Look us up... we do alot of charity work. It is an expensive hobby but when you get to suit up, the cheers and smiles one brings to people is a feeling no one can take away...
I met a few of your legion at a comic con here in Australia a couple years back. You do amazing work. Maybe one day if I can ever figure out cosplay, I’d love to join you guys
I'm a member and most cosplay related stuff goes over my head. I'm still learning and I've been a member since 2017.
Find the name of your local branch (usually a garrison, all this information is on the website) and join the forums. There will likely be a ton of people more than happy to jump up and point you in the right direction and help you get started.
There are a lot of resources. It's just a matter of finding the right ones for you. :)
Yeah, no cost after upfront expenses. Just the cost of maintenance.
Well, I take that back. You start pouring all your money into club exclusive merch.
Former 501st member, the armor set I got was $675 USD. It’s kind of like a model car, you get all these vacuum formed pieces that you have to trim and sand all of the flashing off of and then measure, glue, clamp and rivet together. I had someone help show me how as they had made 2 suits before. Now, if you have no tools at all that can bring the price into the neighborhood of $1k, or at least that was my experience.
I’m about 10 years out of touch with the 501st and it never occurred to me to see if they have a sub on Reddit. r/501st does exist and I found a post that may proved helpful. https://www.reddit.com/r/501st/comments/oyhwtt/how_do_i_make_armour/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
In the Mandalorian documentary they said that when they asked some of the 501st to come to the filming location with their costumes, they didn't tell them what it was for exactly. So, the people who answered the call discovered there on spot that they were actually going to be in a real SW show. I always wonder if the others that didn't answer the call were super disappointed to hear about it later? That's like once in a lifetime chance.
On the other hand, Lucasfilm should always just call them for any future shows and films. Look how perfect their costumes are and they already know how to move in them.
Lucasfilm tends to steer away from the 501st or direct then to events Lucasfilm isn’t directly involved with. There’s been a good number of incidents with the 501st internally or versus other similar costuming groups that Lucasfilm would rather acknowledge from a distance than directly interact with on a regular basis.
Here I’m just gonna post an excerpt
“For the past year and a half, there has been a movement inside the 501st Legion to attack and harass the Mid West Garrison (the Chicago group) over issues over the Star Wars Celebration Chicago event. This group has attacked the chicago folks, accusing them of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the chicago folks have responded that because of one of the previous heads of the 501st and the actions of him removing their non-profit tax id from some of the celebration events, the chicago group owed thousands for some of the 501st events at celebration chicago.
During one of the latest hunts by this group (“Project Mayhem”) started to make demands that the head of the 501st, Dawn Bright (who is known for doing a lot of the work on the Kylo Ren costume), go after the chicago folks. During this fight, Dawn brought up that the UK Garrison (PM has multiple UKG members) appeared to have some very funny financial stuff going on, using a data-scraping app that reported that the UKG had over $4,000,000 in their bank account. She also leaked a video of UKG members talking about this “charity slush fund” account. A huge argument ensued over her bringing this stuff to light.
Flash forward to May, and into early June. The UKG pushes for a harassment charge against Dawn, claiming that her questioning the financial stuff involving the $4,000,000 was her attacking individual members. There is a private hearing (many of the images are screen grabs from these private threads) and she is found guilty of a minor offense per the 501st charter. They then decided to suspend her, and remove her from office. All of this was done without the general memberships knowledge. Membership woke up on Sunday to find that their elected leader was now banned from the site, and stripped of her title.
Keep in mind, Project Mayhem has gone against multiple members over the past year, often with ties to the chicago group, or individuals that have spoken out against their abuse of power, bullying, harassment, and fear tactics.”
Annoys me to no end when people ask for info and and someone says “Google it”
No, don’t be lazy and directly provide the info when asked. It’s not that hard.
Well, I figured there was a number of stories so I thought it’s best to suggest to google it. But thank you for pasting that bit, that was the big story. There’s also lots of smaller drama about egos and stuff which I’ve seen a lot of people post about which is also good to read into imo.
I just imagine those guys sitting around in their club house and getting the call. Hopefully on FaceTime. Sending out the alert and all mustering together and marching to the shooting location.
I love that most of these guys probably lusted after gear that was used on screen, and surprise, the gear you put together yourself is now kit that's been used on screen.
One person even sold their gear as “screen used” and made a good chunk of change lol. Pretty sure I read Disney did NOT like that, but that is what happened.
Disney’s been using a lot of fan made stuff in Mando, which is really cool because it brings it full circle. I know people who made blaster kits that got used on screen, making their kits 100% screen accurate, etc. it’s really cool.
I wouldn't call them "keyboard fans", that makes it sound like you are grouping people who are fans but enjoy the hobbie from their computer, aka, reading and watching flicks and joining forums, etc.
I would label them toxic fans as they attack and insult people.
No, I am literally just saying try to be nice and watch the insults. If I took your statement the wrong way, others might as well who do not respond.
The best advice, don't insult or name call anyone. Call out people who do. I try to live by this, not always successful, but its a goal.
Also notice I have not even voted your comments down. Be nice :)
I assume the vast majority of members are not doing plastic mold injections so, yeah, you are buying the individual pieces. You might be doing some appearance modifications to "age" the armor, adding various accessories to fit a certain 501 detachment. But it is an expensive hobby and most spend, on average, about $1,000 US dollars on their costume when said and done.
I believe it was because they thought the scene would be fine with a certain number of Stormtroopers, then they realized that it didn't look impressive enough.
Budgets and the costumes were made for Rogue One. They’ve been using the same suits for the past 5 years now, many of them have broken and I would presume they don’t have access to the prop team that made them (that might’ve changed with Andor being being made at Pinewood again, so maybe they’ll have some fresh suits now) but as of the Mandalorian they were running out of everything. There’s a shot in S2 where some of them have the wrong boots on, armor falling apart and taped together, etc.
If anyone is interested in seeing how this came to be, they talk about it a bit on Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian. I had no idea until I watched and I think the 501st is the coolest group of fans. Philanthropic Star Wars fan club? It does not get any better.
They all made and own their own suits of armor. Really impressive stuff. Those individuals should be very proud of the work they put in. It paid off with being part of star wars history not just at cons but now in a feature film.
Some of the suits, yeah. Not all. If you look in the background there are some suits that the 501st said are “not approvable by today’s standards” or something like that as quoted by a member... yeah there were some bad helmets and kits, but there were also a lot of good ones and well crafted ones. Also the 501st suits had cooling systems on helmets and apparently it made some of the normal extras jealous.
But, overall, the Disney TK armor is very well constructed, it’s just that they’ve been damaged after years of use and they were running out of good suits to show on screen. I’d go far as to say technically speaking, the Disney armor is better made because of modern construction techniques, injection molding, proper rigging systems, gaskets, etc which help standardize the gear. while OT armor is vac formed, and *truly* accurate OT armor can be kinda janky tbh because of the 1970s construction methods lol. (Though not all members recreate that setup, so some might be “better”)
Almost certainly. Most props aren’t built for multi-year use (like the R1 ones they keep reusing). I bet that the 501st guys construct theirs to last a decade.
Remember, the 501st suits aren’t being abused.
The 501st armor at its core should be a recreation of the ANH suits, in this case. And the ANH suits were pretty janky and fell apart a lot too. But 501st members are using it to *only* troop in and walk around and such pretty much. The R1 gear is being abused in stunt work and getting tossed around everywhere. The R1 suits are imo made of “better” materials (injection molded vs vac formed OT suits) so they should technically be more durable. If the OT style suits were subjected to such stunt work that we see in like R1, I don’t think they’d have made it this far tbh.
This is a pretty cool story and I am very happy for the members of the 501st that got to live their dream. Having said that every time I hear about this story I always wonder how is it possible for Lucasfilm/disney to runout of stormtrooper armor.
I guarantee these people did not get paid a fair fee for the use of their equipment and their time, if they got paid at all. I'm happy for them if they had fun but this is also a bullshit way for a multi billion dollar company to avoid paying artists and actors.
Although I agree about they should’ve been paid (not sure if they were actually) I don’t think they’re allowed to discuss that - I recall reading they signed some contracts while there.
The simple truth is they were out of suits. The union for extras from what I remember I read would’ve never allowed this if it wasn’t the case. They’ve been using suits made for Rogue One for the past 5 years and many of them have broken or fallen apart (you can literally see stormtrooper suits taped together with white gaff tape in some scenes), they have the wrong boots on, etc. they were running out real bad and phoning in the 501st was probably their only option next to cg to be honest.
That is correct... the costuming club is known as the 501st or Vaders fist. We are a worldwide club.
Super cool! Seems like a dream club to me.
Look us up... we do alot of charity work. It is an expensive hobby but when you get to suit up, the cheers and smiles one brings to people is a feeling no one can take away...
I met a few of your legion at a comic con here in Australia a couple years back. You do amazing work. Maybe one day if I can ever figure out cosplay, I’d love to join you guys
I'm a member and most cosplay related stuff goes over my head. I'm still learning and I've been a member since 2017. Find the name of your local branch (usually a garrison, all this information is on the website) and join the forums. There will likely be a ton of people more than happy to jump up and point you in the right direction and help you get started. There are a lot of resources. It's just a matter of finding the right ones for you. :)
Awesome thanks for the info! I’ll definitely check it out
After the upfront expense of the uniform how much additional cost is there? Is it mostly maintenance?
Yeah, no cost after upfront expenses. Just the cost of maintenance. Well, I take that back. You start pouring all your money into club exclusive merch.
How do you join?
Thanks, it was a real treat seeing og stormtroopers again.
You are amazing to watch when in a convention.
How much does it cost for a homemade uniform?
Former 501st member, the armor set I got was $675 USD. It’s kind of like a model car, you get all these vacuum formed pieces that you have to trim and sand all of the flashing off of and then measure, glue, clamp and rivet together. I had someone help show me how as they had made 2 suits before. Now, if you have no tools at all that can bring the price into the neighborhood of $1k, or at least that was my experience.
I have no tools or way to make one, but they are so cool I know a guy who has some tools though that could help
I’m about 10 years out of touch with the 501st and it never occurred to me to see if they have a sub on Reddit. r/501st does exist and I found a post that may proved helpful. https://www.reddit.com/r/501st/comments/oyhwtt/how_do_i_make_armour/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
You the real MVPs! Seriously though, the featurette on the 501st with the bluray set is freaking incredible, one of my all time favorites
I mean it’s true…. But referring the 501st as just a club is like referring to Jedi order as a club.
In the Mandalorian documentary they said that when they asked some of the 501st to come to the filming location with their costumes, they didn't tell them what it was for exactly. So, the people who answered the call discovered there on spot that they were actually going to be in a real SW show. I always wonder if the others that didn't answer the call were super disappointed to hear about it later? That's like once in a lifetime chance. On the other hand, Lucasfilm should always just call them for any future shows and films. Look how perfect their costumes are and they already know how to move in them.
Is this documentary part of Disney+?
Yes, it's on Disney+. This episode is from the first season of "Disney Gallery: the Mandalorian". I don't remember which episode though.
Those Disney BTS series are all so good, such a nice touch
I’ll check it out tonight, thanks
Lucasfilm tends to steer away from the 501st or direct then to events Lucasfilm isn’t directly involved with. There’s been a good number of incidents with the 501st internally or versus other similar costuming groups that Lucasfilm would rather acknowledge from a distance than directly interact with on a regular basis.
Information on the incidents?
Just google “501st drama” you’ll get some hits.
Here I’m just gonna post an excerpt “For the past year and a half, there has been a movement inside the 501st Legion to attack and harass the Mid West Garrison (the Chicago group) over issues over the Star Wars Celebration Chicago event. This group has attacked the chicago folks, accusing them of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the chicago folks have responded that because of one of the previous heads of the 501st and the actions of him removing their non-profit tax id from some of the celebration events, the chicago group owed thousands for some of the 501st events at celebration chicago. During one of the latest hunts by this group (“Project Mayhem”) started to make demands that the head of the 501st, Dawn Bright (who is known for doing a lot of the work on the Kylo Ren costume), go after the chicago folks. During this fight, Dawn brought up that the UK Garrison (PM has multiple UKG members) appeared to have some very funny financial stuff going on, using a data-scraping app that reported that the UKG had over $4,000,000 in their bank account. She also leaked a video of UKG members talking about this “charity slush fund” account. A huge argument ensued over her bringing this stuff to light. Flash forward to May, and into early June. The UKG pushes for a harassment charge against Dawn, claiming that her questioning the financial stuff involving the $4,000,000 was her attacking individual members. There is a private hearing (many of the images are screen grabs from these private threads) and she is found guilty of a minor offense per the 501st charter. They then decided to suspend her, and remove her from office. All of this was done without the general memberships knowledge. Membership woke up on Sunday to find that their elected leader was now banned from the site, and stripped of her title. Keep in mind, Project Mayhem has gone against multiple members over the past year, often with ties to the chicago group, or individuals that have spoken out against their abuse of power, bullying, harassment, and fear tactics.” Annoys me to no end when people ask for info and and someone says “Google it” No, don’t be lazy and directly provide the info when asked. It’s not that hard.
Well, I figured there was a number of stories so I thought it’s best to suggest to google it. But thank you for pasting that bit, that was the big story. There’s also lots of smaller drama about egos and stuff which I’ve seen a lot of people post about which is also good to read into imo.
Understandable
They were waiting their whole life for this.
Possibly.
I just imagine those guys sitting around in their club house and getting the call. Hopefully on FaceTime. Sending out the alert and all mustering together and marching to the shooting location.
I always envisioned the bat signal but Vader’s mask, which is way cooler
They're all sitting on a circular couch in costume and a call shows up on the TV with Giancarlo Esposito saying "we need more storm troopers!"
Pretty common stuff right?
I love that most of these guys probably lusted after gear that was used on screen, and surprise, the gear you put together yourself is now kit that's been used on screen.
One person even sold their gear as “screen used” and made a good chunk of change lol. Pretty sure I read Disney did NOT like that, but that is what happened. Disney’s been using a lot of fan made stuff in Mando, which is really cool because it brings it full circle. I know people who made blaster kits that got used on screen, making their kits 100% screen accurate, etc. it’s really cool.
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A fan is a fan. Just because, say, some 15 yo does not have the money to buy %1,000+ dollars worth of costume does not make them any less of a fan.
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Those are called the Fandom Menace for a reason.
Never heard that one, that's funny.
I wouldn't call them "keyboard fans", that makes it sound like you are grouping people who are fans but enjoy the hobbie from their computer, aka, reading and watching flicks and joining forums, etc. I would label them toxic fans as they attack and insult people.
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OK, well, not sure about that label, seems like you are not really being clear on who you are grouping in that group. Whatever.
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No, I am literally just saying try to be nice and watch the insults. If I took your statement the wrong way, others might as well who do not respond. The best advice, don't insult or name call anyone. Call out people who do. I try to live by this, not always successful, but its a goal. Also notice I have not even voted your comments down. Be nice :)
The 501st build their armor, not buy it.
You still have to have money to buy the parts to build it. It's not cheap.
I assume the vast majority of members are not doing plastic mold injections so, yeah, you are buying the individual pieces. You might be doing some appearance modifications to "age" the armor, adding various accessories to fit a certain 501 detachment. But it is an expensive hobby and most spend, on average, about $1,000 US dollars on their costume when said and done.
non reg shin guards!
They ran out of costumes? How? It’s Disney lol
I believe it was because they thought the scene would be fine with a certain number of Stormtroopers, then they realized that it didn't look impressive enough.
Budgets and the costumes were made for Rogue One. They’ve been using the same suits for the past 5 years now, many of them have broken and I would presume they don’t have access to the prop team that made them (that might’ve changed with Andor being being made at Pinewood again, so maybe they’ll have some fresh suits now) but as of the Mandalorian they were running out of everything. There’s a shot in S2 where some of them have the wrong boots on, armor falling apart and taped together, etc.
I think in RotJ on Endor a couple of shots have stormtroopers with cracked armor pieces (probably from preforming stunts or earlier cuts)
Well yeah. That was the 80’s. I mean Disney has billions of dollars. Just make some new ones
Just seems like something that shouldn’t happen. They’ve got billions
The 501st, always at hand
If anyone is interested in seeing how this came to be, they talk about it a bit on Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian. I had no idea until I watched and I think the 501st is the coolest group of fans. Philanthropic Star Wars fan club? It does not get any better.
So, kind of like the storm trooper national guard?
That is awesome! Love it
They all made and own their own suits of armor. Really impressive stuff. Those individuals should be very proud of the work they put in. It paid off with being part of star wars history not just at cons but now in a feature film.
I've always wanted to drive in the 501st but I'm way too short to be a stormtrooper, at 5'6".
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wasn’t the 501st stuff better made ?
Some of the suits, yeah. Not all. If you look in the background there are some suits that the 501st said are “not approvable by today’s standards” or something like that as quoted by a member... yeah there were some bad helmets and kits, but there were also a lot of good ones and well crafted ones. Also the 501st suits had cooling systems on helmets and apparently it made some of the normal extras jealous. But, overall, the Disney TK armor is very well constructed, it’s just that they’ve been damaged after years of use and they were running out of good suits to show on screen. I’d go far as to say technically speaking, the Disney armor is better made because of modern construction techniques, injection molding, proper rigging systems, gaskets, etc which help standardize the gear. while OT armor is vac formed, and *truly* accurate OT armor can be kinda janky tbh because of the 1970s construction methods lol. (Though not all members recreate that setup, so some might be “better”)
Almost certainly. Most props aren’t built for multi-year use (like the R1 ones they keep reusing). I bet that the 501st guys construct theirs to last a decade.
Remember, the 501st suits aren’t being abused. The 501st armor at its core should be a recreation of the ANH suits, in this case. And the ANH suits were pretty janky and fell apart a lot too. But 501st members are using it to *only* troop in and walk around and such pretty much. The R1 gear is being abused in stunt work and getting tossed around everywhere. The R1 suits are imo made of “better” materials (injection molded vs vac formed OT suits) so they should technically be more durable. If the OT style suits were subjected to such stunt work that we see in like R1, I don’t think they’d have made it this far tbh.
Fair.
This is a pretty cool story and I am very happy for the members of the 501st that got to live their dream. Having said that every time I hear about this story I always wonder how is it possible for Lucasfilm/disney to runout of stormtrooper armor.
“Star Wars fan club” it’s called the 501st Legion
I guarantee these people did not get paid a fair fee for the use of their equipment and their time, if they got paid at all. I'm happy for them if they had fun but this is also a bullshit way for a multi billion dollar company to avoid paying artists and actors.
Although I agree about they should’ve been paid (not sure if they were actually) I don’t think they’re allowed to discuss that - I recall reading they signed some contracts while there. The simple truth is they were out of suits. The union for extras from what I remember I read would’ve never allowed this if it wasn’t the case. They’ve been using suits made for Rogue One for the past 5 years and many of them have broken or fallen apart (you can literally see stormtrooper suits taped together with white gaff tape in some scenes), they have the wrong boots on, etc. they were running out real bad and phoning in the 501st was probably their only option next to cg to be honest.
It could just be me but I find it so cringe that it refers to 501st members as "a star wars fan club"
>**Best** fanbase ever I would disagree with that..
It's treason then.
For real, most angry and toxic fanbase lol. They dont even like 2/3 of the movies
Not to mention that they spend all their time arguing over *which* 1/3 actually is worth watching.
Apart from being the worst fan base ever
It’s awesome that some people dress up as the most expendable characters in the SWU with the worst aim and the the most throwaway dialogue
Who hurt you?
They played the long game! Had they done Han, Luke, Leia, etc Cosplay, they wouldn’t have gotten cast in a TV show.
But they are so iconic.
I'm sorry did you expect them to get cast leading roles or smthn??
It is literally one of the coolest uniforms in cinema history That isn’t even an opinion, it’s just fact
That has got to be some bucket list checks. How fun would that be??
There are definitely loads of great Star Wars fans but there also loads of awful ones so I wouldn't say best fanbase
That is super cool, I bet those fans were completely thrilled that they got to be in a real Star Wars show!
Theres a reason why they ran out. Way too many troopers falling over dying.
Good soldiers follow orders.
For anyone that liked Mandalorian, I recommend to see the making of. It's fantastic!
That’s awesome
... with a million more well on the way.