Death Watch Building Armor for Star Wars Celebration 2015 - Now with Night Owl

RalfSkunk · Oct 7, 2014

I almost made some progress this weekend, but not really. Shawn was good enough to have his CNC machine, known as Lopez, cut me out some chest armor. All said and done, it looked really good, but we made it too small...

On a good note, My friend Colin was able too put a few hours in and we cast another helmet. I've been asked to explain the roto-casting process a bit, so I made it a point to get some pictures to help explain if other people were interested in the process as well.

Chest armor looks pretty good.

...but maybe a bit small...

When we roto-cast, we pour the resin into the helmet mold.

Often we will put the mixing tool into the mold and pour the resin onto the mixer while it is spinning to help cover the sides of the mold. Care should be taken if you do this as you can easily get resin all over your clothes, the floor, ceiling, walls, dog....

We then pick up the mold and rotate it in every direction to allow the resin to cover all the surfaces, then we repeat...

The first coat of resin is straight resin and is used as a print coat to get all the details. Once this layer begins to thicken up, we place the mold open side down to allow the resin to drip down and thicken up around the neck hole. The next two coats of resin are done the same way, but a filler is added to thicken up the resin; this coats more evenly and helps add thickness. The last coat is again just straight resin.

thorssoli · Oct 9, 2014

Whittled some ears for the girly helmet:

Filled and sanded them too:

Looks like they'll fit:

More to come...

thorssoli · Oct 14, 2014

I'm kinda doubting anybody's actually reading this thread, but just in case, here's a progress update...

Chest prototype painted:

Back and collar pieces carved:

Back and collar pieces assembled:

We've also started fairing the dome into the sides of the Nite Owl helmet:

Here it is next to the other helmet for size comparison:

So progress continues. Stay tuned...

Jaro Krieg · Oct 15, 2014

Is it intended that the earcaps and Visor of the male-helmet are not resembling the TCW style?
Or you want to go for a realistic look? :-/

thorssoli · Oct 15, 2014

We're going for a realistic look. Our idea was to think of the animated series as concept art that would be handed to the prop shop in preparation for making them practical.

Here's a shot of the TCW-style Jango Fett helmet:

Knowing what the practical Jango helmet looks like and going the same direction with the animated Death Watch helmet as a starting point, I think we've got it right. Think of it as Death Watch in the movie style instead of TCW style.

Since there's not a practical helmet akin to the Nite Owl or Bo Katan helmet to use as a reference, there will be more license to tweak it as we build it.

Jaro Krieg · Oct 15, 2014

hm if you think that thought longer than wouldnt the classical armor plates make more sense too?

Jango was portrayed in the season 6 arc this way.

Sure, they recycled the opper body of the existing Deathwatch model (and erased the deepth-detail on chestplate and Diamond) -> but on the other hand, they modelled the leg-armor extra just for him and his brief 5 second of screentime on a holo-projektor.

thorssoli · Oct 15, 2014

The aim was to have a slightly distinct shape for the chest armor. Something that suggests it might be the same manufacturer as Jango's armor, but maybe a different model.

We're going to do the shins and knees in the same shape as the screen-used Jango suit. The thighs and shoulders will be different (leaning more toward the animated style). The gauntlets will also be done with details from the animated style rendered with the design language of the film-used suit.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Jaro Krieg · Oct 15, 2014

I would suggest to go more 'animated' with the shins. The only diffrence compared to jangos would be a symetric shape of the guard. Also what seems like an extra-plate to make the front section of the shin stronger is missing at the animated style. Maybe it would make sense that Jango used a 'standard' symetrical plate and modified it by cutting the outlines to suit his ergonomic preferences and enforcing the front because thicker is better. XD

While the knees. The tcw style only misses the Dart-section and a triangular piece at the lower edge on knee-angle side. (Which is surprisingly ergonomic compared to the normal jango knees - were the point of the rectangular side is stiching in to the upper calf.

)

I'm interested how you guys will manage the Belt btw.

thorssoli · Oct 17, 2014

Funny, the belt strikes me as one of the easier parts.

UPDATE: Matt hasn't been coming around the shop much this week (some lame excuse about a job and a family... I don't get it.) but in his absence, I've got the chest and collar parts pretty smooth and shiny:

I've got the backplate all smoothed out too:

The Nite Owl helmet has also seen a significant amount of filling and smoothing:

One more round of fine sanding and it'll be ready for shiny paint. Then molding.

This is the part where everyone really needs to give Matt a hard time for not starting on the jetpack yet. Time is running out...

RalfSkunk · Oct 19, 2014

It's been a few days since I've posted any updates, so I apologize for the massive photo dump... We've been making loads of progress, but feel free to ask any questions. I should take a moment to thank Fierfek for the 3D models we have been using. He sets these up as great pep files, although we just cut them out with Lopez.

Progress on the night owl helmet.

Chest and back armor coming together and getting ready to mold.

Gel-coat being applied for fiberglass molds.

Fiberglass molds coming together.

Some maker-bot action for the gauntlets - Thanks to AprilStorm!

And Night Owl boob by Fierfek.

cardiaz009 · Oct 20, 2014

how much do you think a clone trooper helmet would cost

RalfSkunk · Oct 20, 2014

Thossoli traded with the maker of the clone trooper helmets to get these, so you can PM him to see if he is willing to let one go or get the contact information for the maker (although I'm pretty sure Shawn said that the mold for these gave out).

thorssoli · Oct 21, 2014

RalfSkunk's little pictures really need to be bigger. Yes, I know I can just click on them to see them full-sized, but someone really needs to show him how to post them so they're already bigger. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but his are more like 200.

In other news, I pulled the mold for the chest and back armor. Here's the chest armor mold flipped over with the prototypes still inside:

This is my assistant Kate cleaning the clay off of the fiberglass:

She's almost done with the chest and collar mold:

Then we'll get to work on the back mold:

Once the molds are cleaned up, trimmed, and polished, we'll be laying up fiberglass copies to wear. These are truly exciting times.

In other news, the mold for the Nite Owl helmet is nearly done and I've made quite a bit of progress smoothing out the shoulder plates. Unfortunately, I haven't snapped any photos of them since they looked like this:

I'll have to remedy that.

GhostDarAvode · Oct 21, 2014

Wow!
this is ridiculously sick! What are you using for the making the mold? the pink stuff...
Great work!
-Ghost

thorssoli · Oct 22, 2014

The pink stuff is silicone moldmaking rubber. I did a better job of explaining the moldmaking process in my blog: When My Brain Leaks, the Drops Drip Here.: Clone Wars Death Watch Costumes Part 1: the Helmets

Since the rest of the armor doesn't have quite as many details and hard edges to catch on, there's no need for a flexible mold. Instead, they're being made with rigid fiberglass molds.

Here's the chest mold all cleaned up:

After applying a release agent, the whole thing gets a nice thick coat of gelcoat (tinted black in this case):

The backplate got the same treatment:

Once the gelcoat had cured until it was firm but still tacky, I mixed up a batch of fiberglass resin and gave everything a light coat:

While it was still very wet, I tore patches of 3/4-oz fiberglass matting and placed them into the wet resin. I made sure they overlapped and covered the entire piece:

Then I used a china brush to force more resin into the matting and work out any bubbles that were in there:

I repeated this whole process until I had at least three layers of fiberglass mat over the entire piece. Then I let it sit and cure:

Once the resin had cured completely, it's just a matter or prying the parts out of the molds and cleaning off the mold release:

To reuse the molds, all we have to do is polish them a bit, add another layer of mold release, and layup the gelcoat and glass just like we did before.

We'll end up pulling another set of these parts for each of the guys we're dressing up and then we can trim all of the edges and prep them for paint. Properly cared for, molds like this should be good for dozens of pulls.

eqdizzle · Oct 24, 2014

thorssoli said:
Funny, the belt strikes me as one of the easier parts.

UPDATE: Matt hasn't been coming around the shop much this week (some lame excuse about a job and a family... I don't get it.) but in his absence, I've got the chest and collar parts pretty smooth and shiny:

I've got the backplate all smoothed out too:

The Nite Owl helmet has also seen a significant amount of filling and smoothing:

One more round of fine sanding and it'll be ready for shiny paint. Then molding.

This is the part where everyone really needs to give Matt a hard time for not starting on the jetpack yet. Time is running out...

So overall very good on the nite-owl lid...the brow line is way too over pronounced, imho. I know you aren't going for TCW accurate, but it might be something to consider knocking down that line some.

Here's a pic of my Cruizer for comparison:

Keep up the great work sir!

RalfSkunk · Oct 25, 2014

The cruizer helmet is indeed a nice piece, but we really had to make some changes otherwise our helmet would be just another version of the animated style helmet. It's a pretty simple design, so we were limited as to what we could do. Given the known differences between the Jango helmet in the movies and TCW series, I think we did well... but stay tuned as there will be more artistic license taken!

thorssoli · Oct 27, 2014

Apologies for not posting more about this lately, but we've been pretty busy with another project and haven't been able to focus on this like we wanted to.

So once we were finally done smoothing out the the helmet, it was time to lay up some silicone:

Like always, there's a series of round "registration keys" which I cast in a separate mold and add to the surface of the silicone to make obvious places to mate the rubber jacket mold with the fiberglass mothermold.

Here's the silicone after all of the layers had been built up and smoothed out: