Upgrading the Rebel persona: captured armor

When I started putting together a Rebel partizan impression a few years back, I initially had the idea—inspired by real-life guerillas’ practice of appropriating enemy equipment—to include a piece or two of captured Imperial hardware in the kit. I was very aware of the temptation to overdo it…too many cosplayers let their imaginations run wild and pretty soon a simple ‘Rebel fighter’ costume becomes an unrealistically fully-armored supertrooper.  Since s Alliance doctrine holds that “complete freedom of movement is more useful than the dubious protection provided by armor—which rarely stops a blaster bolt anyway” (WestEndGames, Rebel Alliance Sourcebook, p99), we don’t have a ton of examples of Rebels wearing extensive armor; even this more modern source depicts a Rebel ‘heavy’ gunner with only an arm’s worth of armor:

I reasoned that while a Rebel partizan would probably do most of their shooting from a prone position, anything to give an advantage in taking a stable shot would be desirable, so with this in mind (and to keep things simple), I decided to order a single Stormtrooper shin/calf from Walt’s Trooper Factory, along with a ‘sniper’ knee plate:I went with a right-side shin as I’m a right-handed shooter, and thus I kneel on my right knee, with my left elbow propped on my left knee. (The fact that stormies have their holsters and ‘sniper plate’ on the left side suggests that they are all supposed to be left-handed shooters, but I’m pretty sure most of the firing onscreen is done right-handed: an unfortunate case of form coming before function.)

Anyway…I got the calf pieces trimmed and assembled pretty easily, with the exception of the back joint. An annoying twist (keeping things from lining up properly) refused to resolve itself, despite my applications of heatgun and hot water…and the idea of sticking the damn thing in the oven made me very nervous:

On top of that, I faced another dilemma – the question of footwear. Since the beginning, stormtroopers have always worn Chelsea boots (see above). In keeping with the ‘no visible fasteners’ rule they are lace-free, and are retained with a bit of elastic on the side; this makes them very narrow at the top, which fits well under a tapered piece of plastic armor. However, per my research the Naboo are always shown wearing tall leather boots. I love my Finnish jackboots, but such stovepipe boots are very wide and getting them to cooperate with the shin armor would necessitate extensive shimming and widening the plastic halves, which would look very odd. My other option would be to wear narrower boots, such as my early-20^th century ankle boots (seen paired with snake gaiters for my AgriCorps impression) or USGI mid-shin combat boots:
The latter’s paracord Israeli ladder-lacing gives improved functionality and is a bit less Earth-y looking than standard 2-strand x-crossed lacing, but even for a militaristic impression, such combat boots just don’t fit the Naboo aesthetic, who are noted to be “traditionalists” (Darth Plagueis, p 130-131).

What’s more, TK armor is fairly restrictive in its range of motion…being able to go into a full to-the-ground kneel is next to impossible anyway. Some folks manage to get a little extra flexibility by cutting a bit from the back of the knee, but that’s a pretty unattractive fix and probably wouldn’t work well with my tall jackboots…and blending in with the locals is essential to a partizan.
So…HOW on Earth was I going to make this greave fit together properly, still fit my boots, AND allow me to kneel?
It was at this point—at my wit’s end and absolutely sick of this unfinished project continually mocking me from the workbench—that I came up with a novel solution that solved all my problems to let me have my cake and eat it too.
Going back to the drawing board and my motivations for buying the armor in the first place–to more effectively snipe Imperials!–I reminded myself: if I was portraying a Rebel partizan, I was under no obligation to keep the armor pristine. I wouldn’t be inspected by the local Imperial commander, so it was time to wield Occam’s razor, field-improvise a solution, and chop that sith up! Removing the back half would allow me to wear the front half over my jackboots, kneel fully, and—with some velcro and webbing—I could pop it off or on to quickly re-civilian-ify myself if needed!

With the decision made, I took some measurements, laid out some tabs (reinforced on the inside with another layer of ABS) to feed the attachment material through, and cut and filed slots for some Velcro strips.
Once the backside was prepped, I reinforced the rear corners and drilled holes for the tiny metric screws to hold on the sniper plate.
To prevent buckling and add some kneeling comfort, I filled in the recesses of the top of the shin with some lightweight cellulose filler and padded the knee with a few layers of closed-cell foam (trimmed from military sleeping pads).

Then the important question became: what color would I paint this armor? White plastoid is fine for Imperial intimidation, and—as was pointed out by a member of the SWLH facebook group—leaving it white might be seen as a major snub to Imperials, proclaiming, “Hey stormies, look what I took from one of your comrades!” However, it’s still useless as camouflage, so I would need to come up with a colorscheme to help blend into my local Naboo fields and forests. Straight gray still seemed too Imperial—“The color scheme basically was the baddies would be black or gray, with the exception of the stormtroopers, and the goodies should be in earth colors” (SWCOT, p15)—so I mixed gray, dark green, and mustardy yellow to create a nice greenish-gray, something like a lichen-y beech trunk. I used a wide sponge brush to paint in two perpendicular layers, tapping to remove brushmarks, gave it a spray of acrylic clearcoat, wet-sanded with 400-grit sandpaper, and then repeated the process a time or two. Since the surface of the armor is so smooth and uniform, there’s not much detail to be brought out by black- or brown-washing, so any weathering will have to be done naturally, by going for a hike through underbrush and stomping in muddy puddles!

Finally, I added some Velcro to the Vietnam-era webbing to hold the armor onto my boots, and hand-stitched all the pieces in place:

Even with a small amount of flex in the kneeplate, it does do a good job of stabilizing my kneeling shooting position (although I now realize that it makes my right toe look like it’s floating):

What do you think about my take on partizan leg armor – Too contrived? Too clean? Too Imperial? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or come join the conversation at the SWLH facebook group!

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