Superjedi's GMH--Pre-Pro 2

JUNE 3, 2011

Hi all!
Well, here I go again. I received my amazing GMH helmet this week and I will be painting it as the Pre-Pro 2 helmet.
This will NOT be a fast progress thread (sorry to disappoint anyone who's seen some of my previous threads) as I don't have nearly as much hobby time these days.
But I will endeavor to document everything in as much detail as possible.

The helmet itself is just sexy. It's hard to get a read on how it really looks in photos. The proportions and shapes never come across in two dimensions as they do when you're holding the helmet in your hands.

The casting work is, as expected, practically perfect. I got helmet #9, and there's one small "booger" on the filled-in visor section. However, this will be trimmed away once I cut out that area, so no big deal.
The ear parts and stalk look fantastic, too. I test fitted the ears against the sides of the helmet and the mating surfaces are dead flat. No problem attaching the ears to this bucket! I'm debating whether to get Mojo's aluminum ears when he offers them. If I do, it will bring an even greater level of authenticity to the helmet.

Anwyay, on to some pics. The first couple of shots show it as I received it, right out of the box.







As you can see, the physical damage marks are perfectly preserved and will serve as excellent landmarks in plotting out the damage once painting begins.
Here's a shot of my new baby with my FPH (ESB) and Terminal Fettler (PP3) helmets. This gives a good idea of the overall size and shapes of the various helmets.



The only thing I've done to the helmet so far is give it an acetone bath. Chris recommended doing this to remove any traces of mold release.
Here's a pre-bath shot:



By the way, Vinny's Pizza rules!!

After the acetone bath, I used some Palmolive dish soap and a Scotchbrite-type sponge to wash it off as well. This picture is post-acetone. Shiny!



So that's really it for today. Next up is cutting out the keyslots and visor areas!
Thanks for viewing,
Eric

Looking forward to this paint up Eric... Needing some inspiration at the moment so don't take too long with the progress shots...!

At last!

I'm probably going to copy everything you do on this baby. I started cutting mine today but have yet to give it an acetone wash. I figured I'd do that after I get everything cut out and trimmed. Keep it coming!

Aaagghh!! Pressure already!!
Well here's another quick update.

JUNE 3, 2011

I got the keyslots and visor areas cut out. This is the rough cut stage. I spent about 40 minutes total with my Dremel and a really small drill bit.
I began by drilling holes close to the perimeter of all the slots and visor, then sort of dragged the drill bit sideways to connect the dots. It's actually much simpler and quicker to use a cut-off wheel, but my last wheel broke on another project a few months ago and I never bought any new ones. Oh well. . .

Safety tip: Wear eye protection!! Dremels create a lot of dust, and if that drill bit should happen to snap while it's in use it will find the most painful place to embed itself!

Anyway, here are the rough cuts.





The next step will be to finish the edges with files. I have a large file which will be great for the edges of the visor opening, and a small set of jeweler's files for the keyslots and tight spots in the visor area.

Just a side note here about this helmet's construction. I cut out one side of the visor before making my way around the horizontal portion, and I was leaning my hand with the Dremel against the cheek. I didn't even realize it, but when I checked for flex, it barely budged!
I wouldn't recommend putting a ton of weight on it, but this puppy is pretty strong.

How darn nice are these things

Had to have an honorable mention of a single teeny weenie "booger" ?
I had been popping that little bugger off there on the first batches and
thought to myself, meh, Eric won't mind

Glad to see you starting on this brother. I can't wait to see this thing
up in lights with your paint ! For some reason helmets always seem
to look that much better with you just having touched them, even
before paint


Chris

I'm watching closely as this baby will get an excellent paint job.

Yes, KaanE, it's all finished now!! Some wonderful painting elves snuck into my house last night and completed the helmet for me.

JUNE 4, 2011

I got a bit of an early start this morning. A long while back I had bought a set of jeweler's files from Ace Hardware. It's a set of 8 files and it cost around $12.00.
It's an excellent set of hobby tools. The small files can really get into some tight areas and there are different shapes (flat, square, triangular, half-round, etc.) that can be very useful depending on your project. Highly recommended!

I lugged the helmet back out into the garage and trimmed up the key slots. Anything that requires sanding, drilling, or filing is done out in the garage. Prep creates lots of dust and I don't want that dust to fill up my house.

Here are the trimmed key slots.



This shot is nothing special, but the morning sunlight was streaming so warmly through the (dirty) mini blinds and cast a radiant golden glow into my hobby room. It was as if Nature herself was providing backlighting for my photography. I'm including this picture on a purely artistic basis, sharing the heavenly aura that surrounded my GMH. . . at least for a moment.

I think I will call this shot "Casco de Oro."



Sometime later today I'll start filing and sanding the visor area.

I have that exact same set of files, I have had them since my first helmet (DP95), by that time you were painting your second helmet which you sold when it was finished (MH I think?).

The "Casco de Oro" is a myth, which says it's in "El Dorado":




PS: If you want to keep this thread clean of Sh*T ¡, just let me know and I'll delete the picture.

Originally Posted by KaanE

The "Casco de Oro" is a myth, which says it's in "El Dorado":




PS: If you want to keep this thread clean of Sh*T ¡, just let me know and I'll delete the picture.

You can't delete the pic now

It's beautiful

I agree, great picture!

According to Mayan legend, in the year 2012, a great golden helmet would descend from the heavens and devour the Earth.
Now we see that it's all true!! Aaaahhhhhhh!!!

Awesome thread, superjedi! I'm right there with you. Going to the shop to finish fileing then get some primer on. Thing is I'm still working on my armor as well. My eyes are bigger than my stomach so to speak....exciting times we're living in!

I like how this helmet has the screw holes for mounting the ears... as well as the scratches and gouges to help plot out the paintjob like you said.

Yes, it's an excellent helmet all around. The "landmark" physical damage is certainly going to help when I get to the painting stage.

JUNE 4, 2011

OK, all the sanding, filing, trimming, gnashing of teeth, and inhaling of dust is at an end.
I finished filing out the visor area, then went in with my Dremel and a bullet-shaped grinding attachment to reduce the thickness of the visor "walls." This took quite a while longer than actually filing the edges smooth! The thickness has to be reduced though to bring it back to the correct thickness.
Again, I have to say the helmet is superbly engineered. I had to hold it at all kinds of weird angles to get to the inner surfaces and barely a hint of flex through the whole process.
It's almost as if this Fett Pride guy has done this kind of thing before!

Here's an overall shot of the cleaned up visor area.



This pic shows the reduced thickness around the opening. Took a while, but it should look great when I finally slap a visor in there. You can also see how those little jeweler's files help to get the small corners nice and sharp.



Once I was all done antiquing myself with fiberglass dust (*cough!*) I washed the helmet down again with a Scotchbrite sponge and some Palmolive dish liquid to remove any remaining oils and dust. So there she sits, drying off.
Next step: primer!

The thinning part is what I was doing today. It's taking a long time for me because my dremel's a bit cumbersome and it's a hard area to reach. I only have the top part of the visor to thin out right now and I have to trim out the horizontals on the key slots... it's getting there. I'll post a new thread Sunday looking for critiques and advice.

[QUOTE=fettpride;543984]

This has brought back the memory of the song from that old cartoon ,
"Some day you will find the city's of gold"

Opinions requested!
In this shot of the PP2 keyslots, there are a couple of shades of gray applied in cloudy patterns.
I'm more interested in how people view the light chips/scratches. Do you think they're silver? Or do they just go down to the white helmet surface?
On the vertical edges of the green panels that border the key slot area, it seems that it's scraped down to the white surface. This color appears consistent with the damage inside the keyslot area.



This is probably the area I'll start with after priming. As with most of my helmet paint jobs, I'm thinking about starting with the back areas first.
Thanks for any thoughts.

Super,

If you use the outside Left wall of the keyslot for reference, then I def thing white is the way to go!

Take a look at the RotJ and Sandy rears because they have the same paint techniques, this will give you a better idea about if it's white or silver.

Hmm, I looked at some ROTJ pics and those areas do appear to be physically scratched down to the white surface.
I'll check some more pics, but I'm leaning toward white for now.

First post it sometime for me... this should be good...good luck SJ.. cant wait.

It seems silver to me. I hate when people use flash on photos. I see what you mean about looking white because it matches the machete marks which are definitely white. It could be white, but I suspect silver heavily affected by the flash at close distance. Look at this photo... it doesn't look any whiter than any other areas.
Boba Fett Second Prototype Costume - The Dented Helmet Gallery

Hi, Alex. This will be some new territory for me, combining the layering with some topical damage. *Gulp!* Should be fun though.

CSK, yes I know what you mean about flash photos. It's frustrating because there isn't nearly as much documentation on this bucket as there are on the screen used helmets. But like I said, I'm still looking at photos and trying to determine the best way to go.

I think the White is the gel coat showing through. The detail of damage seen in the pictures above can only be achieved by scratching/sanding through to the helmet surface below the paint layers...

I think that it is the helmet surface. However I subscribe to the idea that this was damage sustained to the helmet after it's original heyday. It all is up to the individual to what your preference is.

Tough call but I think it is white.

IMHO its the gelcoat white...but was it like that when it was first painted I dont think so...ur looking at pics of a damaged helmet after it was MOLESTED

Thanks for the insight and photo manips. I'm still leaning toward exposed white gelcoat.
Obviously there was a great deal of damage to this poor helmet after it had long been painted. The horrible demolding scar being the most visible.
My observations earlier fell pretty much along the lines of the pic that KaanE posted, showing what is "probably" white versus silver. I still have time to decide though.

JUNE 5, 2011

OK! No more glistening white GMH. Primer is on.
I chose to use Duplicolor gray primer this time around. I've used their products before and the primer is nice and tough once it's dry. Should give some really good tooth to the base coats to come. It appears to have just the slightest lean toward the blue side of the gray spectrum, and the photos exaggerate this a bit. It's really a nice smooth neutral gray.
Before I primed, I taped off the entire inside of the helmet. I just don't like a bunch of overspray on the interiors of my buckets. Personal preference. The tape will stay on pretty much throughout the entire paint job just to keep things neat.





So that does it for prep! Here's where the fun begins.

May consider getting ur visor installed and taping the visor up that way u get no overspray into the helmet in the first place and dont have to worry about installing srews and screwing up the paint in the process

If you compare the damage on the backside of the ROTJ helmet, there is also a fair amount of white showing through there in the same areas. As both helmets were done by the same person, it is unlikely all of that is post filming damage but was probably mostly original to the weathering and does indeed get down into the material of the helmet in scattered areas, mixed in with the silver.

Most of the helmets were painted white , and the gel coat is also white , Im certin its the white paint/ Gel coat

But what Im getting at is when it was painted it wasnt left white. When it got abused while being molded it got beat up alot....your not going to take a dremel to it and have the gouges in it also are you? I would leave those areas silver that look like they were silver, and green that should be green....you have to use some sort of logic when doing this its not paint by #s

Originally Posted by Fett 4 Real

But what Im getting at is when it was painted it wasnt left white.

yes, but it was weathered down into the helmet in places, >after paint< bearing out some of the white. Again, IMHO, this was not all post film damage. I could easily be wrong, but there is not much *clear* pre-filming photographic evidence to make a strong case the other way either. Not that I have seen at any rate.

Originally Posted by superjedi

Hi, Alex. This will be some new territory for me, combining the layering with some topical damage. *Gulp!* Should be fun though.

I would say definately chipped down to the helmet White.

Its for sure white in the pics but, logically it wouldnt have been white, as a artist it doesnt make sense. If Im painting something thats supposed to be metal Im not going to "damage" the helmet and make the damage white....its just not logical. It would be silver damage...just like the dent is silver any other damage would be silver NOT white.

Way to go, superjedi. I think I may go the Duplicolor route as well. I've been using Rusto's filler primer for the armor since I've been bondoing old dents and adding new ones. But I dare not use a filler primer on the "beauty marks" of a GMH!

You're absolutely correct, F4R. I thought at first it was silver heavily affect by flash up close, but upon studying old images I've come to the conclusion that it IS white but only as a result of damages. It looks as if it's been rolling around on it's back for a while. And, no, it doesn't make sense that it would have been white originally. I have to agree.

My logic says the followings: looking at the PP2 images all the physicaly damaged areas are silver and there's no white, so I don't think that the original helmet was scraped down to the white gelcoat in the keyhole area (on the PP2 stencils I did white scratches at the physical damage just to highlight the damage). As if a painter who do a painting would intentionally leave unpainted areas to see the canvas...

Do what you think is right, theres no real way to figure it out besides your best guess. I'll do what makes sense to me and you can do the same, neither will be wrong...but realistically if your trying to portray a real metal helmet chips will not be white.

Super,

While I agree with most of what has been said here concerning the 'white-weathering' coming after the fact... What continues to bug me is that it can be seen in the lower key-slots as well as the key slot box edges. I can imagine the box damage coming from storage... But the keys slots themselves?? That seems like a difficult spot to get accidentally scraped... Doesn't it?

Perhaps someone with a little more knowledge of the casting that was done on this helmet could chime in and tell us if the casting process used back then would be consistent with the damage inside the slots?

Originally Posted by SegwayOfOhio

Super,

While I agree with most of what has been said here concerning the 'white-weathering' coming after the fact... What continues to bug me is that it can be seen in the lower key-slots as well as the key slot box edges. I can imagine the box damage coming from storage... But the keys slots themselves?? That seems like a difficult spot to get accidentally scraped... Doesn't it?

Perhaps someone with a little more knowledge of the casting that was done on this helmet could chime in and tell us if the casting process used back then would be consistent with the damage inside the slots?

They removed the MQ-1 board, so they touched the keyslots.

KaanE,

Do think that's what it is? It's from pushing the board out from the outside? Seems reasonable, if not a little excessive.

Originally Posted by KaanE

They removed the MQ-1 board, so they touched the keyslots.

I don't mean that, my point is that the keyholes have been touched FOR SURE more than once.

KaanE,

No doubt. That bucket as seen a few hands on it. but it's going to take more than that to strip the layers off.

I'm not being argumentative here... just playing devils advocate. I'm guessing all the white spots were 'after the fact' damage... just trying to present other possibilities for discussion.

I agree that it doesn't seem logical that you would get that kind of topical damage in a concave area like the key slots. But the pictures do seem to show those scratches as white. Logical or not, my goal is to recreate the paint work as closely as possible.
Great discussion!

super,

no doubt... and I'm guessing your recreation will be second-to-none...

But, this discussion does raise the question... are you trying to recreate the paint work as it is? or as it was?

Originally Posted by SegwayOfOhio

super,

no doubt... and I'm guessing your recreation will be second-to-none...

But, this discussion does raise the question... are you trying to recreate the paint work as it is? or as it was?

Great point...

As with all of these paintups, I think it comes down to whether you want it to look how it looks now, how it looked when it was first made, or how it would look if it was "real"

If I'm wearing something out with the 501st, I want it to look "real" -- so there would be no scratches down to white, since the theory is that the helmet is silver / metal to begin with.

If I want it for display it would be one of the other options. I haven't ever been a fan of helmets that recreate obvious post-production damage like blue sharpies or poorly fixed cracks.

In this case though, for the white showing through, I'm torn... when I do mine I suspect I'll leave that silver, but I think in your pics it's showing white gelcoat.

You said what I WANTED to say but couldnt find the words to say it STG...thanks

I guess its down to if your a costumer or a replica collector , seems the costumers want it to look real and those who are only in to replication want to make it look as the actual piece is,
Neither are wrong or right just different points of view,
But for SuperJedis who is out to replicate the original, then mask out the white first , simple
I personally am doing a replica of it as it is now cut marks and all and for my manaquin that I,m making look as it was in the original photo shoots Im making another helmet look like it was then , with the interior workings and all

Trouble with the pre-pros is there's very scant reference compared to the screen-used buckets.
With so little evidence of how it looked fresh out of the painting area all those years ago, we have to rely on the photos.
Here's something I've noticed in a couple of the reference pics.
This first shot is a promo shot. Notice the areas where I have made comments.




Here's a similar angle of the helmet "X" amount of time later. Look at those same two areas.



Unfortunately, there just aren't enough photos of the helmet during its promo heyday to make the same kinds of observations. Frustrating indeed!

Anyway, not much time during the week to work on the helmet. I did some tests with various shades of gray to try to pick the best combo for the key slot area.

Now that you showed that pic...At C5 they had a Fett Picture bundle...and the cover is of the PP2...and theres the same no chip and broken patern...

And also the yellow crayon is gone in the later pics
and the scrape down from the dent drip over the second kill strip isnt there in the early pics

Right, that's what I mean. There are some obvious differences, but they're all "frontish" shots of the helmet.
There are good shots of the back, but not the promo kinds of photos that would show as many variances in the details.

Well the evtra paint damage probly came when they were removing the mold like we know thats how the cut marks got there so it makes sense some of the paint may have chipped of when they had to pry the mold from it

I can't wait to add the yellow crayon!

I am definitely adding the yellow crayon to my paint job! Not kidding, I've always loved that sloppy little yellow mark.

Man, that's a lot of work! Too much trouble I think. I'm just going to paint mine metallic purple and be done with it.

Double Dog Dare you

Holy Moly, that's really NICE!

Originally Posted by superjedi

Man, that's a lot of work! Too much trouble I think. I'm just going to paint mine metallic purple and be done with it.

I think you mean PINK, purple is not screen accurate.

Originally Posted by superjedi

Trouble with the pre-pros is there's very scant reference compared to the screen-used buckets.
With so little evidence of how it looked fresh out of the painting area all those years ago, we have to rely on the photos.

This is one of my favorite pics of the PP2 helmet.. when I get around to painting my GMH I will prob go with all the promo photos like this one... painting as it was.

Hopefully more reference will come out... I'm pretty sure that will be a sure bet btw. cough cough

Spidey just re-opened a can of worms!

Worms. . . delicious worms! C'mon, Alex, you can't expect a tease like that to go ignored.

Originally Posted by superjedi

Worms. . . delicious worms! C'mon, Alex, you can't expect a tease like that to go ignored.

PM sent...

I want a PM

Hi all,
Told you this would be a slow progress thread!

JUNE 11, 2011

OK, stage 1 of the rear panels is complete. I masked the whole back area off and sprayed a couple of contrasting grays. I began with a medium light tone, and covered it with a much darker gray. I deliberatly left it cloudy, because there are definitely a couple of shades visible under the dark green.





I tried to match the cloudy patterns in the keyslot area as best I could. It will begin to look much better once the chips and scratches are added.



Keep in mind, the flash is blowing out the contrast in all these pics, but there's not enough good natural light left to get better ones, at least till tomorrow at the earliest.

If I have time tomorrow, I'll begin placing/tracing the areas that will remain gray as I prepare for some dark greenage!

Post a coupla images of it masked, please.

JUNE 12, 2011

Maskage! Got the damage areas stenciled, and then applied some Winsor & Netwon masking fluid. This is really great stuff. It might be a bit more expensive than some other masking products, but I've had the same bottle for around 4 years now and it still works just as well as the day I bought it.

The shiny, wet looking shapes below are the masked areas. Those will remain gray.





I gave the fluid about an hour to dry well, then sprayed on the base green for the back panels. I went with CNW Green. It's applied in a pretty haphazard manner, as all the colors on this helmet are kind of "muddy" and a bit translucent in places.
After the green had dried for a while, I went back with my reference pics and added some gray misting. I really need to find a good spot to photograph this helmet so I don't have to use the dang flash!! The contrast is way out of whack in these pics, but you can get a good idea of the areas that were misted.





This mess will dry for 5 or 6 hours, then I'll go back and remove the masking fluid. I like that part cuz it makes a big mess.
Not sure if I'll get much further this weekend, but the silver damage and small physical scrapes will come next.

I love it bro....beautiful work.

Nice work! What tool have you used to apply the masking fluid?

Good work so far on the back plates. I love all the detailing you do on your helmets - especially this one. I'm eager to see how this will look when you will finish it.

Thanks! I used a couple of different sizes of microbrushes to apply the mask. They're sold in packs of 10 and they're like tiny Q-tips. Just a little puff of fiber on a plastic handle. I think I've mentioned using them before in a couple of my other threads. They're very inexpensive and disposable, so they're perfect for these types of applications.

The mask is removed now, however I may have to reapply and respray the green a little heavier. It came out more faded than I would like.
More to come!

Looks great superjedi! Phenominal attention to detail.

Very nice!
Btw, Where can this 10 pack of micro q-tips be found?

Dahone,
I have a Hobbytown USA store not far from me, so I get a lot of my hobby supplies there.

JUNE 13, 2011

Smallish update for now. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was not happy with the color saturation of the green once I finished spraying and demasking the gray.
Just one of those hmmmm moments. So I used a Scotchbrite pad over the panels to smooth them out, then reapplied my masking fluid to all the gray areas and reshot the CNW Green.
Much better results! Not sure what happened the first time, but shooting another couple of layers over the original green base coat seems to have helped immensely.
Here are 2 shots of the back panels in indirect natural light.





I also redid the gray overspray patterns. They're subtle, but visible, in the above shots.
I started doing some small touch ups already, and will continue to work in some smaller details and the silver areas over the next few days.

Oh baby! I like.

Thanks.

JUNE 13,2011: PART 2

Had a little extra time before my class tonight so I did some detailing. I used a lighter shade of gray and a tiny liner brush to add some of the small scratches and chips.
This is my favorite detail paint brush; a Model Master size 000. It's what I use to do most of my very small detailing.



Here's the left panel. Not too much detailing on this side.



The right panel has some more tiny scratches.



For the detailing in the keyslot area, I was thinking about the debate between silver and bare white gelcoat. I agree that logically, there shouldn't be any white showing through, but there's just too much delicious detail in this area to not do something in there.
I split the difference and added some pale gray damage. I like the way this came out contrast-wise.



I still have to do all the silver that appears on the back panels, then I'll see if any of the CNW green needs to be touched up.

You've made the best choice with the rear keyhole area. I like it a lot.

Hey Eric, you can actually use an exacto Knife to create the exact line scratches... I'll post a pic of what I mean later.

80 grit sand paper works really well too less control though

Yeah I've used a compass point before to do very fine scratches. I just decided to use my brush for these.

JUNE 14, 2011

I had some time to do a little work on the helmet this afternoon so I added the silver to the rear panels.
I think (for now) this section is pretty much done. Some minor touch ups here and there to tweak the smaller areas, but that's about it.
The silver is just the usual Floquil Bright Silver, applied with a small detail brush. These pics were taken in fairly bright indirect sunlight.





I have to give a big thank you to Rafal Fett for doing so much work on the PP2 templates! Using those in combination with the reference pictures is really a big help.

I won't have much time to do any more until at least Friday, but it'll give me a chance to plan the next stages of the paint job.

Perfectionist until the end! I love how you did the back plates. The green looks a little bit bright (?), but this might be because of the white areas.
Amazing paint job so far!

The green looks bright because of the sun pouring in through my living room window. See the shadow on the floor?
I really need to set up a "photography area" somewhere in my house.

Originally Posted by superjedi

The green looks bright because of the sun pouring in through my living room window. See the shadow on the floor?
I really need to set up a "photography area" somewhere in my house.

Send it my way, I'll take some good pics for you

JUNE 18, 2011

Free time!! Finally.
This update will show a couple of steps together. I got the base green on the dome and cheek areas, being careful to mask off the other portions of the helmet.
When I mask large areas, I use a thin strip of blue painters tape to get a good seal along the edge, then go back and tape a double layer of Glad cling wrap to the tape border. I know that some people mask with newspaper, but I don't want to take any chances of paint seeping through paper. I've used plastic wrap on every helmet I've ever painted and nothing's gotten through so far!

After the base green was dry, I misted on a very thin coat of an olive green in some places. This was just to act as a toner to muddy up the base coat in certain areas, to match the reference pics as much as possible. I mixed the olive very thin, about 50/50 paint to water and airbrushed it with fairly low pressure.
This helmet has a lot going on in these green areas! Much more weathering and color blending than I'm used to with the ESB paint job.
Here's the base green with the olive misting.







After that stage had dried overnight, I began working with Rafal's cheek templates. I tweaked the size until they were a good fit for the lower cheek panels. I just stretched the height by a couple of percent.
I used my standard tracing paper method to plot out the silver damage areas and painted the silver with a size 0 brush.
Here's the right cheek.



A bit closer. You can see just a couple of small spots where I added some dark gray.



Left side.



Closer again.



Of course, all of the above work will be masked when I paint the upper cheek panels.

As I mentioned, there's a lot of overlapping damage and misting layers on the green areas. Now that the cheeks are complete, the next step will be to paint most of the silver damage on the dome. When that's done, the cheeks and dome will receive another misting of gray. After that, I'll complete the remaining silver areas.
*WHEW!* That's a lot of steps. If this was ESB, I'd be almost done by now.

Stay tuned!

That is incredible looking!!!

Fantastic! Your paint job is nearly perfect in comparison with my stencils. And I think this is the goal: using the stencils is 10% and the rest of 90% is pure knowledge and talent.

It looks awesome, I never thought someone could do a Sandy bucket using a topical paintjob!

Thanks guys. Rafal, your templates are a huge time saver!

KaanE, remember it's "layeropical." There will be masking and airbrushing and more detail painting involved. This is just the first layer of silver.

JUNE 19, 2011

Hiya, folks!
As the weekend draws to a close, I thought I'd put up a last batch of pics.
I've been working my way around the dome, blocking in the "major" silver areas. There will be lots of masking to come, and even I'm not quite sure how I'll be pulling all this off. As a famous archeologist once said, "I don't know. . . I'm making this up as I go."

Here are some shots of the dome. All the silver is painted on with my trusty size 0 detail brush.



Going counterclockwise.



Closer on the above area.



Finally, I painted the internal area of the dent to give me a good reference for size when I match it to the templates.



Each of those sections was stenciled individually, using Rafal's templates as a basis. I usually begin with a tracing of the stencil, then tweak it based on the reference pics. I always paint the damage areas with a ref pic up on my computer screen so I can check how I'm doing.

I think I'm subconsciously saving the back of the dome for last cuz it's so complex! Eeeek!

Im not positive but your rear panels look like a blue green, shouldnt it be a hunter green?

The rear panels are straight Floquil CNW green. The color changes a lot depending on the lighting.
Just look at some of the pics further up the thread to see what I mean.

Originally Posted by superjedi

The rear panels are straight Floquil CNW green. The color changes a lot depending on the lighting.
Just look at some of the pics further up the thread to see what I mean.

I would have to agree, the lighting really does change the color... once you get the weathering on and the Caboose red color... it should start to look more right.

I have noticed that the CNW Green acrylic does have a different over all hue when compared to the Floquil enamel version.

Looking good!

What's the dome color you're using?