Welcome to another Artist Highlight from the As You Wish Helmet Project! This helmet along with 49 others will be displayed a Star Wars: Celebration VI in Orlando, FL from Aug 23-26. Starting Thursday, August 23 these helmets will be auctioned on eBay by the Make-A-Wish Foundation with 100% of the proceeds going to support Make-A-Wish.
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Artist Overview
Company: Acme Design, Inc.
Artists: Kenn Kooi and Arturo Delgado
Website: http://www.acmedesigninc.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/acmedesigninc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AcmeDesignInc
Youtube: acmedesigninc - YouTube
TDH: Tell us a bit about yourself and your company.
Acme: Acme Design, Inc. is a fabricating facility in suburban Chicago, twenty years strong, capable of making whatever our customers can dream up-- and beyond. Our ideal customer is one who has not had their expectations met in the past. Something we hear over and over from our customers is, “You made ME look really good!"
Clint Borucki (the founder of Acme Design) and Kenn Kooi (lead fabricator on the Acme helmet) both saw Star Wars in the theater as kids, after which life was never the same.
A shop like Acme exists today because of movies like Star Wars, and magazines like Cinefex and Famous Monsters that inspired us as children by letting peek behind the curtain of movie-making.
In addition to our full-time professional facility, Acme Design hosts monthly model and prop group meetings on site. Our model and prop group was witness to the creative evolution of three of the helmets in this year’s auction.
TDH: Tell us a little about the process of creating this helmet.
Acme: Kids are an important part of the future of the hobby of model-making. There were grown ups who inspired us as children, and now is our time to pay it forward. We have real respect for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the important work they do; at Acme, we get how important it is to make dreams come true. Through our model and prop group, we’ve had the pleasure of watching other helmet projects develop for past auctions, so we jumped at the chance to participate this year.
That and… Art Andrews had some compromising photos of Acme that he threatened to post on the web if we didn’t get involved.
TDH: What was your inspiration for THX Helmet?
Clint: Well, there's this movie called "THX 1138" that was directed by a guy named George Lucas who went on to make a series of films called Star Wars… REALLY??! Do I have to explain this??
Kenn: Wish I could take credit for this, but Arturo Delgado came up with it, and when he told us the idea we all loved it.
We wanted to create something with roots: THX 1138 is an Easter egg in the Star Wars universe. It predates everything Star Wars and is the seed of George Lucas science fiction.
TDH: Tell us a little about the process of creating this helmet.
Clint: Creating anything is a VERY painful and distressing process. Nah, I'm kidding! We already had this one sitting on the shelf in our Boba Fett Helmet Variation Department.
Kenn: We set out to mimic the robot cops (head police) in THX 1138. I cut and smoothed out the face plate to soften the features and worked to make the helmet look like a motorcycle police helmet. Arturo Delgado completed the leather parts for the finishing touch.
TDH: Now that the helmet is finished, if there is one thing you could change or do differently, what would it be?
Acme: We would have had waffles instead of toast this morning. Aside from that, we think everything else worked out pretty well.
TDH: With your helmet finished, what is you next project?
Acme: Deciding what we are going to put on the shelf in place of that helmet and, of course, WORLD DOMINATION!!! Stay tuned to the continuing saga…
WIP photos of the Boba Fetish helmet:
The finished Boba Fetish helmet:
Click images for a closer view. This helmet will be available for sale via eBay starting Thursday, August 23 with 100% of the proceeds going to support Make-A-Wish.
