My ESB helmet progress

Jango Fett Jr

Well-Known Hunter
My ESB helmet progress (finished)

Here's my helmet primed before painting, with the modding I've done to it I'm pretty happy with what I've got out of it. It's a Marrow Sun helmet (original version), with heavy modification to right earpiece area, keyslots, and making it overall less sharp and crisp to match the real helmets. This helmet was great to work with, big thanks to Jordy for that.

My goal is to make this more like an original film-used prop version, leaving it more asymmetrical and not perfectly trimmed, and painting as per Lee's recommendations and what I've noticed done on the originals (lines not perfectly masked, painting with the earcaps on the helmet, etc). In addition, the paintjob will be more of a reflection of it's appearance during the filming of ESB rather than after years of poor handling afterwards. Anyone who has studied the exhibit photos against ESB framegrabs and publicity photos should know what I mean.

My camera is awful so I have a hard time getting detail shots, and in the first shot it looks very narrow, so forgive me.

three.jpg

Real Borden connector
borden.jpg

Newer version of the keyslots with seperate MQ-1 circuit casting (right after I snapped this photo I realized I had to fix it some more!)
keyslot.jpg

Rangefinder earcap mount ground down, replaced with 2-piece version, and added the small mounting area for the lower earpiece. God what I would give for some good metal ears...
rightear.jpg

I can't thank Tylerdurden and Rogue Studios enough for their help so far...you guys have an unhealthy amount of knowledge and it's infecting me:p
I've been dragging this project out for months due to lack of time from work and school, so hopefully I'll be able to relax and get a fair bit of painting done over the holidays.
 
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I am anxious to see you're work on this, your ESB Fett is one of the best so this promisses a lot!!
 
Great work! I know it always tempting to do more major modifications than several subtle, key changes, because photos sometime lie to us. But you took the right approach, and it paid-off big time!
 
Lookin' sharp!! So did you attack the cheek corners yourself or is this a mod to the MS1 that J is now incorporating? (they look great to me, btw)
 
Nice work Greame! Remind me again why I've gone through the trouble of making these changes myself?! I should have just gotten you to do it for me ;) but that wouldn't be any fun would it!
Now if that P13 guy would get off his high horse and send me a borden connector I might be able to finsh my mods off!

Again exeptional work! You definetly have some of the best eyes for detail among us.
 
AHHHH .YES!!....Great start....almost hate for you to put the paint on it looks so nice and clean ..:love

Nice work on that ear piece...(y)
 
Awesome progress so far, I too am modding my M_S 1 helmet so I will follow this thread with interest, did you simply dremmel the cheek corners square? If so how deep can you go? Also when you ground off the right earcap top did it leave a hole that needed filing? Ive also got the new slim earcap piece and will need to make this mod. Keep up the good work!!!

 
I've been waiting quite some time to see some progress pics of this! :lol: Great start bud. I really love what you did w/ the earcap!!!!! Did the area you ground down get kinda thin around the ear cap???? I know jordy makes these buckets fairly thick, so I'm guessing its still pretty thick there. I had the same idea for doing this once I get enough $ scraped together for a MS bucket. Yous Looks spot on. Really looking forward to the progression of this bucket!;)
D
 
Mine was actually molded REALLY thick, so even after sanding off the extra piece it was still about a half inch thick. I'm happy that Jordy made it so thick :D

I wish I had taken more progress photos doing the modifications, but as I said my camera is terrible and I just get frusterated trying to get a decent photo. Here are a few I took early in the process, before I finished cleaning it up. The lower raised part looks a lot thicker in these photos as a result of the blurriness, but I think I got it to match what I see on the original. It tapers really funny too, that was a pain to figure out!
md-IM004747.jpg
md-IM004732.jpgmd-IM004750.jpg





md-IM004749.jpg




md-IM004752.jpg
 
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Here's what I have so far.
Flash
3of4_flash.jpg
No flash
3of4_noflash.jpg

Again, my camera blows, but just goes to show how funny these colours are. I used all the colours from Rogue Studios' list, and went with a light misting of Dunkelblau over the Euro 1 Dark Green on the back. It is really light in person, but it shows up really blue in the flash photos.

More pics to come as I paint the mandibles, and then to the daunting task of detailing!
 
Looking great, Ive done most of my mods in the same way as yours, its good to be able to follow your progress as it gives me the inspiration I need to get it finished!!!
 
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