Making your own lekku
 

Head Tails
Here is our most complete guide to making your own set of Twi'lek lekku on a budget.

List of Materials

  • One set of white children's pantyhose

  • One piece of upholstery foam

  • Vinyl or leather for head band

  • head shape of some sort

  • paint ( I use apple Barrel Colors water based craft paint.  Works well to blend latex, cloth and skin into one uniform color and shade, as well as being inexpensive )  It runs well through my airbrush

  • Rubber Cement

  • Quilt Batting

foam form
Start of by shaping your foam into your tails,

Draw out your design and cut them out.  Use an electric meat cutter for cutting foam, it works really well and usually can be found at second hand stores for little cost.

setting up for paint
Once you have them all cut to size and shape, all you need to do is paint them.

Place the foam form inside the pantyhose and set them on your head form.  Adjust them to size and shape to fit your models head.  Make sure they can see and it fits on their forehead without slipping off.

Then paint them the color of your Twi'lek and add any details like spots, stripes or anything else you need to finalize them. 


Headband
Take and make a clay mold of the ear pieces of your Twi'lek.  Make a plaster casting of them.  Finally make 2 latex forms from the casting and paint them the base color of your Twi'lek.

Once they dry take your vinyl and make a headband to fit your model.  Large areas for the ears, and extra straps to strap down the hose lekku.

Glue them all together with rubber cement,

I also added some hand stitching with a needle and thread for extra hold.
Once you have them all put together, take out your foam forms, and stuff 2 rolled up pieces of the quilt batting inside to fill the head tails again.  This makes them full and yet soft enough to bend around a move freely.

Take the headpiece and wrap it around the head, fitting it into place and cutting it to size, then secure it to the pantyhose with rubber cement.

take the strap pieces and lay the lekku down to a position you like and wrap them in the extra straps off the headband and sew the ends to the headpiece.

Now you have a full set of Twi'lek lekku fir for any Jedi  Make them longer or shorter, thicker or thinner depending on the size of your model.  Its all up to you.

I would suggest going to Starwars.com for pictures of the various Twi'lek seen in the movies for ideas on how to customize your own Twi'lek look.