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

It's been way too long without any updates, so here's something at least.

I've been out of the country for the past month and Matt hasn't made it out to the workshop while I've been away. One of my assistants did a major cleanup in the workshop and I wasn't able to find the Nite Owl helmet in the midst of the mess, so I went ahead and rotocast a couple of new ones:
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Then I got a bit of a start trimming out the visor area:
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They fit my 23.5" head with a bit of room to spare:
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So that's nice:
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Hopefully I'll get a chance to do some painting over the next few days. Stay tuned...
 
Alright! At long last, the holiday dust has settled, a major purge/reboot has happened in the workshop, and I've finally found a few minutes to do a bit of work on the Nite Owl helmets.

I started with the same base color that we used for the DW boys. Here's my girlfriend trying one on:
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She's got a tiny head, so it'll need a bit more padding in order to sit right.

Once that was set up, I masked it all off and painted the cheeks and the strip around the back in a coat of satin aluminum:
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Here's another shot showing one from the side:
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Tomorrow I'll be gluing in the visors and it'll be time to get started on the weathering. Can't wait!

We should (finally) be starting on the jetpack this week too. Stay tuned...
 
Visors installed:
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Forehead icon painted on:
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Here's Matt beginning the weathering process:
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Here's the first helmet with all of the scratches drybrushed on:
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And just when the blackwash started:
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Matt likes the blackwashing:
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Here's the first three Nite Owls when Matt was done weathering them:
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After staring at them for a few minutes, we decided that they needed a bit more drybrushing to bring out the silver scratches at the edges:
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Now we just need to retrofit them all with rangefinder stalks. Oops.

Next up: beginning the jetpack fabrication:
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Stay tuned...
 
Thanks Darren. I'm having fun with this project.

Last night I got started on retrofit parts to add rangefinders to all of the Nite Owl helmets.

I started by spraying a bunch of mold release on a reject casting. Then I cast the ear section of one of the Death Watch helmets and ground the back down until there was a vertical groove that mad it paper thin where the bolt would go through. Then I gooped a bunch of bondo onto it and stuck it onto the helmet. Once it cured, I did some quick cleanup around the edges with the belt sander. Here's the nearly done piece fitted back onto a reject helmet:
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Here's the widget dry-fitted on one of the finished helmets:
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Now I just need to clean it up and add a couple of details to it (because it's a big, blank space otherwise) and then I'll pull a mold and cast copies for the rest of the helmets. The outer cover piece will be cast from the same mold that we've been using for the Death Watch helmets.
 
Thanks for all the compliments, guys.

It looks like Matt has dropped the update ball, so here's a quick teaser of the next parts in progress...

Jetpack skeleton:
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Nite Owl boobs:
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Shoulders:
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I'll probably be building a Pep version of the leg armor since they look like they're really simple.

Stay tuned...
 
Thanks. I'm pretty proud of it.

Progress continues.

Here's Matt working on the jetpack a bit more:
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At this point, the main body is mostly made, but this is the most up-to-date photo we've got:
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We've also added some details to the ear widget for the Nite Owls:
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I think it's a lot better looking now:
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So we went ahead and poured a mold for it:
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Yesterday I finally got a chance to do a bit more smoothing on the Nite Owl armor parts:
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Here they are in a shiny new coat of primer:
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With any luck, we should be starting molds for the boob armor and the jetpack sometime this weekend.

Since our little group has been slowly growing, we're rolling out a few more helmet castings too:
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Stay tuned...
 
Awesome thread guys. Are you planning to do any DW officers, flamethrower or "Grapple" characters? Or just sticking to grunts and NO's?


Sent from my iPhone
 
Right now the plan is just plain Death Watch and Nite Owl troopers and one as Bo Katan. As we get closer, we'll probably end up coming up with a few minor variations.

Here's another Nite Owl helmet casting with the retrofit ear widget installed:
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By now we've got quite a few helmets in progress. I think there's a total of 8 for the guys and 7 for the girls. Here's Kate trimming the edges on some of them:
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While she was doing that, Matt made some more progress on the jetpack prototype:
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I took the opportunity to try on the smaller sized pair of gauntlets:
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Later in the evening, we taped some of the Nite Owl parts onto Kate to see how they'd fit:
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Quite by accident, everything seems as though it was made for her:
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Even the jetpack looks right:
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Speaking of jetpacks, we've made our first step toward lighted, smoking exhaust:
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So stay tuned for more updates as we make progress...
 
Lighted smoke exhaust!!! That's is awesome, please say WD-40 flame thrower is next!

WD-40 no, but I've been thinking of building on of these into my own armor: LINK.

For the exhaust, we'll probably end up with a more orange color when it's all said and done. For now, we're working out the plumbing end of things.
 
So really dumb question, but is there a reason you're doing the a traditional Fett pack in lieu of the DW jetpack ?

Looking over all of the references we've been able to find, and the various scenes in the show, there's a lot of different jetpacks worn by DW troops. We're going with the one we like (which seems to be the most common among the Death Watch and the NIte Owls). Here's what it looks like now:
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A bit more smoothing and sanding and this piece should be ready to mold.

We'll also be turning down some tank toppers for either side, the exhaust nozzles, and one or two different versions of the rocket to go in the middle. So there will be at least a little bit of variation.

In other news, we finally got around to adding a rangefinder to one of the Nite Owl helmets:
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And then the rest of them:
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I'm pretty happy with them:
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So we're making more:
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Finally, Matt finished edging all of the Nite Owl chest armor pieces:
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Then I sprayed the whole thing with a liberal coat of PVA mold release:
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And applied a layer of gelcoat:
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Once the gelcoat had firmed up, it was time to put on a coat of fiberglass resin:
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Then I soaked some fiberglass mat into it:
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After working out the bubbles with a chip brush, here's how the mold looked:
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I did the shoulder mold at the same time:
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I also made some progress on this girl's helmet:
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Which definitely stands out in the rest of the stack:
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So that's the latest. Stay tuned for more.
 
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