Rebuilding a Master Replicas Fett helmet

my biggest "secret" on the high speed painting is having a good sense of when paint is *just* dry enough for tape... and i only use the crazy $10 a roll super delicate surfaces tape.

the nice thing with rattlecans is that they dry fast and the finish is REALLY tough.

i can lay it down tape about an hour after i paint if the temperature is good. and a small space heater does wonders for the temp.

that and i find layered weathering much easier to do if you don't let the paint cure too much before peeling it.

I completely agree, nice work (y)
 
I went over Brian's last night and saw this helmet first hand. I've got to tell you people... it's nothing short of AMAZING what he's able to do in such a short amount of time! I was floored!
 
I've been having fun playing around with colors... trying to really capture the rotj look.

I think my base colors are good, and with the proper weathering, it should be rockin'
 
here is the helmet with the visor installed:

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i liked this shot because in the background you can see a tiny little rotj photo, and the colors look pretty good :)

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and my "quick and dirty" RF mod.

normal_fetthelm2.jpg


i took the battery cover off and removed the sliding latch button, aka the polaroid window.

i then filled it all in with modeling clay and molded it. i used clear resin to make a cast, then sanded it smoothish. i could have sanded it better, but i thought i was going to need it for today. since i don't need it until tomorrow, i'll pop that back out and smooth it out better.

it's just held in with a blob of hot glue, so whenever i need to change the batteries, i can pry it off.

the finish on the topper is rough. i stripped the paint off... it's molded in black, but should really be painted again. i'll get there eventually.

in other news, mold #2 should be ready to go tonight!
 
the second mold came out much nicer than the first! i did one last night, and while a little thick, it's looking great overall.

that was my first time with the smoothcast roto, and working with it was a bit strange... SO fast! but it was fun, and i feel like i'm closing in on it!
 
Kick butt Brian !!!

FP

I couldn't have done it without you! Both figuring out the mod, and looking at your own RotJ helmet really helped me pick out some stuff I hadn't seen on my own!

I started trimming out one of the pulls from the new mold last night, and will start painting on Monday (I'm away at NY Comiccon until then)

I *think* I have finally got a winner!

Pics coming tonight!
 
progress on my ear caps!

i finally dove in to the ear cap issue!

sorry... lots of text, not lots of pics!

so, the MR earcap on the RF side is just odd.... i don't know why they built it how they did.

it's hard to put into words, but basically think of the 2 parts of the RF side ear cap as being the inner and outer caps. the inner cap sits on the helmet. it's the thicker of the 2, and has the cutout for the stalk.

the outer cap is sort of a cover that goes over it, and is thinner.

on the mr it's reversed. the piece that touches the helmet is about 1/16" thick, and all of the bulk is on the outside. the outer cap is concave on the inside for no obvious reason. it has a small lip at the bottom where the RF stalk lives, but is curved otherwise (reduce cost by shaving an ounce of aluminum out?)

i was trying to figure out how to do something with it that didn't involve scratch building a whole new piece. i wanted to preserve the look and feel, but make it closer to accurate.

i ended up taking the assembly off of the helmet, removing the stalk, and then screwing the 2 pieces back together. this left me with a sort of sandwich of metal with a gap in the middle for the stalk.

i filled the gap with modeling clay, leaving a solid chunk.

i made a 1 piece silicone mold of this part, and poured 2 copies.

on copy 1, i carved / sanded / filed away the outer cap, leaving just the inner part that touches the helmet.

on copy 2 i did the opposite, carving away the inner part, leaving just the outer cap.

a LOT of sanding later, we get:

normal_propstuff_019.jpg


if you look closely at the back of the little triangle wedge at the bottom of the cap, you see that i cut a little too much. i'll build that back up with epoxy putty, rather than going through all this effort again.

once i get these all properly sanded and smooth, they will be the masters that i mold off of for my final ears.
 
This is very informative. I figured someone would make some mods to this, I just don't have the nerve, unless I picked one up for cheap.



Robert
 
And here we have a good pull from a revised mold, painted with the focus on looking good, not speed!

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The colors used are highly variable... I misted all sorts of stuff on top of each other to get what I wanted.

The dome and cheeks are sage green, spruce green, dark grey, black, and flat brown. The visor is claret wine and black. The mandibles are black, navy blue and hunt club green. The back is hunter green, grey and black.

The earcaps are lightly weathered with flat brown, mostly sanded off.

The stripes are a mix of a couple of acrylic colors that I blended until I liked it.

Weathering is primarily misting of black, brown and grey. On the cheeks I latex masked some areas before misting, so that they remained their original green.

When it was all done, I put some Testor's dullcoat on there.
 
I'm in no way a ROTJ Fett but that is freakin awesome Brian!
Love the 2nd pic with the head slightly cocked to one side... very Clint Esq! ;)
 
wow you did a fantastic job fixing that. i plan to get a MR helmet but im still swinging back & forth bout fixing it. plus that paintjob, idk if i could risk that. it'd give me a heartattack
 
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