X-wing Pilot's helmets

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zigzwag

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Hello fellow creators!

It's been a few months since I have posted up something to the Forum, and yeah, I know not Halo related, but still, I found that this project brought with it quite a few lessons learned! I am happy to share my experience with those that are willing to give it a bit of a read!

Anyways, short backstory on these helmets. I am currently working on a Star Wars Short film with a friend of mine, (actually already finished, but we are just going back and updating some things) and we decided that it needed some pilot's.

I have always loved the iconic look of the helmet so I was rather excited to give it a go, and I am quite happy with the result! Building these helmets also allowed me to test out some new techniques that I had been interested in trying, so with the smaller scale of the project I was not to worried if it didn't turn out like I'd have wanted.

Anyways here is a list of the materials that I used for this project.
- Eva Foam floor mats
- Paperclay
- Modpodge
- poly clear resin (and 4 cheep wall paint brushes) **Will double-check name of resin**
- Krylon (Primer, silver, Ivory, Camo black, blue, and brown)
- Acrylic (Black, white, silver, blue, yellow, red)
- Acrylic paint pens (Black, yellow, red(pink), blue )

I really should do a better job documenting the process! I never take enough pictures... I will venture to do so in the future!

Anyways, these helmets were built off of templates that I picked up off of Etsy, I paid something like $10CAD for them. They definitely did the job, though there was some interesting issues in the layout of the .PDF file that necessitated some fancy scissor work lol.

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(This is the first helmet I built. Learning experience aside I was happy with the way that it turned out.)

I decided that I would get one helmet up to the best stage that I could before starting the second one. Just as a 'proof of concept' design.

Paper clay:
was the next step, I have never used it before to fill in cracks or gaps, I have to say though that the finished product was greatly helped by this, I would easily recommend paper clay to anyone. However, one thing I would like to say is to use in moderation, small amounts will go further in the long run unless you want so spend FOREVER sanding it down. Though it also worked rather well to help build up areas where my ability to cut straight lines failed me! filling in small divots and gaps that I had in the prop.

Modpodge:
After the Paperclay dried, I applied two coats of Modpodge to seal the clay to the foam, and seal the foam to get it ready for the resin coats. Would definitely recommend this as I have been told that EVA foam likes to soak up Resin.

Polyclear Resin:
This was something I have never tried before, So without dropping a ridiculous amount of money on Resins I went with a small almost sample sized bottle that I found at Michaels. Applying it was very easy, pour equal amounts of resin and hardener into paper cup, and brush on like paint. let sit over night and tada! I did this for two coats. I found that the result was definitely harder then using straight EVA, however it didn't come out as hard as I thought it was going to. it still felt kind of foamy. but on the plus side, it seemed more resistant to the wrinkling that I was seeing on older non resin coated props!

Painting.
Painting was simple, I followed the same process I have been using for all of my props.
Prime
Base coats
fine details
weathering
I found that using the Acrylic paint pens was an amazing tool to have for doing small details that needed to be sharp and crisp. outlining in black saved me a VERY long time trying to do that by hand, though I think that they fall short if you need to use them to fill in large area's. Still though, a nice tool to have in your collection!

All in all, taking out the amount of time that it took for the props to dry, I'd say the working time on these props was about ten to twelve hours!

Anyways, That's my little blurb about these helmets and a bit of their backstory! I hope that this was informative, and if you guys have any tips or tricks for future projects, or experiences of your own that you would like to share I'd be very interested in hearing about them!

Also, feel free to critique my helmets, I know that they are far from perfect but I am happy with the result that I got using the materials that I had available at the time.


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Those helmet look fantastic!

I am impressed that you were able to get the resin to work. When I tried it I had, well, less that stellar results.

Love the paint jobs, especially the blue and red one.
 
the Resin did seem to work, after putting the modpodge and the Paper clay base down. I do find however that the resin I used dried rather flexible still. as though there was still a good amount of it that was absorbed into the foam. If I had more time, and more resin I would have liked to see the effect of using more coats, or maybe coating both the inside, and the outside of the helmets to see what kind of difference that it would make.

As for the paint jobs, thank you :) I always look for avenues to further my painting expertise, I don't claim to perfect it, and by far are these helmets perfect, in fact funny thing about the blue and red one is that both of the Rebel crests on the top are pointing up and to the left... I didn't have them both pointing towards the brim for some reason. I guess that's why you shouldn't paint past midnight lol.
 
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