Repainting Boba Fett

I bought a 19" Jakks Pacific Boba Fett action figure, because I thought it was good value for money. For $40, I have a 19" tall bounty hunter with reasonably accurate details. He's a little bit simple, but he's a good starting point for a repaint. Most of the inspiration for this project came from Cosplay Chris on YouTube, so, uh, thanks Chris. You do good things.

The plan was, basically, to rip Boba Fett apart, paint all the bits, replace the cape with something that looks less like a piece of muppet felt, and put him back together. And that's basically what I did.

Straight out of the box, Fett had a few problems that needed solving. Most importantly, he was missing his right shoulder bell. My plan to fix this was to attempt to cast a duplicate shoulder bell. Ultimately, I decided to do something a bit stranger, and go with the "poncho" look from the Sideshow Collectables Mythos Fett figure. This would mean I'd only need to find a way to make the cape and poncho look good, and not have to cast a replacement bell.

The other problem is much simpler: Fett's wookiee braids look like crud, as they're moulded into the plastic. I shall replace those with some kind of braided string or rope. Easy.

First up, pull apart and primer. Jakks Pacific toys are generally held together with screws and plastic tabs, and put up very little fight when assaulted with screwdrivers.

After taking the figure apart, I also used a rotary tool with a sanding barrel to remove the offending wookiee braids from Fett's chest piece. In the above photo, I've progressed to putting some dark blue paint onto the jetpack, too.

After that: Paint. This is the part where you'd expect I'd have taken a bunch of photos, but that's where you'd be wrong. Instead, we'll jump awkwardly to the completed paint job, and speak no more of it.

Well, we'll speak a little bit. I repainted the armour in three layers. The design of Fett's armour suggests that various parts of the armour were originally different colours (specifically yellow and blue) underneath, before they were painted green. The metal also shows through in several places. I tore up bits of masking tape to mask off the areas that would be chrome, then used larger pieces of tape over the chrome areas to allow another coat of "original" paint (yellow or blue), then larger pieces of masking tape again before the final green coat. I ended up covering up the printed logos on Fett's chest, but I figured the poncho would cover those areas, anwyay.

As usual, what I thought would be the final paint...wasn't, and required considerable weathering. I was unable to find an appropriately light grey for Boba's shirt, so I ended up using white in the hopes it wouldn't be blindingly clean, but it was blindingly clean. So, I shall weather the crap out of it with some airbrushed dirt.

There's the final paint job, with weathering on the white shirt and a whole bunch of darkening and dirtying on his boots, pants, gloves and pretty much everywhere else. I've dry-brushed a lot of chrome paint along the edges of the forearm parts, and on the kneecaps and shoulder bell, and generally weathered the hell out of all of the metal parts.

The wookiee braids are now some pieces of braided rope, which I've distressed with a wire brush.

The cape and poncho are some pieces of cheap fabric that I've also distressed with everything I could get my hands on. One of the best techniques I found was to scrunch the fabric up tightly into a ball, then wedge it into my vice very tightly and proceed to smash it quite violently with everything from a hammer to a wire brush. The cape was airbrushed along all of the edges to suggest dirt and grime.

I think the poncho still needs more weathering.

For one final detail, I 3D printed an EE-3 Carbine rifle for him. I found the model on Thingiverse (there are several) and set it to print. The printed piece was painted matte black, then the butt was painted brown and some silver Rub'n'Buff applied to the metal parts.

I will, one day, add a strap to the rifle so it can sling over Fett's shoulder.

I'm in no hurry, though.