Mandalorian Death Watch helmet WIP

So I had a whole post all typed out, and just before I posted it, my browser crashed. So I'm just gonna post the gist of it.

I'm scratch building a Mandalorian Death Watch helmet out of cardboard, fiberglass, and bondo. I used the same method to build a Coruscant Guard helmet, and that can be seen over at the Special Ops detachment.



I'm having to use some artistic liberty in the design in order to make some lines work. I'm also filling in some of the detail gaps, and I'm drawing from the Super Commando helmet to add some of the more finer details (that will come later on, though).

Anyways, I'm only at the cardboard stage. By now I would have finished the cardboard stage to the Coruscant Guard helmet, but this is such a far more complex design that this stage is taking a while.







I DO plan on casting this and selling copies once I'm finished with it. But please understand, that won't happen for a while. I estimate that it will be way into next year before I get to that stage. I plan on taking my time with this helmet because I have a lot of school work to focus on.

Looks cool! Very encouraging first set of pictures! Keep up with it!

Doing a good job!!

That's awesome; can't wait to see the next stage!

why not try making ur prototype out of sintra? at least then you could wear it to. but that looks amazing looks just like the death watch helmet.

Originally Posted by lowki13

why not try making ur prototype out of sintra? at least then you could wear it to. but that looks amazing looks just like the death watch helmet.

Accually all that needs to be done after the cardboard mock-up is to paint it with fiberglass resin and sand it out. You will have a light-weight rigid mask. Not super strong but definetly wearable. Nice work Keep at it.
MS

Very nice DW helmet prototype!

That is comeing along really well.

Exactly what kind of cardboard are you using. I tryed to make mockups out of some cardboard and I couldn't get a good bend in the pices.

Lowki, the purpose of doing it this way is as follows: The cardboard step allows me a cheap and easy means to produce the accurate form I'm wanting to make. The fiberglass step provides the strength and a surface for the Bondo to adhere to. The Bondo (once sanded) provides my smooth surface and a sculpt-able surface. Sintra is far too expensive for my needs, and frankly, its not as easily manipulated as these materials.

Marrowsun, I'm actually doing two more steps than just fiberglass resin. I'm doing a full-out fiberglass process. Resin and actual fiberglass. Fiberglass resin isn't too strong by itself, but that's because it's meant to be used in unison with fiberglass mat or fiberglass cloth. That's what gives you the actual strength. The previous helmet I made with this process is just as strong as any other fiberglass helmet out there because i used fiberglass mat. Anyways, after the fiberglass goes on, I'm gonna cover it in Bondo and smooth that out. The Bondo allows me to easily sculpt on details, and it's certainly a lot more friendly to my skin. Once I cover up that fiberglass, no more itchy.

Z, The cardboard I'm using is just regular corrugated cardboard. I just cut up cardboard boxes that I find (freebies). In order to get good bends in it, three things are required: something for a roller (I have a thick cardboard tube), your hands, and patience. Simple one-direction curves can be attained by rolling it over a thick tube. Complex curves require some time and effort. Basically you just knead it into shape.

ahh didn't realize sintra was dificult to work with im starting a gundam helmet out of carboard to eventually use sintra on. but then again i am using and old motorcycle helmet for the dome portion. well it looks good either way.

I love the death watch, great to see that others do as well Good job!

Finished the dome to the helmet, and thus finished the cardboard stage to the helmet. Any more shape work will be done in the Bondo stage after I do the fiberglass. I don't expect to start the fiberglass stage for a while, so this thread might lay dormant for a few days or weeks before I pick it up again.

The dome was made by making some cross sections and placing pie slice shapes in:







Now, for the purposes of fiberglassing, I'm covering up the visor area. This will allow me to fiberglass over the whole area so that it maintains it's shape during the fiberglass process. Then I can cut out the entire visor and it will hold it's shape.

very good work!

look interesting, can't wait to see how it all turns out

I said I'd never build a scratchbuilt helmet again, but this one is making my fingers itch......looking good!
Rob

This looks awesome! Can't wait to see it done!


PS- is awsome really spelled awesome? because my browser (Firefox) underlines incorrectly spelled words, and when spelled awsome, it gets underlined =X

Awesome is spelled awesome.

Looks great! Sure look forward to see this finished. Are you doing the "wings" separately?

Looking good so far!

Looking great so far... can't wait to see how this turns out?

Make sure you explane how your going about covering that in fiberglass. I am really wanting to start on a custom helmet. It would be nice to make it in fiberglass.

David,

That looks like a fantastic template! I can`t wait to see it after the fiberglassing.

And I`m curious as well to see how you will achieve the "wings" on the top of the helmet.

Keep up the progress pics.

Cant wait to see the results and will definitely try and get one when you are selling them

wow dude that looks pretty boss and i havent seen anyone at the conventions with a decent one

I'm officialy jealous! I love it bro, keep up the excellent work, I'm looking foreward to your progress.

Very cool! Looking forward to the finished product.

Excellent sculpt! Kepp the progress pics coming.

Alan

Wow David, you're like some building mad-man, fool! I pitty the foo' that doesn't eat my cereal or doesn't think this is a kick-butt project! :thumbup

Nice, love your work so far..... keep the updates coming...

I have to be honest. I never liked these helmets until I saw the work you are doing. Keep up the excellent work!

Excellent work! Keep the progress coming

I love the DW helms! That is so sweet! Man...where did you get your cardboard skills?

Keep it up, dude!

I'm really inspired by this, and might actually try out my skills on cardboards for one or two parts of my body armour. But that raises a question, is it possible to make moulds from cardboards? Or would it need to be made in fibreglass first?

Thanks.

Looking forward to the finished product.

When I saw this thread, I thought a death watch helmet this looks dumb but you are doing such a great job I cant wait to see the final.
Keep up the god work

Sorry to necropost, but I thought it'd be best just to keep this thread updated.

Over the past few days, I fiberglassed the helmet's exterior. I still need to sand down all the rough edges and give it a once-over with my power sander, but that will come in the next few days. I'm currently out of school for my Christmas vacation, so I hope to get some notable work done on this helmet by the time I head back to classes. By the way, the plan is still to do casts of this helmet, and depending on what kind of money I get for Christmas, I may get to mold it up sooner than expected, but I'm not going to rush into that by any means. It'll be my first full-helmet, two-part mold, so I want to do it right.

Super commandos beware. The Death Watch are coming!

very cool, cannot wait for it man

you're doing an awesome job!

-Naas

looks fantastic!

Just wanted to show off one last group of progress photos before the Bondo stage. NOW I'm actually ready for Bondo. I sanded the entire helmet off, grinding down all of the bumps and rough spots, and roughing up all the smooth spots to make a nice surface for the Bondo to adhere to. Tomorrow morning I should be able to begin the Bondo stage.

Here's a photo of how this helmet fits on a 5'8" 190lbs body. I was really worried that this helmet would be too big for my body type, but the nature of the helmet is misleading. The actual core helmet is a nice fit, it just has chunky parts sticking off of it, creating the illusion of being bigger than needed. But it actually looks really good for my body type, so I'm very happy with how it's turning out.





Now this back part I'm going to do up like a standard Super Commando helmet. That raised box on the back will have a recessed "keyhole" part that's on Boba's helmet, although of a slightly different design.

I got about 5 hours of work in on the helmet today. By the end of the day, the helmet has been covered in Bondo. I'm gonna let it sit over night and fully cure and get rock hard, and tomorrow I'm gonna start sanding away. It's still going to need a lot more Bondo work, but this is just the first Bondo stage.



I needed to build up this ridge some more, so I used some plastic tubes to fill up space while I Bondoed around them.




I also started the horns today. They're mostly done, actually. I just have to smooth them out with some wood filler and prime them.

Wow!! Very good! I'm incredibly impressed with the horns you made for it. Great workmanship with the wood there!

Wow. That's impressive!

I want one of those sanders!

David.

This is one of the greatest things I've seen on these forums, really accurate - especially for a paper sculpture.

Will you be making more than one copy when done?

Thats so cool! Are you going to color it the same
colors like on your picture?

Really good job on the helmet man. However you dont really have to wait overnight for bondo to cure. If you added the right amount of hardener it should fully cure in less than 2 hours.

I'd still wait overnight. Sometimes when it "cures," it still has a bit of a sticky feeling to it.

Berry Nyce, I look forward to this one!

Ok, I have some questions to answer!

Sarim Thiri: I will indeed be making copies, as previously mentioned in the thread. This cardboard/fiberglass/bondo mockup will be wearable for myself, but I'm actually making it to be my first helmet mold and will be molding it before I paint it. I'm going to make a rubber mold of it and then do resin copies. I'm looking at using rotocast or something like that for simplicity and for experimentation with materials. The nature of the helmet would prevent easy access to key areas for fiberglassing, but it could be done after the fact I suppose. I want to make the casting process as easy on my end as possible, as I do intend to sell copies in small quantities. The plan is to sell copies as kits, with the helmet pulled right out of the mold with the edges cleaned up, and the horns cast in resin as separate pieces.

Montatora Viroria: I haven't decided what scheme to color it. I want to keep it "accurate" to the source materials, but I do have some options. There is the lighter olive drab and yellow/gold that looks very nice, but then there is the darker black version which just looks plain menacing. I think I'd like to do the black version though, but I'd do extensive weathering on it, like the Boba helmets.

987654321a: I have extensive experience in working with Bondo, and that's actually one of the best qualities of it - the cure time is pretty fast. However, because of the extensive surface area covered, I wanted to give it as much time as it needed, especially since we were going through a humid/rainy period. I also really just didn't want to rush too much with it.


Here's my final progress for the evening. I got the visor cut out and sanded smoothish. I also carved out those horizontal lines at the sides of the visor area. The lineart has those lines coming directly out of the visor, but I decided to give a little 1/4" space between the visor and the line. The line was carved out with the router bit on my dremel turned on it's side.

Well congratulations for being the first to really take this project to the next level I really didn't know what to expect when you started, but your skill is amazing

Amazing and inspirational work. Just curious though. I'm not familiar with the comic your using for a source. The only Death Watch I was aware of up to this was the Star Wars Galaxies Death Watch in the DWB. Looks great.

This is just awesome! I would certainly be up for a copy if you will sell it.

The SWG Death Watch are lame and lazy, they're just regulars with no distinction at all.

The ears were looking at me funny, so I lopped them off with a hack saw. I didn't like how they were curving, so I drew a new profile for them (curved more inward) and went to work. It definitely has a thinner front profile now. I'm gonna add some more cardboard over it and just bondo straight over the cardboard. It's structurally sound in that area, so it really don't need too much reinforcement. I might go in with a bit of epoxy on the inside of it before I attach the cardboard, though, and I'm actually probably going to attach the cardboard with the same epoxy while I'm at it.

I've also been working on that ridge around the dome, and I've also begun to shape the dome down. This dome is gonna need a bit of work, a bit more than my Coruscant Guard helmet did.

I've also begun to tighten up the shape of the horns. The left horn is ready to be smoothed down since I shaved the mounting shaft down a bit so it's slimmer. I still have to shave down the right horn's mounting shaft, though.

Holy.... that's uncanny. And you've done a GREAT job sculpting that from the pictures. I thought about redoing my ear pieces in wood, myself. Much cleaner corners.

This project is really turning out great! Keep up the good work.

very cool!

That looks better and better with each passing day.

Kandosii'la, keep it up vod.

You're doing a great job, keep it up!!!!!!!!!

I've gotten to a point on the cheeks where I can prime it and prep it for filling. So that's what I've been working on this morning. I got it primed to where I like it and I can start filling in with some putty.



I also decided to go ahead and put together some greeblies for the cheeks. The lineart shows *something* being there, but of course, it's not clear enough so I decided to design some greeblies myself. They are identical on each side.





I still have a LOOOOOONG way to go on this helmet, but getting this stuff done make it seem a little more closer to completion for me.

Man, that looks awesome! Love watching this build.

This is looking awesome! Congratulations for all of your hard work

That is FREAKIN' AWESOME!

Very nice work on this project! By far one of the best DW helmets I've ever seen.

Wow that looks really fantastic man. Keep up the good work.

I've been watching this thread for a while, cuz I like to see the work of comic illustrators made real. When I read the comic, I thought the Death Watch group's helmets seemed like a silly variation of the typical Mandalorian helmet, and an unnecessary one at that. You've heard it for weeks now: you've done fantastic work here. But, in addition to making something real from two dimensional images, you've made this concept cool. I'm really liking the look of this bucket, now, when before your work the design in the comic just wasn't doing anything for me. Well done.

Happy New Year TDH!

While I haven't had time to work on the helmet since a few days after my last post, I do have two progress pics to show. The first is the sanded first priming of the cheeks with bondo spot putty smoothing out some of the dips. The second is the reprimed cheeks, which are ready for a second smoothing since there are still some noticeable dips in them.

Wow David, the end result is looking fantastic!! This is turning out better than anyone could have anticipated!

wow man...thats looking incredible!!!!

Dave,

Looking fantastic.

Do you plan on coating the inside of the helmet as well?


Keep up the good work.

This is absolutly one of the best scratch builds i've seen. You did an awsome job and I cant wait to see the finished product. Mesh'la! Kandosii!

that helmet is Awesome! Great job it looks sweet keep up the good work man.

wow the bar has been set pretty high but seeing what you did gives me some idea of what i should do

outstanding work.
i'm wondering...how do you make a helmet out of cardboard? are there directions on how to do so on this forum? (mando helmet)

Great job on the DW helmet!

Where the rest?

haha, good work!

Just stumbled onto this thread and LOVE your take on the DW helmet! I've wanted to do one of these myself but I don't think I could top your work.

Has any more progress been made with this?

hey my friend was wanting make his own death watch helmet and need to know the measurements from ur helmet he's having trouble

I'm glad that someone resurected this thread. Hopefully some more contribution happense here, I want to see the end!!

Probably won't get to much on this particular build unless the guy who actually was making the helmet comes back to post.

I certainly hope he does! Not to mention maybe doing a run of these because he's got my money for sure!

this is awsome, and where did you get the template from because i was going to try to make a death watch helmet myself.

great job!

Originally Posted by BAMfett

this is awsome, and where did you get the template from because i was going to try to make a death watch helmet myself.

I don't know what happened to this guy. It seems like he just disappeared. I'm NOT hijacking this thread, but I'm also making one of these (just do a search if you want to see it.) There really isn't a template for this. I followed pretty much exactly what TB-1184 and just winged it.

David.

looks great

Oh wow that is incredible. It's a shame there hasn't been any more progress on it.

Wow, this is excellent.

I'd really like to see where it is at now.

Beautiful stuff, man. Keep it up!

Great work, this is looking sweet.