Thanks for the compliments, fellas.
Jayvee - It's hard to tell, but I finally got the smoke visor in the mail. It's not as dark as the green face shields, but it's still pretty dark. I'm interested in knowing what you think of yours. These things aren't as easy to get ahold of as one would think. It took quite a bit of searching for me to find one.
I have to redo the upper cheeks. They didn't turn out dark enough, blue enough, or with as much damage as I wanted. Hopefully I'll be able to get some real paintwork going this weekend. Add that to the ears and rear panels (notice I don't really show the back/sides all that much?)
I forgot to mention that I color-sanded the majority of the helmet. This was necessary mostly because I used spraypaint rather than airbrush, which tends to leave a somewhat textured finish in some places. The color-sand really evened out the paint, and the smoothness was awesome! Applying the dull coat was very quick. This was mostly necessary, again, because of the use of spraypaint (the colors are all satin/semigloss). Like I tell deadland all the time, I'm a car guy, so I believe in sanding (1200/1500/2000) and clearcoating EVERYTHING! The pictures don't do a very good job of highlighting the actual finish of the helmet, particularly the dome.
So between the sanding and dull coating, the helmet looks more like what I would imagine a real helmet would look like. deadland and I have had talks about how the screen-used helmet was painted, and it's doubtful that there is any sealant on any of them. So clear coat, for me, boils down to my personal taste and, above all, protection.
I will add several more coats of the dull coat when I complete the helmet, meaning my lid will be very well protected. My paintwork is about average, I suppose, but nevertheless, I'd like to keep it looking nice. I'm debating whether or not to wetsand the entire lid after the remaining paintwork is finished, but I'm a little leary of two things:
1. Is dull coat even sandable in the first place?
2. Wetsanding/polishing a gloss clear coat makes the surface into a mirror, basically, which is beautiful to behold. But that's not what we're going for with Boba Fett. Will it alter the finish? I know that it won't become as smooth as glass, but at the same time, I don't really know what it will do. Does anyone have any experience with sanding dull coat?
Thanks for looking!