Re-weathered eFX Luke X-Wing helmet

Hi all!
Don't have a lot of free time these days with my school schedule, but last weekend
I was actually between projects and had a few glorious hours for myself!

I've had an eFX Luke ANH X-Wing helmet for a few months now. It's a beautiful
helmet. Very solidly made, fully lined, and I enjoy having it in my collection.
The only thing (being a detail nut) was that I was never quite satisfied with the
factory weathering job. It looked OK. . . until I saw a thread over on the RPF that
showed a helmet that was re-weathered by Steve the Swede!
Man oh man, what a difference!

Since I had some time to do something "proppy" last weekend, I decided that I would
take on a re-weathering job of my own. It was a fairly simple job. I used some
tape and plastic to protect the interior, and the visor. I then shot the whole helmet
with a couple of light coats of Testors dull coat. I had decided to use pastel powder
to do the weathering and pastels stick to a matte surface much better than a semi-flat
surface.

I don't have any in progress shots, but here are a few of the finished re-weathered bucket.



If you're familiar with the eFX X-Wing helmet, the weathering is fairly light overall. Using
some black pastel powder darkened certain areas nicely.



I used a large brush to "pounce" the pastel dust into the surface after getting it approximately
where I wanted it. Then I used some balled up masking tape with the sticky side out to remove
some of it. Steve the Swede had some awesome pics up on the RPF that served as a guide for
the weathering patterns. He's the one who did the paint master for eFX, so what better guideline!



Where the patterns were a little more intricate, or where they were scratched down to a brighter base,
I used the back of an X-acto blade to dig through the pastels a little more aggresively. Most of what I did
was pastel weathering, but there were a few places where I added some chips. Most noticeably on the red
portions of the helmet.



After I was satisfied with the weathering, I sealed the whole helmet with a couple of light coats
of Krylon low odor clear flat.
So that's pretty much it! A nice 1-day project for a change. :LOL
I really like the way the helmet came out. Much more grungy than eFX had originally painted it.
Many thanks to Steve for sharing his amazing paintwork and for once again providing inspiration to us
crazy detail-obsessed fans.

Beautiful E, it really is amazing how much a paintjob can come to life with a bit of weathering - youve done an outstanding job on this one! And i'm hearing you on the spare time bud - barely had time to scratch my bum of late, let alone do too much hobby stuff - that crazy sort called 'work' keeps getting in the way! Top job again my good man

Thanks, Jonny.
If you've ever seen the paint master that Steve did, it's just bizarre how the factory
released the helmet with such vague weathering patterns.

For those who aren't familiar with this particular piece, here's a factory-fresh example.



Brighter lighting in this shot, but hopefully you can get an idea of the areas that I worked on.

Wow, the weathering you added looks far superior - it really amazes me how they spend ages working on a really nice product with the interior, etc, and then do a pretty random bit of weathering on the more obvious areas, that detail nutters like us would actually notice before anything Really top notch work as always E