My scratchbuilt progress: cardboard *PIC INTENSIVE*

Many thanks go to Alan for his templates and to Honus for the inspiration that a cardboard bucket can be done, and done well.

The work you see here in the first post was all done in a few hours on a saturday. I'll try and explain step by step what each picture is and how it was done for those who have never attempted a scratch build with Alan's templates and maybe it can be used as a "how to" guide to go along with Honus' guide.

* FYI to help match things up, descriptions of each picture will be below the photo


I made the mistake of using packing tape for most of the helmet, which you will see in most of the pictures. In this case I would recommend using tape because this inner form gets removed later, using tape made it easier to take out.



A top down view of the same step: both of which show the helmet base and the inner form.



Inner surface and dome base attached. To curve the pieces, first I attached them end to end, then I rolled them like a newspaper, if that makes any sense.



angle 2



angle 3



angle 4



outer surface attached, inner surface cut into to make room for the cheek, 1 piece of the cheek attached.



angle 2



angle 3



learning from the first side, I traced the cheek onto the inner surface to be cut out before attaching anything.



inner surface cut out.



attaching the outer survace



continuing to attach the outer surface




outer surface attached, cheek attached.



angle 2



brain surgery, Hannible Lecter style. Needed to open the lid to ge the other parts of the cheek in.



removed to bottom, leaving a ring to hold the form, removed the inner form pieces, which folded and popped out easily due to the fact that I was using tape. attached the 2 pieces of the cheeks together and attached it to the upper cheek area and to the bottom ring.



angle 2



without the flash to see the 3D form a little better w/o flash washing it out.



looking down through the top



dome form cut and attached, Kinda. I made a second dome base, so that the dome and the rest of the bucket are seperate pieces, to make working on the inner parts easier.



angle 2



here you can see the 2 seperate pieces



my formerly headless manaquin now has the start of his head.



angle 2



angle 3

I have since completed the dome, taking pictures along the way of course. Pictures have not been uploaded yet.

More to come.

Awesome job so far. Can't wait to see the pics of the dome.

That just freakin amazes me.

Wooooooow good job man.

very cool

Great helmet.

Nice background too.

That is exactly the way I did my mock-up!! Nice work!! Thanks for setting up a tutorial, I don't know when I'll ever get to it!!

Alan

nice job

thanks for the comments guys!

on with the dome



this may not have been the best way to do it, but here's what I did: I taped the 3 pieces together then started attaching the triangles starting at the front on piece 1, all without being attached to the dome base or the dome form.



angle 2



angle 3



finished and resting on the rest of the helmet.



the inside view: As you can see, there's just the one piece of tape on the inside, I did all of the taping on the outside. I have since gone back and hotglued the seems, the dome base and the dome form, then removed the tape carefully and smeared elmers white glue over almost the whole outside of the dome.



angle 2 of the inside



and one shot of the helmet with dome resting on top, unattached, on the otherwise headless manaquin.

Originally Posted by wizardofflight

That is exactly the way I did my mock-up!! Nice work!! Thanks for setting up a tutorial, I don't know when I'll ever get to it!!

Alan

Good to know that I'm following along how you did yours. Thanks for the comments!

Originally Posted by COPENHAGEN6

Great helmet.

Nice background too.

thanks, that's just one wall of my Star Wars room! Maybe one day, I'll get around to posting pics of the whole room.

Great work so far! Gotta love cardboard....

Great work on the dome. Gotta question for ya: do the traingles all come to a point once they are placed bended? In a few of the pictures, it looks like the top of the dome is pointed, but in the "angle 3" picture, it looks smooth. Just wonderin' if I am seein' things or if you made an adjustment.

Thats sweet. You've got some talent. Keep us posted

Originally Posted by Jimmy BufFETT

Great work on the dome. Gotta question for ya: do the traingles all come to a point once they are placed bended? In a few of the pictures, it looks like the top of the dome is pointed, but in the "angle 3" picture, it looks smooth. Just wonderin' if I am seein' things or if you made an adjustment.

It did come to a point. At least at first. I put a piece of tape temporarily at the center on the inside to help bring it all together. The top now very smooth after the dome form pieces were glued into place, or once the top was glued to the form, depending on how you think about it.

I'll get some shots of the inside of the dome with the forms in place when I get the chance.

I haven't worked on the helmet for a few days, so I haven't taken any additional photos. If you have an specific parts of the helmet you want me to photograph, let me know and I'll try and get them for ya.

****UPDATE****



here you can see the dome section before i started coating/sealing it with Mod-Podge, which you can see in the picture. The dome form pieces have been glued in at this point which flattens out the top making it less pointy



more of the same, with less flash



started sealing it. The stuff goes on white and dries clear.



Here I've cut off the outer surface around the back to get the ridge, however the cardboard I used was not thick enough to create the ridge



very washed out view, but i'm inserting 2 more layers of cardboard between the inner and outer surfaces to get a bigger ridge



adding the layers



sealing the helmet



No details in this shot due to the flash washing it out, but i was going for the outline anyways, to show the form of the top of the dome: no point.



I couldn't find an exact shape of the dent, so I kinda winged it (that would be something to add to the templates Alan, the location and shape/size of both the arrows and the dent.) I took the 25mm by 25mm measurements listed on tk401's site and the general shape as shown in the painting stensils progress photoed by AFettFullofDollars traced it onto the helmet in my best guess location. Then I poked a hole in the center, and cut from the center to the corners. After that I just stuck my finger in the dent to push it in then started using hot glue on the outside and inside (not shown) let it cool a little then rounded it a little with the cap of a sharpie pen.



angle 2



dome resting on the rest of the bucket



angle 2



angle 3

I am currently adding more layers of Mod Podge to seal it, Mod Podge is sandable so once I've got a good number of layers built up, I can sand it and prime it

I also still need to make the keyhole section as well as the ears. I would also like to put a metal ring on the inside of the rim as well as the base of the dome to help keep it's shape.

I feel as if I'm there adding layers of Mod Podge with you.

Don't keep me in suspense......

Keep up the good work.

Great work. I think the dome is just a tad too high, though.

Originally Posted by TeamFett

Great work. I think the dome is just a tad too high, though.

that may be the case, or it could be the camera angle...

i'm not sure what i could have done wrong if it is too high... the dome is already a good 1/4 inch smaller than the rest of the helmet all the way around, so if i shrunk the dome template any more that ridge would be even bigger.

how too high does it look to you? I'd rather change it sooner than later.

****UPDATE****



keyhole setup started



from the pictures I've looked at, it looks like the keyholes slant inward into the bucket the farther towards the bottom, i wasn't sure how to do this with the pieces in the templates so I made 2 skinny triangles and a skinny rectangle to attach the whole thing to the inside of the helmet to give it that slant



with the keyholes installed into the helmet



slightly different angle after everything dried



the ridge and the rangefinder side w/o the ear, i had to build it up with layers of cardboard. I think I used about 6 sheets or so cut to the correct shape then hot glued together and into place



angle 2 from the front



the dent and the top of the dome filled in and ready for sanding/primer



a view of the inside



another look inside with the dome attached



hopefully this will help determine if the dome is too tall



tape measure in front

i neglected to take a shot of it from the sides with the tape measure. i'll get those taken tomorrow. after that, some final touches and then primer.

I appreciate all the feedback I can get. This is the first time I've attempted anything like this so if i'm screwing something up let me know so I can fix it now. That's a big part of why i'm documenting it so much so I can get the feedback so things can be adjusted along the way.

Thanks for looking and that's for the feedback. More to come pending hight correction if needed.

man that thing looks awesome. keep up the good work!!

unfortunately it looks like teamfett may be right



i took one of my pictures with the tape measure, scaled one of batninja's photo's of his sgtfang mystery, made his transparent and put it over mine. I hand traced (badly) the edges of the cheeks, the corners of the visor, the arrows, the dent and the top of the dome green on mine and red on the mystery. The scale of the photos looks pretty close judging by the visor, the angles they were shot at may be a bit off, but my dome is definately about 15mm too tall.

i was thinking it might have been, back in the back of my mind the whole time, thanks teamfett for pointing it out and making me think about it and analyze it this much. I'd rather catch it now than later.

ah i see now, but that extra 15mm could hold all sorts of fans and stuff. lol.

I have to say it again TALENT pure TALENT.

what the mod podge does is seal it and make it water resistant as well as making it a little stronger and harder. I tried gently pushing in at the sides below the ears at the bottom, and it doesn't seem too much more flemsy than like a DP96/97. It will need to be more reinforced with a metal hoop around the bottom, but even without it's pretty strong.


I just finished putting one coat of primer on it after fixing the dome height. That really revealed how much more work needs to be done. I thought I was going to get away without having to bondo it or put any other sort of putty or anything on it. But with the primer coat, you can really see the ridges in the dome and gaps and bubbles in the glue around the dome.

look for more updates soon.

****UPDATE****

I've been working, and photographing, but I was having problems getting pics uploaded, I ended up doing one picture at a time, so here we go




primered, as you can see, I need to do some major bondoing to round out the dome. Gotta have daylight to do it though since I don't have a workspace inside for that sort of thing







rangefinder ear



start of the cover



top layer is one piece of cardboard cut and glued down at an angle



I did the arch by gluing several small triangles up and down and at the angle the arch needed to be and then gluing several bigger triangles curved and then angled down.



side view together with the stalk guide piece.



all the pieces cut and ready for gluing for the lower section of the rangefinder side ear



layers glued together ready for the top piece



the top is all one piece, together with the other 2 pieces



laying on the helmet unattached




angle 2




the other ear. I didn't take any progress pictures of this piece




you can't really see much fro this angle but I thought it was fun.




ears layed out together



I have since hot glued the ears on and am going to me mod podging them to seal and strengthen, then it's bondo time. No time this weekend unfortunately as I will be out of town most of it, but I'll see what I can do.

FYI for anyone wondering the strenght of the the helmet: the helmet and each of the ear pieces have all been dropped on the floor more than once and are still in tact with no damage done at all. You can also knock on it and get that nice, deep, hollow sound.

looking forward to painting and a little worried at the same time. I'm going for a ROTJ:SE so its all Gotta find and pick up the paints first.

this really astounds me,

i totally feel for you when it comes to cutting out all these individual pieces and layering things to make a 3d object.

just finished an orthographic mapping project last month for a class for school. cutting out dozens of layers of illustration board to make 3 views of the same object, i did a laser tag gun

nice work on this, can't wait to see it finished

As much work as you have put into this you could of just bought a bucket. BUT, I do respect you greatly b/c your starting from ground zero. So hats off to you! I will be watching this thread.

I see you're still going strong. I continue to watch and learn.

well, the long weekend has finally given me the chance to bondo. I'm waitng for it to set so it can be sanded. Then it's time to paint. I've got all the paints on RS list so except for the tanish color on the back I should be good to go. That and I need to do alot of studying of techniques and pictures of scratches etc. Oh and I need an airbrush. but i'll be putting up some more progress pictures soon so stay posted.

Wow that is some really kick A@# work. I'm very impresssed need to try that challenge.

Very nice work indeed, your thread is one of the threads that galvanised me into making a bucket of my own this way. Kudos on the hard work mate it's paid off in spades

you may want to start your own thread for pictures of your own progress, but if you want to make some direct comparisons I have no problems with you posting them here.

ok xD i just wanna know wut is that gray material that u used in ur helmet

that's actually just primer paint. under that is something called Mod-Podge which is clear. It's a cardboard sealer. The bottle says you can put it over jigsaw puzzles to keep them together or whatever. My sister-in-law also uses it to decopodge which is some sort of girly crafty thing.

cool ... u used a glue to do it my helmet got some parts that arent very .. perfect xD how can i repair that?

lets see what you are talking about first, maybe I can suggest something, but without seeing it my best suggestion sadly is to start over

i wll post just the url of the pcture o/

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/7164/dsc01526dr9.jpg
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9017/dsc01525ke8.jpg
http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/1460/dsc01527xd0.jpg
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/5527/dsc01529xq4.jpg
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/8025/dsc01533ra9.jpg

Wow, why did I not keep up with this thread? That is an amazing bucket. Now you can have the pride of wearing it and being being able to say you made that.

One thing I can see for improvement though, is the dome, right where it meets the brow. Instead of going strait down, it appears to curve inward. Kind of like a circle that is just short of being cut in half. Do you know see what I mean? I wish I could explain it better. This can be easily fixed in the bondo process.

The arrows also look like they could be straightened out a little.

Keep up the good work.

Absolutely incredible! This shows that anything is impossible. The only critique I have is that the dent is too high and far back. I can't wait to see some paint on this puppy. I'm in awe of your patience and skill.

im just finishing with the paper part of my first scratch build and i was wondering if you bondo'd the inside of the bucket??

That's a great bucket! I've almost got all the fabrication done on my cardboard bucket. Keep up the good work!

at the last time i touched it I had pretty much covered the whole outside with bondo and am working on getting it sanded. there's also a section of the dome that is kinda flat so i'm trying to build that up a little more with the bondo. I also filled in the dent and the arrows so that I can put them in more accurate places. I haven't worked on it in awhile because I live in an apartment and the only place to work is outside on my deck and it's been too cold for that. As far as the inside, i plan on leaving it cardboard so that if anyone asks how I made it I can say it's made of cardboard and if they don't believe it i can just show them the inside.

thanks for the kind words.

thanks, i have been wondering how you gort it stable without supporting the inside

the inside is covered with mod-podge, but other than that there's nothing. I've dropped it on more than one occasion with no real damage.

Bah, I can't see your pictures at work. I'll have to check it out again at home since Photobucket is blocked here. I'm really interested in seeing your pictures, hopefully I can get more inspiration. Cardboard, FTW!

I'm working on a cardboard bucket too. Thanks to Honus and WOF, as well.

I've used the Modpodge as on the outside to seal the surface and maintain the detail but I'm coating the entire inside with fiberglass and resin. Mostly because I have it but also partially to see how well this technique works.

The modpodge did add a little firmness to it but the fiberglass has turned it into a solid helmet.