MakeNoiseMan

Awesome, thanks for the help! Here's a side view and overlap shot of the left, and then of the right side of the helmet. And lastly here's a rough placement of the (veerrry untrimmed) ear. Something I didn't think to do at the beginning was trim anything off of the bottom lip of either the mask or the cap, so I may have missed a step there. In the last photo, the angle does seem to align, but the ear seems closer to the tear than in your reference photo. Maybe because it's untrimmed. Anyway, let me know what you think! Thanks again.

Thanks, guys! :-) Matt, I will get that vocoder touched up once I get the paint back out for the ears! Thanks for pointing it out. And Q, thanks for the tip! That's a great idea. I'll have to go pick some up. In the mean time, I've riveted the assembly together. Woohoo! Although, I've run into my first problem. My head is too big! Is there any issue with simply dremeling the inside bottom lip of the bucket to open it up some more? If so, I may have to look at reconstructive surgery. Whatever it takes! Hahaha.

Painting day today! I figured it'd be easier to do the traps before the helmet is assembled. Unfortunately, I don't have any toothpicks on hand. I'll be picking some up later to tidy the edges once the enamel paint dries. As many have suggested, I first traced the guidelines with a pencil. Then I copied Scimitar's awesome idea of painting the black outlines first, and filling in the grey afterwards. This way you only have to worry about making one pretty edge at a time! Then, while my paintbrush was still black, I did the vocoder. Then came grey. I was really looking forward to painting the frown. On all the other build threads I've looked at, this step was always when the face came alive! After that, I filled in the traps and tears with grey. That's all the painting I could do for now. Once it's dry, I'll assemble the rest of the helmet and paint the ears, trap/tear lines and tube stripes. In the mean time, I drilled some holes in the chin recesses to install Ukswrath's hovi-tip speakers. A heads up to anyone else who uses PlasticWeld to reinforce this part of the mask: at this point, I learned that the mic tips won't sit flush against the plastic (at least on an AP helmet), meaning that when I measured the threaded portion of the speakers to make sure they'd make it all the way through the PlasticWeld, my calculations were flawed. Thankfully, it ended up juuuust making it through for me, so all is good. Not really a biggie if they didn't—you'd just sand the PlasticWeld down—but better to be aware of ahead of time. Now to let the paint dry. I'll report back later!

Thanks very much! :-) I definitely will be asking plenty of questions. For now, though, I've gotten a little further. The PlasticWeld cured, and I was able to mount the lenses successfully! Next step was PlastiDip. This cool idea of using bits of plastic bags to mask the teeth and eyes came from Scimitar's build thread! I bought the spray can version of PlastiDip, which ... lacked some precision, shall we say. I definitely could/should have taped up the outside of the mask first. Not to worry, though—a quick google search revealed that a small amount of WD40 on a cloth erases PlastiDip overspray like magic. All tidy! After this I wanted to do the mesh that fits behind the teeth. I didn't realize that AP's kit would ship with it provided, so (several months ago) I bought a window screen to cut up. On top of that, Trooper Bay's helmet kit included one as well, so now I had three options. I ended up really liking the look of layering the thin, grey one I bought over the thicker black one that came with the AP kit. If this is undesirable for any level of acceptance, please let me know! I still have the extra, normal black mesh and can swap it out without trouble. I sewed the two layers of mesh to some pieces of soft Velcro. I like the idea of being able to remove or replace the internal helmet components like the frown and lenses, so Velcro was the answer! Here's the hook Velcro attached to the inside of the mask. And the assembled face, from the inside and out! Tomorrow I hope to get some painting done. More updates to come soon! Thanks all and goodnight. :-)

Hello, everybody! I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday. I can't tell you how excited I am to finally be making a build thread! My name is Brendan. I'm 22 years old and I live alone with my cat, Raz. I've loved Star Wars forever and have always like dressing up in costumes. In high school, I got involved with some local Star Wars costume groups and met a lot of really great people. Unfortunately, they each came to an end because of leadership issues. Determined not to let yet another folded group mean the end of my access to Star Wars costume-y goodness, I finally decided to look into the 501st. Before this, I had always viewed the 501st and the Rebel Legion as an amazing, yet unattainable for me, calibre of cosplay. This totally changed when I found my way to whitearmor.net and saw how constructive, helpful and involved all these troopers are in elevating each other to success. Not only did it make the task seem much more approachable, but it cemented for me that this is a community I dearly want to be a part of. You guys ROCK! In August, I placed my order with Authentic Props. Besides being endorsed by countless troopers, a Canadian vendor was desirable for me because I live in Southwestern Ontario. Since then, I have had plenty of time to devour others' build threads and assemble all the tools and soft parts I would need. My boots came in from Imperial Boots, my blaster from Quest Design Canada, my neck seal from Geeky Pink, and other assorted goodies from Trooper Bay. I also ordered helmet electronics from Ukswrath on Etsy. I am super pleased with ALL of it and I highly recommend each of these vendors. With my shopping list completed, and my brain full of other troopers' great ideas, all I had left to do was wait for that beautiful big brown box—which arrived on Christmas Eve! Mark must have shipped "expedited parcel via reindeer". Ho ho ho! Without further ado, let's get to the building part of this build thread. As many have suggested, I'll be building for Centurion from the get-go. A quick note; I will try my best to give credit to the troopers whose threads gave me many of the methods I'll be using, but because I have read so many threads over the past few months, I fear I've lost track of some of my sources. If you see something you came up with and I've not given credit, please do chime in so I can say thanks. :-) I decided to start with the helmet—I reckon that looking at it will serve as motivation as I work through the rest of the project! My first step was trimming and sending the back edges of the face. I know they won't be seen, but it gave me an opportunity to practice with the dremel. As others have suggested, tracing the guidelines with a pencil helped a great deal. Same thing with the back of the bucket. Then came the teeth. My oh my, this part stressed me out. I was afraid that, in my newbie hands, the drill bit was going to fly off in another direction and carve Joker-style scars up its face. I practiced on the scrap ABS first and, thankfully, I completed the dental work without injury (to myself, or to the mask). After drilling a hole in each indent, I used needle files to finish the shape. After that came the eyes, for which I first drilled, then cut with scissors, and then filed. I struggled with these a little. The OTTK's canon asymmetry will be an ongoing relief for me throughout this project, I think. Next I set about attaching mounting posts for the lenses. I used Chicago screws for this, super-gluing them directly to the inside of the mask (after sanding it a little). I'm aware that, lots of times, this isn't enough to keep them secured, so I used PlasticWeld to further secure them to the inside (pictures later on). I saw this on SlyFox470's thread. I cut the lens shapes from Trooper Bay's dark green lens, fit them to the screws one at a time, marked, and drilled. Here's a picture of the PlasticWeld securing the mounting posts. As also recommended in SlyFox's thread, I used some to reinforce the inside of the chin recesses since the plastic is a little thinner there. And that's where I've gotten so far! The PlasticWeld is currently curing. After that, I'll be coating the interior with PlastiDip. I am extremely eager to get your input and feedback as I work through this. As a first-time trooper, I'll need all the help I can get. Thanks everyone!