ANH male Tusken scratch(ish) build thread

[techne]

It's a little unclear where the best place is to put a build thread but this seemed like the most popular location.

I’m planning on making a mostly-scratch-built ANH Tusken. That means (at the present, anyway), sculpting my own head form out of craft foam/Worbla (I’m talking about the internal structure, that the fabric will cover), 3D printing the various “metal” face parts, sewing my robes, making the air breather and gaffi stick, and making the bandoliers from leather. I’d like to make the metal face parts from scratch instead of printing them, but I’m not that good a metalworker and I don’t think other replacement materials like foam, Sintra, etc. would work for tubes that thin.

I have a planned completion date of late March, when I want to wear it at a small con that I run.

I figured I’d start with the gaffi stick and air breather since they’re relatively straightforward. I’ll show the gaffi in this post, put some questions in the second post, and the air breather in the third post.

I used HappyTrooper’s demo for the gaffi with a few modifications. I’m happy with the result and want to super-thank him for the tutorial, but it does bring up some questions for me as I mentioned (see next post).

When I started, I assumed there were a total of 3 gaffis in ANH, one with each kind of head. However, I noticed that there are at least 2 versions of the pineapple head, or maybe they made one and altered it at some point. You can see in these examples that the metal end of the pineapple head gaffi is relatively short and does not have the ring around the pipe partway through (or if it has the ring, it’s butted up against the wood): one, two, three, four. Two of those is from a book and a little more suspect, but the others aren't. Here, however, it is notably longer and does have the ring: one, two, three, four. Maybe this is well known and I was just unaware.

I decided to make the long style, which is basically what HappyTrooper’s is. So this is a pretty long weapon when all put together.

Making the pineapple was kind of a pain in the butt, or at least more than I thought it would be. What I realized is that the diameter/circumference of the circle on the top of the wood couch bun is a little bigger than the diameter/circumference of the circle on the bottom of the bun. So if you just mark off 1cm intervals around the top circle and bottom circle, they won’t match up at all. There are more marks on the one end than the other end. This doesn’t just give you an angled curve like you see on HappyTrooper’s video, there are just too many hatch marks on the one end. So, I had to do a little math and worked it out so that there are the same number of hatch marks/intervals on the top circle and the bottom circle, but on the one circle they were 1cm and on the other circle they were a little more than 1cm. You can see the cumbersome way I had to work out the geometry in these pics. Long story short they now have vertical cut lines. The horizontal lines were straightforward like the video.

I tried to make the L-brackets a little more equally distributed around the PVC elbow, instead of putting them at 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock, and 9 o’clock, but mine ended up a little wonky too. All that gets covered up by Bondo anyway, as does this plastic ring. One, two, three.

When it came to the cone/spike on the pineapple end, I used a funnel as in the video. I’ll point out that this funnel, like the one in the video, is larger and a different shape than in the screen one—more on this below. I added an elongated spike out of foam and Worbla, then covered the cone with Worbla because I couldn’t get the Bondo to stick to the funnel. I thought I could get the Worbla smooth enough but wasn’t happy with it so I eventually put Bondo over that, which worked fine. That covered up the screws and strengthened the connection to the spike tip. I’ll note that I know some pics of the gaffi have a broken tip, but some don’t; I went with the long, unbroken spike. I also Bondo-ed the bottom, over the L-brackets. One, two.

This was then attached to the main PVC handle and the seams Bondo-ed.

I used the plastic stake, like in the video, as the foundation for the spike, but transformed it into a 3-sided pyramidal spike: one, two. I don’t think the tent stake version feels accurate enough to the onscreen versions, although you do see triple-bladed spikes like that on real weapons like guandaos (although to be honest I’ve only seen this on modern practice guandaos, I can’t find good historical examples). However, to cover the stake, the spike had to have 3 sides instead of the 4 sides of the movie, but I feel that’s more within an acceptable design variance (for what I mean by this, see below). I used Worbla to cover it. It makes for a pretty wicked spike, really.  I “welded” it to the pole with hot glue to cover the space between the triangular shape and the circle of the pole, just like using the hot glue to make weld marks around the fins.

I haven’t done hardly any faux-weathering on costumes before; I tend to like bright costumes that match classic 4-color comic coloring. But here it seemed necessary. I think it went pretty well, I was happy with it.

High-res files, see below for low res: one, two, three, four.

I used the cone tip of my Dremel to make a pattern of dots in the handle grip, as seen in the movie.

Let me know what you think of the gaffi. I tend to use links, hosted on Imgur, because I've had issues with images disappearing on other hosts or having trouble fitting images under the forum's guidelines. That makes for a less interesting post here, visually, but should give a better set of images overall.

 

[techne]

I mentioned that I have some questions. I should say that while I’ve made a number of costumes in general, the only one I’ve done through the 501^st is a TK, so that formed my idea of how the forums work. But the Krayt forum is quite different from the FISD in that there, it’s common to present your near-finished costume to the forum leadership for critique for the Expert Infantry and Centurion levels. I.e. there are quite clear community standards that you can get direct yes/no feedback about on the forum. Here, there are only a relatively few build threads and since there aren’t different levels to build to, it seems like the approval happens entirely at the garrison level. Which is all fine, every community is different. Just explaining why I'm not totally sure how things work on this forum.

Which is important because I have some biggish questions about what is acceptable for a build. For instance, in the FISD there was a pretty clear set of expectations that everything had to look EXACTLY correct and had to be based on an ideal trooper. For instance one onscreen trooper has a different black band on his forehead, but it’s not ok to make your build look like that guy (for approval anyway). Same with the blasters—there are a lot of variants onscreen but you build toward one ideal one. At least that's what it was like when I made mine years ago.

Whereas for the Tuskens, it seems to me that the forum not only accepts all versions of the on-screen Sandpeople, and mixes and matches of the parts between them, but also variance off them. Let me use the gaffi as an example. I like the clever simplicity of HappyTrooper’s build, and from the comments on his thread on this forum, it’s clear that several members made theirs according to his. There's certainly nobody from forum leadership saying "don't make it this way" in the thread.

But really, his has multiple details that are different from any of the onscreen gaffis. The curve of the funnel on top of his pineapple end is a different kind of curve than in the movie. His pineapple looks like a pineapple grenade with a grid-like pattern instead of the little mini pointed shapes of the movie (see previous links). He has a tent stake with 3 edges coming off a center rather than the 4-sided pyramidal spike in the movie. None of this is to criticize his build--I really appreciate it. I am just pointing out that it's different, and that that seems to be fine based on comments? Other gaffis on these forums have some of these same differences, but some are closer to the movie. Others invent their own heads altogether. Examples: one, two, three (granted, a rifle, but still modded from the original head from what I can tell), four. Again, this is no criticism of the examples I'm showing in any way. I really appreciated seeing their builds as I was working on mine. I'm just making a point that variation seems acceptable, but I want to be sure my take on that is correct.

I’m not sure how open-ended this allowable variation is, since the CRL doesn’t have a lot of detail and basically says make it look like the movie, but my sense—and maybe I’m wrong—is that we don’t need to keep to the details and are free to create one as long as it fits the “spirit” of a Tusken gaffi. I would very much like to hear feedback on this.

My biggest question is the robes. After looking at the robes in detail, it seems to me that a lot of the most popular fabrics that people use for the inner and outer robes aren't really accurate. I know a lot of people use Osnaburg for the inner robes, but looking up close at the movie and book pics, I don’t see any weave on the inner robes' fabric. Osnaburg looks basically like a light canvas with a pretty clear, even rough weave, and from the pics I think the inner robes are closer to a felt or wool, at least in these images: one, two, three, four, five, six. On the other hand in these images they look more like a cotton or linen, because of the way it folds/creases: one, two. In any case, there is no visible weave, which would seem to cut out Osnaburg. It’s possible there were at least 2 kinds of cloth used on different Tuskens for the inner robes, one with no weave (wool) and one with a tight weave (cotton).

It's hard, because I don’t entirely trust the images in the books or traveling shows. Some of the traveling shows seem absolutely inaccurate, in terms of fabrics. I've got a great show example that I need a friend to email me, I'll edit it in later. But this book, Star Wars Costumes, seems reasonably definitive and similar to the pics from the set and again, I see no weave, it looks like felt or wool. You can find that book in its entirety here, the Tusken is on page 63/64. You can zoom in pretty close, unlike most of the photos from the movie set. Unfortunately the actual movie has almost no shots of the inner robe that you see see with any detail.

Given that the robes, as it says in that book, were from existing "Arab" costumes on previous movies, it makes sense to me that they’d be the kind of material you’d find in a typical desert robe for real people rather than a canvas-looking material like Osnaburg (at least that’s what Osnaburg looks like to me online; from what I’ve read it’s a kind of rough linen). Canvas makes sense for the face/boot/arm wraps, because those were made for the movie and are for fictional scavengers. But if the robes were "Arab" robes in their origin, they'd be made for comfort. Beduins make their robes from wool or cotton (one, two) . So my tendency is to think the interior robes are one of those two fabrics, maybe both since there is possibly more than one interior robe style in the same way there’s more than one exterior robe style.

So, my feeling is to go with a wool or perhaps a cotton or maybe a linen.  Wool is pretty damn expensive though, especially white wool so you can dye it. Thoughts?

The waistband (one, two but again they're from books, so who knows), in contrast, looks more like it has a weave, and I’d go cotton/linen. Thoughts?

In terms of the outer robes, we know there were 2 or 3 outer robe fabrics as well. I know many use monk’s cloth or a basketweave, but again, that seems inaccurate to me. The one is this tufted towel-like fabric (and here and here)  where the tufts are rectangles that project out from the surface a bit. That pattern looks a bit like a basket weave from a distance but is not at all an actual basketweave in structure.

The other one is a weave, a twill. It could be a canvas.

The third one I don’t know but looks even more textureless—I’d guess it’s the same as the interior robes from the look.

Since the tufted towel is basically unavailable—although I agree with this thread that the Lynova blanket is very close, it’s like $400+, and there is this one that seems to only have a telephone number, which I would probably not buy from without a website to see their images--I’m probably going for the twill. What I’d like is a more noticeably textured twill than I can find. The only one I see that looks like I’m looking for is again absurdly expensive. There was a thread on here somewhere, which now I can't find to link to again, that had these digital enhancements of the fabric: one, two.

This partly goes back to the question of screen accuracy for the specific 3 or 4 on-screen Tuskens vs creating in the spirit of the design. What I mean is, I have seen a number of comments about how in Europe monk’s cloth is unavailable and so they use a different cloth. Now monk’s cloth is not the right cloth in the first place, but it means that it is acceptable to make certain substitutions instead of going for 100% accuracy. I fully support this, it’s just interesting to me because when I was making my TK years ago, I’d read all kinds of threads where people are arguing at length over whether a screw head is 1/8” or 3/16”. Here, I haven't seen anyone arguing about, for instance, whether the ring on the metal end of someone's gaffi is not quite the right shape. Maybe I'm just not seeing those discussions, but it seems like a different spirit on this forum, given the variation in terms of cloth type and gaffi design. I’m not at all saying people here don’t care about accuracy, clearly they do. You can see that, for instance, in the discussions about how the metal pieces in the face should be angled. But it seems like there is more of an acceptance of variation in both the interpretation of what the original is (what kind of fabric is it) and one’s vision for an accessory’s design (gaffi stick heads).

All of which is to say, regarding the fabric, is that my sense is that if I can find a fabric that I believe looks accurate, and I can back that up with evidence, then that would be ok, even if other people are using other fabrics?

Thoughts on this? Again I know it’s ultimately up to my garrison to accept it or not. I’m just curious if I’m reading the forum style accurately.

[techne]

For the air breather, I used a standard coup can, which is the correct length and 2.5” wide. It looks appropriate in proportion to my head/body.

I got the flare nuts and aluminum rod, and some leather. That was all easy enough.

I looked for a match for the ridged caps quite a bit—two hardware stores, two convenience stores, an auto parts store, a grocery store, and online. I didn’t find anything with the correct depth of ridges, the flat top, the slight taper towards the top, the correct width, and the ridges going all the way from the bottom to the top of the cap. These WD40 style caps (one, two) are close and I’ve seen other people describe the caps as perhaps being old WD40 caps. I even think I can see some red fading through the caps in this picture although that may be my imagination. The problem is that it has a ring at the bottom with no ridges, and the indentation at the top.

I carefully cut off the top and bottom with a Dremel, which also left it at just the right height (one, two). I cut a small circle of Sintra to fit in the top (one, two) and then Bondo-ed over that to fill in the cracks around the edge. That worked really well.

Between the can and the ridged cap the surface is a little bowed, so I took another piece of Sintra and heated it, then pressed the center out so it made a bit of a dome. (Also here and here). I put that on top of the can lid and glued on the cap/flare nuts.

The 36” aluminum wire was surprisingly easy to bend. I put the ends of it in a vice then bent it down with my hands to get the 90 degree bends at the ends, then just bent the main curve around my knee with my hands. I’ll need to bend the U so it curves over my shoulders but I’m going to wait til I make the mask to do that, to be sure it fits.

Annoyingly, the ¼” rod did not fit in the ¼” flare nuts—it was basically exactly the same size, so I had to grind the wire down so it would fit inside.

I tried E-6000 to attach the wire to the can/nuts assembly, but it didn’t dry even after 24 hours. Then I used hot glue which was perfect.

I also used hot glue to attach the leather to the can. Interestingly, I had spray painted the can along with the rest of the assembly, and when I first also tried E-6000 to attach the leather, the glue pulled the spray paint right off—like it liquified the paint and pulled it off. Weird. Anyway I just hot glued it and it was fine.

After some weathering, here it is (and high-res: one, two):

I will either tackle the head or the bandoliers next, but might take a teeny break for real-life work. I would love to head your thoughts on my questions of the gaffi shape, fabrics, and the overall question of design/material flexibility in the meantime.

Oh hey one more question--how do you interleave pics within the body of your text? All I can see as an option is to put them at the bottom.

[Nezhdanov]

Hi and welcome!

 

You raised a few queries so I’ll try to go through them. I think you are correct with many of your observations. I’ll say there will be some questions I won’t be able to respond to as I am just a regular member like you!

 

Firstly I’m not going to comment on how another detachment handles their costumes. 

 

Possibly the way this forum might be different could be because of a few things.

 

1. If we were to imagine that Star Wars was real and not a made up fantasy world, then the faceless army of the empire would have a lot of resources and be massed produced so would have a different manufacturing process to the ANH Tuskens living amongst the sand and rocks.
2. The Tusken characters in the film vary from each other quite a bit from wraps, robe materials, gaffi’s, bandoliers and so on. Evidence in the film is that ANH Tuskens look slightly different from each other so it makes sense for many costumers to create their own Tusken either recreating exactly what is seen on screen from one character or a combination of the characters seen or a variation that would fit into the film.
3. This is why one of the two ANH Tusken crl’s is for a generic Tusken and the other is for the only Tusken in the film that has some decent screen time (fleeting screen time though it still is). It is possibly for this reason the generic ANH Tusken crl is vague.
4. The standard for accurate recreation of what is seen on screen remains for the ANH Tusken like any other costume. I suppose the levels of accuracy is how close you can match what is seen on screen. Some try to do this by tracking down original materials while others use a variety of methods to get the on screen look. It is not necessarily an easy costume to build and many find their own level of how far they want to go for accuracy. We try to help people make the best costume they can here but what is clearable at garrison level may vary and that is out of our control. I would encourage those starting to build a costume to get tips and ideas from what others have made but stick to what is seen in the film or reliable reference photos primarily. Books and exhibitions can help for inspiration but can be inaccurate as the costumes are not always put together correctly for exhibitions.

 

For your gaffi, it does seem to vary from what is seen on screen. The gaffi and rifle are accessories and so are not required for clearance so maybe that is why you have seen variation in others builds?

Screen reference 

Real world weapon examples for ideas. These would have been hand made.

 

I think the difference from what is seen in the film would be queried for clearance in my garrison but as I mentioned earlier, each garrison can be different when it comes to clearance. You could try to alter the end point shape, even altering the cone would help to fit more with what is seen on screen. The dimples might be a challenge so that might be something to consider if you want to go to that level of detail or not. It might clear at your local garrison as is so it is really up to you. 

 

Onsnaburg material I have seen has a fairly non descript small weave and even at a short distance away the weave is not visible.

The osnaburg I used with a small coin to show weave size

From a short distance after dye on top of material with no dye

It might be the reference you are looking at is zoomed in or maybe there’s many different weights or varieties of osnaburg. It is a cotton material, cotton twill maybe but it is a suggested material in the crl so if you see other suitable material then there’s no reason not to try it. Maybe put up a sample or a picture of what you are thinking of for the inner robes before spending any hard earned money!

 

As for monks cloth, it was in the crl for a long time but not now. Possibly it once looked like the right material before better quality dvd and Blu-ray was a thing. Or it might have been an easy material to get in some areas, i’m not sure, I’ve only been a member 4 years. As people saw a named material in the crl, many used monks cloth for their costume. I’ve not checked historically in my garrison if monks cloth has been cleared for ANH Tuskens but I don’t think it has and don’t think it would now. Monks cloth has been used in Europe for ANH Tuskens but often the import costs are high so people try alternatives for cost and other reasons.

 

The outer robe material can be a challenge to get and is often an expensive part of the costume so get samples and give it a wash to mimic a machine wash to get an idea what the finished weave looks like. Natural materials like cotton might take dye better than synthetics and heavy weaves might look better.

 

As for your breather, this seems fine but it will be hard to say too much until it is being worn with the rest of the costume. The film version does have a bend in the rod which might help with how the breather sits when worn.

If the breather hangs too low it can get a bit tangled with bandoliers but that might not be a problem.

Possible can used? So anything that looks like the black and white photo should be fine.

Hope this helps!

 

 

[techne]

Nezhdanov, thank you very much for your thoughts here. The point about the generic tusken vs the named tusken makes sense in particular, when it comes to the variability in the generic one. I have also, since writing this, been thinking about the fact that the FISD (which I know you don't want to compare one group vs another, that's ok) also obviously has the standard level of approval below Expert Infantryman and Centurion, and that that level probably approximates the kind of slight variability to the details of the costume that I've been seeing here. I guess when it comes to the gaffi, I'll just show my GML and see what he thinks.

In terms of the CRL mentioning a fabric, it doesn't say anything about either of the robes. It mentions duck cloth or bull denim for the wraps. I could certainly see those fabrics used for the one style of outer robe as well, personally. Interesting to hear your thoughts on the Osnaburg. Close up, it looks wrong to me, but from farther away I could see it as the second type that I was identifying as a possible cotton.

It would be interesting if, after people got their costumes approved, they posted them all here in one place. That way, even in an absence of build threads, new folks could see a mass of approved costumes and have a sense of what might generally get approved, even if any given garrison might have its own interpretation.

Anyone else have any thoughts, especially on the gaffi? Have you seen HappyTrooper-style gaffis--ones that use funnels on the one end--get approved?

[techne]

I forgot to post the pics of the exhibition of costumes my friend took. The show was Star Wars Identities: The Exhibition which is supposed to be real movie props. As you can see, while parts of the Tusken look real, the robes are completely inaccurate. My assumption is that they lost the robes, or this show didn't have access to them, so they just put in a place-filler robe instead. But this also makes me very skeptical of other exhibitions of this type, and whether or not you can trust any given piece of it. Of course, the exhibition may have had a note explaining the robes, I have no idea. But since we mostly look at these pics as random contextual-less pics floating around the internet, it's worth wondering how much other similar show pics might have similar issues.

Click on the link to see the pics. The link also has other pics from the show so you can have a sense of what else is accurately shown in the exhibition.

https://imgur.com/a/xGcZsIu

The first 3 pics are from my friend, the next 2 are from the same exhibition but I found them on the internet. Interestingly they have a different gaffi head, which is completely smooth.

Folks, can I also get hints on posting pics here? Because it seems to be limiting me now to a total of 37KB for in-line pics, which all go at the bottom. I don't see any other image-posting mechanisms for posting in-line pics.

[Nezhdanov]

Hi,

When I mentioned Osnaburg is a suggested material, I meant I’ve seen the material clear, for example me and my wife have made 3 cleared ANH Tuskens using Osnaburg as the inner robe material but this does not necessarily mean it is the correct material or most accurate. I’ve also seen people who clear other material for inner robes such as dust sheets from hardware stores as an example.

I’ve seen people construct gaffi’s using a variety materials such as plumbing piping which sometimes appear to vary from the film but seem to clear and I think I’ve seen cones similar to yours clear.

The exhibition Tusken appears to be one from the prequel films which is quite different to ANH Tuskens in look and materials.

https://databank.501st.com/databank/Costuming:TuskenRaiderMaleAttackoftheClones

Book reference with different gaffi etc.

Film reference a bit hard to see in the nighttime scene 

There is a way to see completed costumes at events although it is all Denizen costumes in a jumbled order on these forums. (A caveat here would be that some costumes cleared a while ago may differ from current crl requirements)

https://www.kraytclan.net/forum/forum/38-member-troop-tracking/

Here’s mine as an example, some of the photo quality varies 

https://www.kraytclan.net/forum/topic/8169-nezhdanov-dz-91420-event-roster/

Hope that helps!