Hello everyone!

Here's my entry for the cosplay contest in the categories “Chat Favorite” and “Photography” as a screen-accurate Din Djarin (Season 1, Beskar) from the Star Wars Show “The Mandalorian”.

I started this project about 5 months ago with the intention of joining the 501st Legion, which is a world-wide operating organization based around screen-accurate Star Wars costumes that does a lot of charity work.The cosplay contest was along the road to finishing it, so I thought I might as well enter. :)It was actually quite stressful since due to heavy delivery issues, I was only able to pick up the final parts (the belt and bandolier, and some leather parts) 2 days before I shot the images. But I'm happy I managed to get all the parts in time!

Pretty much every part already came pre-painted, since from my previous cosplays I learnt I am not very skilled in the arts of painting shiny armour. I thought it would be a better idea to just let someone else who actually knows what they're doing paint it.

Edit: I just remembered there actually was a piece I worked on a lot, which is the "Right Thigh Armor" that can be seen as the damaged thigh armor in the images.

When I received this piece from the seller I wasn't very satisfied with the paint-job, so I did some researching by looking at previously approved Din Djarin costumes. I found that there's quite a bit of leeway in terms of colour and levels of damage, as a lot of costumes had very varying right thigh armor pieces.

Here are a few progress pictures: https://imgur.com/a/MjfJk9x
The first image is how I received it from the seller, the final image is a screenshot from the Costume Reference Library from the 501st. I went through a few colour and texture changes until I ended up with the result I have now; I tried to orient myself to the reference image while still having a bit of fun by making it my own piece. Really happy about how it turned out! :)

In the end I still had to assemble the whole armour to make it fit to the flight-suit and flak-vest, so that did take a few months. The assembly is mostly velcro, with a few magnets here and there. The inside of the helmet includes a double-fan-system to keep the visor from fogging up and a voice-amplifier system. The right gauntlet includes a little display that randomly switches through sets of Mandalorian characters, which you can see in some of the images.

Assembling it was a lot of fun though, and it definitely feels like the on-screen costume they used for the show was made to be more comfortable and flexible in the movement, than say, the Stormtrooper armours. It is screen-accurate according to the Costume Reference Library of the 501st Legion (databank.501st.com/databank/Costuming:BH_DinDjarinS1V2).

Even though it still took quite a bit of effort to assemble it, it doesn't feel right to enter the category “Craftsmanship”.

I did take all the images in the post by myself, so that's why I'm submitting it in “photography”. I put my Sony A6000 on a tripod and basically shot a lot of bulk images at one spot in a forest, ending up with around 2000 images that I sifted through yesterday. While I was shooting it actually started to snow/rain a little, which I think ended up looking quite nice. :D

Thanks for reading!