt buckle a nice natural roundness over the belly, pushed it into the bottom of a bowl whilst the worbla was still warm so that it would get a nice subltle curve to it.


Measuring up the loin cloth pattern. This fabric was another great find. Only a few dollars and it's a great colour match.


Drawing the loin cloth shapes onto vinyl. I wanted the pattern on the loin cloth to have a cool 3D texture, so I used the spare vinyl from my leathers.


Loin cloth sewn with vinyl pattern glued on. I should note that the loin cloth also has interfacing so that it doesn't fold and keeps its shape.


Belt pieces all measured and ready for sewing. I used a nice brown vinyl for these. Each strap section is two pieces sewn back-to-back with a piece of interfacing in the middle.


Measuring up the back pouch. I felt it was really important to keep the back pouch proportionate to the rest of the costume. And luckily, it's just big enough to hold my phone and some touch-up make-up.


Completed belt with buckle painted, plus food capsules and covertec clips added. Pretty chuffed with the end result! For those curious, my belt straps are all sewn to the pouch at the back, whilst at the front, they snap behind the buckle with press studs.

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HEADPIECE & MAKE-UP


OK, so a basic run-down of the materials I use. To paint the headpiece, I use Ben Nye Magicolor in blue and white. The blue is diluted with the white to give it that lovely soft Ahsoka blue. I then apply the headpiece with Pros-Aide. For face and body paint, I use Mehron colour cups in orange and clown white. I seal the body paint with Mehron setting powder. To get that delicious Ahsoka brown for my lips, I use Maybelline Superstay Lipliner 45 Cappuccino and Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick 665 Choco Liscious.


I'm going to be honest, my headpiece is not the greatest. The artist I had commissioned did a real rush job with it. I think it's probably the weakest (and by far the most troublesome) aspect of my costume. I had A LOT of cleaning up to do before it was presentable.


My headpiece jewellery came with the headpiece, but was painted silver for some reason. I decided to remedy this.


All painted gold. Much better. I painted these with a dry brush, so it gives this really cool aged bronze effect between the silver underneath and the gold on top.


Headpiece painted and jewellery attached.


Putting together my Padawan braid. I made this from beading wire and the same round beads that are in my montral chain. I then added two crystal triangles to the bottom to form the end of the braid.


I used these little hobby paints to paint the triangles at the end of the braid.


All painted and ready for action! I kept a snip of wire poking from the bottom to help while painting, but cut it off afterwards.


Fortunately, I have a very high brow (just like Ahsoka!), so it's great for painting. The downside is that I have to disguise my eyebrows. I do this often for a Red Queen costume I have, so it's not new to me. Basically, I have to cover my eyebrows in glue stick and wait for it to dry. Once that's done, I simply paint over it.


And this is the finished look! I hand paint all of the white detail onto my face myself, then I apply the orange around it. I'm looking to create stencils eventually, because it is very time consuming. My blue contacts are 'Sky Blue' by ColorVue in their Crazy Lens range. Very affordable and comfy.

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And here's the complete outfit. I'm really proud of the work I put into this costume. Feels like I've been building it forever!

Just want to give a quick shout-out to Alpha Prime, Rebel Rach, and Stormraven for their help. Mostly Alpha Prime, because he has to put up with my costuming neurosis 24/7 Much appreciated!



I submitted my pics for approval today. My fate now lies with the Costume Gods

(This post was last modified: 23-04-2014, 02:18 AM by Satay.)

Excellent work. One of the best Ahsoka builds out there.

WOW This build thread explains why your costume looks so good I really hope that everything goes quickly with the approvals

This is a great build Satay! I particularly love your Mums coat hanger triangle idea - that is so clever! Is the head piece latex? With the amazing work you have done here, you would be more than capable to make your own? That way you might be happier with the result.
Love this build!

Such an awesome costume well done looks amazing


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Thanks guys! It's definitely been one of the most labour-intensive costumes I've ever worked on. But I picked up a bunch of new skills along the way, so hopefully things will be easier to make in the future

Is the head piece latex? With the amazing work you have done here, you would be more than capable to make your own? That way you might be happier with the result.

Yes, the headpiece is latex. I can get it working well enough, but it really is poor craftsmanship, especially when I compare it to my beautiful Twi'lek tails.

At this point, I'm not really confident that I could make anything better, just because I haven't sculpted anything since I was a teen and I have absolutely no experience with casting latex I think I'll keep trucking with it and hope that another artist makes some more professional ones in the future. I may even look at commissioning someone else who is a bit more reliable down the track

Going by some of the comments on the RL board I don't think you will have any problems with the approval. You seem to have impressed some of the LCJ's and the DL Great to see your hard work is being recognized.

Looks amazing.

Great work

Excellent work, well done