First 'Serious' Build - Skupilkinson's Pepakura Ep.2 Clone Helmet

Aussie Phantom

New Hunter
Hi Everyone,

This is my first post on TDH.

I stumbled across pepakura recently and quickly saw modelling potential so I decided to build my nephews (ages 11 and 12) some Boba and Jango Fett helmets for Christmas- which lead me here specifically to Skupilkinson's "fetthelmet.pdo".
Anyway after building up a 70% mock-up (printed A4 at '2-up' in 80gsm copier paper - too flimsy) I figured that I didn't want to decide which of the boys would be Jango and which would be Boba. I'm not sure which is 'better' in the boy's eyes and so I switched to an ep.2 clone.

A couple of quick e-mails and a paypal transaction to Skip an I had a starting point, his ep2. clone pattern. I was very happy.

In the end, which looks a long way off at the moment, I'll paint them up as "officers" one in red and the other yellow. I'm aware that the colours signify rank but the boys won't worry about that.

I'm doing this thread, as a record of the work for my nephews as much anything else, so I'm going to be pretty thorough. But I'll start slow. So far I've done a 50% scale paper (110gsm at A4 printed '4-up') build of the helmet. This was for practice and to have a good idea of where the tricky parts will be. I'll go through that build in my next post but I've said enough for now.

Here is taste of what's to come.

Comment are welcome and appreciated.

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Dude, that looks so good it could shine. You are obviously taking your time with it, and it does pay off.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to back away before I drool all over it!
 
Thanks everyone,

I've been checking out TDH for a while and I know all your work so I appreciate your encouragement. Most of the credit has to go to Skip though - It's hard to do a good build starting from a bad design (more on that later, I have experience with below par designs which I'll make use of).

I'll take us back a few steps to the begining...

DAY1

I actually cut the pieces out over a couple of nights. It's a bit fiddly working at half scale but nothing too bad. There are only a couple of small pieces and a handful of long thin parts (I hate them but they are the key to good details in paper modelling).

After cutting everything out I realized I had no idea what anything was or where it belonged and although I could make out some of the numbers on the edge ID marks, at the scale I was working in I wanted a better way of ID'ing so I bit the bullet and sorted everything out to match the original printed layout (Photo1) - It looks pretty full-on but it only took about 10 mins to do and I was watching TV at the same time. Once sorted I grouped all the parts in their relevant "sheets" so I always knew where my parts were - It made the assembly go pretty smoothly.

98 pieces all up.

I then finished of Day One off by building the "fin" and the tops of the dome. I tried to work on the left and right sides of everything at the same time to keep things symetrical. These bits came together pretty easily.

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Day 2

Day 2 was lot harder than Day 1... Fiddly more than hard it was also the source of a doosey of an error which haunted me for the rest of this little practice build.

I've found that the hardest parts of the pepakura build are the long thin bits. Particularly those that have a "mountain fold" on one side and a "valley fold" on the other - giving us a Z cross section or a step. Of course these are also the parts that make the detail because they give us the various small steps and inlaid parts like you see on the temples of the helmet and at the rear.

So after a "night's work" I had knocked over the temples and the "power socket" at the rea of the helmet and moved onto the larger step that runs around the brow of the helmet. The front went OK if a little wobbly - a little too much glue and one too many goes at getting the curve right.

But it was the two rear portions that I found hardest to keep smooth and the close-ups show that they are pretty ragged - What the close-ups don't show is that they were originally stuck on the wrong way around!!! somewhere along the lines I swapped Left Hand and Right Hand pieces - I was tired it was late and there was an pretty exciting part of True Blood on the TV at the time...

Anyway it took surgery to fix and the patient looked worse for wear as a result extra glue doesn't really make up for a lack of attachement tabs. Later on this error continued to cause alignment issues but that happens when you're tired.

I've made a note to be more careful in this area on the full scale builds.

Aside from the drama I also put together some small parts like the rectangular socket for the rear of the helmet and the internal parts of the "ears".

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Thanks Jose.

Sonnenschein, I've done a lot of modelling - mostly scale (1/72, 1/48, 1/32 & 1/35) aircraft and vehicles. But Paper is a pretty new medium for me. I find it pretty forgiving up to a point and then it turns into a mess very fast. With the rear sections of the brim there are a folds going in a couple of directions and then meeting a curve (two of those dreaded "z-fold" pieces with a separate outer edge piece that should be a smooth curve) . It's that curve that bites us because Pepakura lays all the folds out as straight lines. I've worked out a way around this by scoring curved fold lines (seems obvious doesn't it?) but that's not really as simple as it sounds because paper won't fold in a curve very easily - it's takes a few stages to get the fold AND the curve. I'll cover that when I get to the full scale build (if my solution works!?).


Day 3

Day 3 went pretty smoothly - I finished the lower set of tabs on the Brow/Brim of the helmet (this is a long thin "z-fold" piece) and started on a couple of the fiddly bits like the inset part that runs down the back of the helmet and the visor.

I didn't curve the 'face' part of the visor enough and so ended up with a small fit problem at the corners of the "T" This was also due to my 'fast grab' glue working against me and stopping me from being able to adjust the fit - next time I'll use standard PVA and gain a minute or two of working time to get everything lined up before the glue goes off. The inset T-visor and the and the mouth below it are probably the two most challenging parts of the build.

Last thing I assembled the neck ring - Why? Because it was easy and after having a minor issue I wanted to finish on a high.

By the way I keep refering to these installments as "Days or Nights" but none of them were much more than an hour or so. I'm taking it steady but that doesn't mean working slowly.

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Wow. Those are truly interesting challenges and I dig that your looking for solutions. This could become a more refined process to building a helmet. Keep up the good work !(y)
 
I find it to be a very effective method. I've built armor and helmets this way and short of owning a CNC, I can't imagine building a lid any other way.

Nice work Aussie. ;)
 
Thanks Guys,

Obivously I agree with Skip since that's pretty much the basis of this project. Although I'm yet to go the whole hog and actually build a full set of armour - the more I work with paper and card the more potential I see, particluarly since I've started adding resin to mix. (More on that later)

Skip - a CNC setup would be sweet but I've been overheard comparing Pepakura to 3D printing. The major limiting aspect is the 3-D model itself. If it is designed with paper modelling in mind then you can make pretty much any shape you want.

RS - I just checked out your update of your Sci-Fire Clone gear thread - fantastic work!

Day 4 - The final Run.
(I'll add this in on an edit after work I've run out of lunch break! but here are the photos)

"Day 4" was a Saturday and so I pretty much finished the test build helmet on Day 4 but it was across three sessions.

I started by working on the face, the mouth area is pretty tricky and I'm not 100% sure I put it together right. I'll look at this more closely when I do the full scale build the problem area is where the mouth meets the bottom of the T-visor - I think I got another part around the wrong way. The cheeks and the first of the chin pieces went in nicely though and gave the face enough rigidity to move on to the next step.

Then I switched to the indentations behind the ears - These went nicely. Not much more to say!

The part I'm most happy with in the whole build is the back of the helmet. It took a bit of care to get the crisp folds right next to complicated curves but I was really happy with how it turned out.

I suppose the last photo with my hand in it is the first real indicator I've given of scale - that and the 1cm grid on the cutting board.


Next session... Major assembly

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Alrighty,

So I now have Dome, Front(F), Back(B), Left hand Side(LHS) and Right hand side(RHS) subassemblies. Bringing them together was the next job. You can see that I haven't curved the face enough in the first photo - It should be the same width as the dome.

Fitting them together went reasonably well. For the full size build I'll do thing a little differently. Namely, I'll stop the dome subassembly before I get to the brow/brim ridge and I'll make the various pieces of the brow/brim parts of their nearest subassembly below. This will make things a little simpler both with regard to the face because the pieces for the F,B,LHS & RHS subassemblies can be joined to make a ring before the dome gets fitted. This will help with keeping eveything symetrical and will make sure I have plenty of access where the brow/brim prieces meet the ears and the "power plug" at the back of the helmet.

The rest just fell together - there were a few more minor miss-aligments while doing the lower portion of the helmet and I'll change the way I do thing when I go full size in order to avoid these but all of a sudden I had a complete AOTC clone helmet sitting in front of me.

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I am sold on Pepakura. Especially after seeing Skip's Animated Snow Clone dome. You guys have made a strong case for it, as all it takes is time and patience, the crux to building Clone Armor across all mediums. Good work Aussie, keep it up!
 
Thanks Skip.

Replicant Shadow Thanks the endorsement. Patience is important but I wouldn't think that using a Pepakura model requires any more patience than any other method. The keys are a bit of planning and being methodical. You're generally dealing with so many pieces that a minor miss-aligment early on can be a major problem by the end. In many ways writing this thread is giving me a chance to do a bit of planning because I'm going over the build of the mock up and taking extra note of where I can improve things the next time around. I've been cutting out the parts for the first full size helmet lately and I'll probably start that build on the weekend. But in the meantime I'm looking at resins and thinking about finishing techniques. After all the one overarching pattern I've seen on these forums is that eventually everyone has to start sanding.

Just as a quick wrap up of the 50% test build I have a few things that I haven't mentioned yet that I'll have to keep an eye on or do differently.

(Photos have been uploaded but I'll add to commentary via an edit after i get back from lunch)

First up is the brow. Some of the problems here were simply due to the scale that I was working in and the issues associated with the fact that Pepakura lays all the folds out as straight lines, hence it looks a bit jaggy. The rest are due to "poor" folding resulting rolled over edges to the "z" piece that forms the upper surface of the brow...I say "poor" be casue it was the best I could do at the time but I'm now working on a technique that'll address the problem.

Next is the "power plug" on the back of the helmet. This is simply miss-aligned and the build order that I used meant that I didn't have enough access to fix the fit problems. Once a miss-alignment sets in it affects every part that's connected to that part. Hence the bottom of the reccess at the back of the helmet is "all over the place" as well (3rd Photo). Changing the assembly order so that the dome is fitted last will help this a lot, the rest is just being careful.

For those unfamiliar with pepakura you build by matching numbers to one another e.g. in the 3rd Photo you can see that the two 195s are out by about 3mm (1/8 inch).

As anyone who's build one of these helmets (or anything similar) will testify those large smooth areas can bite almost as hard as the fine detail. I had a few spots in the bulged area above the neck ring where I couldn't quite get things to sit "just right" the end result was a few wrinkles, puckers and pinches (pHoto 4).

Photo 5 shows where the brow ring doesn't quit meet the ears - there are similar gaps ina few other spot, legacy of the LHS/RHS mishap of night 2. You can also see that the crease at the top of the ears has turned in a a blend... I was concentrating on the brow and didn't notice this until after the glue had dried.

Last but actually one of the most noticeable when you have the item in you hand is a miss-alignment of the pieces that attach to the RHS corner of the mouth (Photo 6).

All of these things are minor but a slight change in build order and a extra few seconds here and there in the build and they could have been avoided. They could all be fixed with resin or bog but I figure that a extra few minutes getting the paper model as good as possible might save hours sanding.

We'll soon see. It might be a little while until my next post.

I've only just started cutting out parts for the first full scale helmet but I'm still doing a bit of testing with resins (I want to use polyurethane rather than the much more common epoxy) and some "papercraft" techniques. I'll report on anything useful.

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Progress... but a setback as well!

I've attached some photos of the first of the full scale helmets. It came together very nicely but I have a slight problem in that it appears to be too big. Have a look at the second last photo, it's not out by much but the big indicator is the fact that my eye line is about level with the cheekbones. If I have the helmet positioned so that I can look at the T-visor the neck ring is pushing down on my shoulders and I can't look up or down it will certainly be far too big for my nephews to wear. A minor disappointment but it all counts as experience.

You might also notice that I built this helmet inside out, so to speak, in that I've put the glue tabs on the outside. this was intentional and I will go into it a bit later on... provided my plan produces the desired result.

One other thing to note is that I made a minor detail change to the back of the helmet. Just by changing the position of two of the fold lines I made the triangles on the back of the helmet become more acute.

Like I said it's all practice. I will print out the next helt at about 30 cm height and see how that goes. Once I have one that fits me I will decide on if I need to scale to others to suit the boys. At the rate of going they will probably have grown big enough to fit a helmet that fits me by the time I finish anyway.

Still it's all fun!

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