Helldivers 2 B-01 Helmet / ODST Mashup

[FuriousFido]

This is my first thread so I am new to the documentation portion of cosplay, and first time making a helmet.
The helmet I am making is a Helldivers 2 B-01 Helmet, the default helmet used in the game when you start out but my take on it will be a mix of Helldivers with ODST themed Paint scheme and decals. This helmet will be used as a mashup with my (unfinished at the moment) Sean Bradley ODST kit which will use the same colors.
The helmet files are provided by GalacticArmory through their patreon, the files were scaled by default to a 24" head size. The dome piece had to be split to allow for bed size, the prints took between 3-11 hours. The longest being 11 hours 24 minutes for the Visor Buck. I wanted it to take its time slowed down and decreased layer height to provide a smoother surface for when the visor will be vacuum formed by myself.

Printer- Bambu X1 Carbon
Material- Hatchbox PLA (black)
Paint- Rustoleum Black for the main sections, Rustoleum Chrome for the vents, and detail paint like the stripes will be Ford Engine Green. This is to tie into another hobby of working on a 1930 Ford Model A truck with my dad and brother and also green is our favorite color. We plan to use this same green for detail coloring in our ODST kits.

I plan to use the ODST emblem in place of the Helldivers skull emblem on the sides of the helmet, if I am to make a cape I will do the same for the emblem on that.

I will try to keep the thread updated and motivation high, cannot wait to show others and see the project finished.

 

[SilverFox]

Looks realy good, can`t wait to see the complete armore

 

[FuriousFido]

Looks realy good, can`t wait to see the complete armore

I am not so certain that I will be making any sort of armor specifically to go with the helmet as I currently have my SB ODST kit to still complete and cosplay suits lined up already after that, but this helmet will go nicely with my completed ODST suit. The colors will be the same and my wife has made a design to replace the Helldivers skull on the side with something more fitting for the UNSC aspect. I'll post that after I get some more work done on the helmet.

 

[FuriousFido]

With the Visor buck printed I sanded it smooth with 220 grit sandpaper before applying some primer filler, still some more to go at it but quickly it’s smoothing out. I’m not sure exactly why but the top part in the middle of the buck was pretty rough as compared to the rest of the print, my thought is it could be from the speed of the X1C. The printer was set for “standard” which is 100% but that is still pretty fast.
Hoping to get the helmet assembled and primed this weekend while also finishing the buck and possibly forming a visor or two.

 

[HoundinAbout]

NICEE!!

 

[FuriousFido]

Unfortunately I had plans come up over the weekend but here’s what I got so far.

Got the helmet officially glued together.

There are some gaps between the parts that I will have to fill. I was hoping to avoid having gaps like I do but I was trying a quick glue and it set quickly, but the bond feels strong so there’s that. They’ll just get extra attention with bondo filler putty, as for the top of the helmet I plan on using an orbital sander to help get that smooth. I’m not quite sure why it came out so rough but I plan to tweak the printer to prevent that from happening again but the filament used has been open to air for a few years. I was just trying to get rid of and use as much as I could.

And here is the visor buck, I initially sanded with 220grit for at least 30 minutes straight and then one pass of filler primer then sanded with 1500 grit. It’s incredibly smooth and the main rough spot in the middle smoothed out really well. I’ll let it go and try forming a visor on it before spending too much time on making it perfect. It’ll be dyed black so I doubt any imperfections will be well seen.

Since the last update my wife had a decal worked up and can’t wait to show that but I’ll be waiting until the helmet is finished for that.

Still thinking about trying to make a cape also to go onto my ODST kit along with this helmet, I feel like that’ll really sell it as a mashup.

 

[Parzival]

With the helmet still taped together at the time, we had gotten excited, so I suited up with what I have of my SB ODST and gave the helmet a try. We were pleased.

Also images of the glue used and the helmet during the sanding / putty phase

 

[FuriousFido]

Unfortunately I forgot about the post and I feel I did not take great photos along the way. I am still getting use to thread aspect of the hobby. Where I had left off was assembly of the helmet and having to fill in gaps and smoothing out the rough layer lines in certain spots and where I had glued the sliced helmet pieces together.

I had used bondo filler spot putty with thing layers with multiple coats to fill in any of these gaps. Between each coat drying (with the aid of an air blow gun and heat gun) I would sand and then filler primer spray. I would appreciate any feedback but I thought I had seen somewhere along many cosplay youtube videos that a heat gun between coats of spray paints will help it dry and cure faster.

After patching the seam lines with the spot putty I had painted the helmet black thinking I would be set and it would be "good enough"... I was not pleased as you can see in the last few photos that you could clearly see (especially with light reflecting off the surface) the spot putty had an edge to it and I dont think I sanded enough. After this small disappointment I had decided to sand more extensively and the difference this time would be that I would try wet sanding and also go to a higher grit. Before this moment I had never wet sanded before, and on a print I had not used more than 220 grit sandpaper. I started at 220 and went up to 400 from there, then to 1000. All of this was done with wet sanding and after a few moments I felt as though the sandpaper was gumming up, especially when sanding any spot with the spot putty. To help combat this new issue I would wipe the helmet down more frequently with a rag to remove any excess material and also dry it up and take a look to see how the helmet looked. I repeated this process until I was pleased with the smoothness and lines, I have never been shooting for "the perfect helmet" with this being my first helmet. I am using all of the methods and ideas as tests and treating them all as attempts, if something works out then I note mentally what I did to achieve that effect and if it doesn't work out then I try to revert the helmet back to what it was before the previous attempt and try another route.

I'll update again soon as it is late. At this moment in time the helmet has already been finished, the contest over and results in. I just will be continuing the thread to finish up in parts the work done to the helmet.

 

[FuriousFido]

Alright back at it, I see now where it would be beneficial to write these things up as I progress. One reason would be for feedback, hopefully before I were to make any mistakes. Another reason is so I don't forget any details, which I am trying to remember any difficulties I had to possibly hear back on better ways to execute any ideas for next time. Ah well I'm sure there will be plenty more projects.

After painting the helmet with it's base layer of black I noticed that by the front left area of the helmet there was cracking of the paint taking place. I had sanded this spot when I felt it was dry enough after 1 day of sitting in a relatively dry and warm location. After another coat the cracks were hard to notice as you'll be able to see (or more like not see) in the finished photos. I have read different accounts of people saying this would be due to multiple layers put down before the previous had time to fully dry and cure or humidity issues. I think if anything this would have been me getting antsy with wanting to get as much done as quickly as I could and putting on another coat well before I should have. That mistake was sanded out and another coat applied and sat as I continued to work on other aspects of the helmet, in this case the visor.

The materials used for the visor are PETG sheets (1/32"x12"x12"), a frame made to hold the plastic sheet, a convection oven to heat up the plastic, a a shop vac or similar vacuum, and finally a vacuum form table(?). I am not sure exactly that would be called but in the picture below you will see its a sheet of peg board with a wooden sided frame covered in tape to cover all potential spots where air may pull through and there is one hole drilled into the side where we stick a vacuum hose. There are waaaay better setups across the internet that I would encourage someone to look for rather than our idea we made years ago, but it did serve it's purpose. Upgrades are definitely needed in the future, especially if we want to make better props with more efficiency as you can see the frame for the sheets is still being used which involves drilling holes into the sheets and an ungodly amount of screws and nuts. A new frame is being made by my brother at the moment as with this Helldiver visor we were pretty much done with that idea of operation.

After the sheet is secured we would use a convection oven to heat up to ready for pulling with the vacuum and buck. This oven we did not buy for this purpose, don't worry we don't eat any food from this bad boy. This here is a fine scrap haul, a lot of others have looked for deals at local resale shops or something of the like. Again there are other avenues to do the same job, look into what would suit you best. If you can notice, the inside rack has the middle cut out to account for the drop of the PETG sheet, as the sheet heats up you will see it sag a few inches and for our visors we would run it at 250°F and you most likely will not have that sheet in there for any longer that 3 minutes. Once it has a decent sag of 4 inches or so I pulled it out, set it onto the vacuum table that would have the helldiver visor buck onto it and then turn on the vacuum to pull that sheet onto and around the buck. While it would pull I (while wearing gloves) rubbed my hands along any areas that didn't quite pull like I wanted it to, to help it get more detail and close any gaps. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of the moment or the setup as I was the one handling the hot plastic. The pictures above are from 2019 but it's the same setup.
Not sure if anyone would care for the information but the convection oven is an OSTER model: TSSTTVXLDG-001 120 VAC 60 Hz 1500 Watt. I never realized that it seems to be a pricey oven.

Once the visor was made I took a blade to cut away the general shape away from the buck as it was pretty well molded close and after that was out I took scissors and cut it to a closer fit. Now it was time for dyeing the visor black. If I had more time I really wanted to dye the visor a light blue for more of an ODST look.

Again I'll update more when I can. Work has been pretty stressful and I have not been on my computer as often, I find it easier to work on threads with a keyboard in front of me rather than my phone. Doesn't help that I get motivation to update this near the time I should be going to bed, instead I update this until my eyes feel heavy. I'll aim to finish the helmet update by the weekend or during, next update will have more pictures for sure.

 

[FuriousFido]

Just a quick picture of the setup before I go to bed and forget. My brother had taken a picture when we were going through the motions and talking about our steps. The helldivers visor buck was taped to the vacuum table to help it stay in place and not shift when I would lay the hot plastic sheet over the top of it.

Please excuse the mess, most of our crafting takes place at the dining room table.

 

[FuriousFido]

Alright! Back at it and late with the update. So I didn't take any pictures of the visor being formed or detail shots but I'm sure everyone on these forums gets the gist or knows of a place where they can find similar gists.
Here is my fancy setup for the visor dyeing.

I forgot to mention a very handy tool for this process and a good guide for the vacuum forming, N8tebb's youtube.

This is the link to his visor video to which I used specifically for the dye process. I used his temperature and timing for my visor.
Heat was set to roughly 145F
Dye used was iDye Poly Black
Just the same as his visor in the video after 5 minutes in the dye and color enhancer I took the visor out and rinsed it in a bowl of lukewarm water. The visor looked good (I should've stopped there I feel like). I decided to let it sit another 5 as I could still see pretty good through the visor and thought it would be too transparent. After pulling it out after the 5 minutes I had rinsed again, wiped it down and let it sit. This is what we got.

In the pictures you could see that I had trimmed the visor and after dyeing any deep scratches or bumps in the plastic were more visible. I am unsure if this was due to heat as the pot got a little more hot than I had liked at one point, if I had scratched the sheet before working with it (likely) or if from material on the buck when vacuum forming. No matter the reason, I liked the "used" look of the visor, It seemed like it was actually used on a helmet and this had no change over the visibility. In one of the pictures you can see the visibility, it's clear and tinted well. In the light it does seem a little too dark but I'm sure it is because I haven't had much time wearing helmets with such a dark tint. Thankfully with such a dark tint when someone is behind the visor within the helmet you cannot see inside, so there is no need to chrome the interior of the visor to prevent anyone looking into the helmet.

 

[FuriousFido]

I have learned that like most projects of mine, I am really good at starting a thread and never finishing it or forgetting to do so. So after dyeing the visor I had taped the helmet to prep for the green stripes along the center of the helmet and a thin stripe around the vents on the sides.

This was my first time trying a bag to cover most of the exposed area and after finding one with no pinholes or tears i went with this one. I really enjoyed that method as the first helmet I had worked on I used A LOT of tape for covering sections I didn't want to paint and went through so much only for it to still have paint go through.
After taping I had used a spray can of Ford Model A Engine Green

I really liked the dark green and we had extra from my brother's Model A project. This paint looked perfect on the helmet. Very different from the bright yellow stripe and I liked that.

While I had the helmet drying I had sprayed the helmet side clip and vent detail pieces with primer and rust oleum chrome paint. I gave them two coats and decided they looked great. I left all of the pieces to dry while then working on cutting out the decal stickers.

And here they are! The design my wife traced the ODST emblem shape and ribbon and then modified the flames to fit around the automaton skull. I was very pleased with it and the initial design had the ribbon empty. I had used a program with a free trial (I cannot remember exactly) to get the words as centered as I could and with a good curve with the ribbon. I went with the Helljumper in the ribbon but looking back I kinda wished I had went with Helldiver instead. Either way I am still very happy with how they turned out.

 

[FuriousFido]

I had forgotten to include these versions of the emblem used for decal. Anyone is free to use this as they'd like. I had intended on getting a good sticker made but never kept it in mind long enough to allow me to get something ordered in time for the contest deadline so I had used white vinyl on our Cricut.

 

[FuriousFido]

All right, after the nice drawn out pause between updates I think this will be the last one. After my wife had the designs drawn up I cut them out with the Cricut as mentioned above and then put them right on to the sides of the helmet when the stripes dried. I eyeballed the spot where I placed them figuring it was a decent location, but to be sure they were someone symmetrically placed I did use some measuring to guide me. Although I can not remember how I did that, just believe me. Once I had those on I super glued the vent and side pieces on and used an accelerant so there was no wait...and then I immediately learned that the accelerant made the chrome paint run and reveal some of the black filament underneath, so that was unexpected but I think I left it as it was not a big deal to me at the time.

The last bit was installing the visor and I kept that really simple. I had used some hot glue, while holding the visor in place from the interior of the helmet on one side, I put a dab of hot glue in each corner on the other side. This was repeated on the other side before I then went around the visor completely to hold it into place.

This is the first picture I took after getting it completely together and I was stoked (and tired as this was 4:41am), dirty mirror, working gloves still on, helmet offset... what a perfect picture.

Finally here is the photos I submitted for Galactic Armory's Helldivers Helmet Contest!

As my first helmet I made, I am very happy with it. I like the subtle green that in person almost looks black, The chrome pieces look good and the emblems look so good. That ODST pod behind the automaton skull is so cool to see. I am glad I was able to make it in time and the other entries were so good! I personally loved the fallout mashups.

March 2nd- started printing
March 5th- assembled (glued) the helmet together & emblem made
March 8th- visor buck sanded and smoothed
March 14th- bondo'd seams and a bunch of sanding
April 23rd- first layer of black paint
April 24th- additional layers of paint
April 25th (11:05pm) - vacuum formed and trimmed visor
April 26th (12:11 am)- dyed the visor
1:58am- finished taping the helmet for stripes and started painting stripes and chrome pieces
2:36am- finished putting emblems into cricut app to cut and afterward they were trimmed from the vinyl sheet to allow for transfer
3:43am- glued the chrome pieces onto the helmet front and sides
4:17am- adhered the emblems onto the sides, I only had enough transfer tape for one emblem so the second one I had to eyeball the lettering with very much difficulty
4:41am- Visor attached
8:51am- Contest pictures taken for submission and sent in.

Surprisingly work went extremely well that day and I did not feel tired at all (which was unsusual) but as soon as I sat down after work I was extremely tired and went to sleep. Learned a lot and had a lot of fun, hope this was a decent build thread as this is my first. I hope to make many more!