Helmet Progress

[Apollo]

I am going to start by saying that on just about every costume related thing I do, progress is pretty slow. It's taken me months to get to where I am now on this thing lol.

 

I started by taping off every bit of the outside with painters tape and newspaper to paint the inside black. The hardest part were the eyes and teeth (which had already been cut out) and I did get some minor overspray. I chose to paint the inside first because of the overspray which was later covered up by white paint on the outside. The black on the inside was krylon fusion satin black, and it has held up wonderfully to me ripping any number of adhesives off the single coat with no chipping. I used whatever it is the Mike Harrison recommends on his website for the outside. It comes in a big silver can and is industrial. Many weeks later I started to paint on the sandie details with a sponge brush. This is where I learned that it is not my destiny to be a painter . I'm banking on the fact that the details are supposed to look slightly messy and it might be partially covered up with weathering. I'm trying to make the inside look as nice as possible because I just want it to look somewhat realistic. It makes the whole process a lot harder but I'm hoping the end result will be worth it. To that end I spent a lot of time looking at tk4205s build thread and trying to copy his methods. I ended up making something similar to the skullworx but without the sound (I'm using a larger radioshack amp for more volume) because the first thing I rigged up (based off tk4205) did not allow enough room for my chin so the thing sat on my head weird. I'm also considering getting rid of all of the tubing in the back because it makes putting the helmet on and removing it a huge hassle, especially with a mic on lol.

 

 

And I just like how the lighting here makes the curves look so sharp

 

The next step is padding, then lenses, then weathering!

[mrfurious]

looks superb to me, nice one

[TK-2126_MD[TK]]

I agree looks good, i might suggest u get the same pics, with a noon sun over top... thats all for now.

[Apollo]

Yea, sorry for the poor lighting and blur on those

[Apollo]

Finally got some batteries for my camera so here are a few more shots. I've added lenses, they're the green acetate that came with the helmet, doubled up, nailed to a piece of sintra, and held in with some fairly weak magnets. There are a couple of problems with this set up. I miscalculated the heat that I would need to heat the sintra up for molding, so when it cooled this plastic didn't exactly fit the helmet. This has caused the lens to sit back a little bit, which doesn't look too bad but is annoying, and the magnets aren't all touching. This makes the lenses fit even worse, and they fall out sometimes (not too much but enough to make me not want to troop with them). The acetate is also fairly thin and I've been told that my eyes are visible from about a foot away so if I'm talking to someone they can see me. Flash photography is a sure fire way to see my eyes, even after I installed a layer of screen mesh behind the lenses as per somebodies advice. Here are the pics.

 

Flash

 

No Flash

 

 

This shows how far back the lens sits. Check out the left eye

 

One of the lenses I made (now it has more magnets and screen mesh)

 

I'm definitely going to need to change these lenses. They look really cool (kind of reflective) in natural light, but they are way too easy to see through and I did sort of a shoddy job of installing them