Ord Mantell's PP2 Build

[Ord Mantell]

After initial masking I go back over everything with a fine tooth comb by using a magnifying glass to inspect for errors. And I have found lots of errors. All methods of masking have a multitude of ways of introducing errors.

Here, the bottom left corner is pretty sloppy and needs to be redone.

For this spot I'll project an image directly onto the surface to apply latex where it needs to go using a toothpick. It's tedious and time consuming but allows for much finer detail. And this helmet has quite a lot of fine detail. It's actually surprising how much.

The main drawback of using projection is you block the light right as you apply anything to the surface but if you pick the right view angle the difficulty can be minimized.

 

[BudaFett]

I think...that's the craziest way I've ever seen someone stencil!

 

[Ord Mantell]

I think...that's the craziest way I've ever seen someone stencil!

My build threads are for entertainment purposes only. Do not use as medical advice.

Dean recently suggested a whole new color to try for the helmet kill stripes. He hadn't tried it yet so I thought I would give it a try and I think its pretty good. Certainly the best Floquil straight-out-of-the-bottle option I've seen so far. I tried it out real fast on the test helmet...

vs pic of the real helmet:

couple more shots...

 

[Ord Mantell]

 

[Ord Mantell]

 

[Ord Mantell]

I know it doesn't look like it's changed much, but the gray masking was a lot more effort than can be seen.

 

[BudaFett]

Talk about an ugly duckling phase!

 

[Ord Mantell]

Talk about an ugly duckling phase!

This is the stage where the psychological strain of "trust the process" is peaking.

This looks slightly less beaten to a pulp...

Here is mine next to the original in the same stage in the Daydream polaroid provided by Sandy Dhuyvetter...

 

[Ord Mantell]

There... starting to look a little more recognizable:

A lot of the hard stuff is over. I can probably get the next three colors on in one day. Maybe.

 

[BudaFett]

Oh, that's looking great!

 

[DrToothache]

Amazing work on the helmet!

 

[Ord Mantell]

Oh, that's looking great!

Amazing work on the helmet!

Many thanks you guys!

I'm rethinking the upper cheek color all of a sudden now that it's time for that to go on, so instead of tackling that head-on, I decided to distract myself with some experimentation on the practice helmet.

I've been studying the PP2 helmet for long enough now that I've come to appreciate much of the chipping damage all over the helmet can't just be from careful latex masking. After Mario told me about the vaseline I did experiments yielded interesting results like this...

But masking with vaseline is actually quite difficult, with results being completely unpredictable, and it presents certain challenges for a helmet, not the least of which is once the helmet is covered in vaseline, handling it is nearly impossible. Certainly impractical if you want to go fast like Daydream had to. Plus we have pretty good evidence latex was the main method of masking for most if not all of it.

I originally suspected a long time ago a simpler method for creating the detailed chipping seen on the Daydream helmets. I feel pretty certain Mario and company used the technique, if not intentionally then at least accidentally, although it might've started accidentally and then proceeded to be used intentionally. The technique is fun, but you couldn't hope to use it to replicate the damage of the original helmets with any precision. But it could be used for spot enhancements, or for making your own custom version of a Daydream style helmet.

This technique can add tons of random dots of silver, or roughen up the edges of existing latex pulls...

I'm just playing around with it. I'm not really using it much on the helmet paintup although I'll maybe use it a little bit, mostly in the back where the chipping gets rather absurd.

 

[Ord Mantell]

 

[Ord Mantell]

All the colors are on and everything is de-masked finally. the right ear has been under scotch tape for a year and a half. I had to take that off and degrease it, wash, rinse and reattach. Kill stripes, a lot of detailing work, numerous fixes, additions and weathering still to go... but the red sure does pull it all together...

 

[BudaFett]

Now we're cooking! That looks fantastic!

 

[Ord Mantell]

killstripes

 

[BudaFett]

Damn, gorgeous!

 

[Ord Mantell]

Damn, gorgeous!

Thanks Buda!

One of the difficult aspects of the killstripes color is not just the hue, which is really hard to nail because it definitely changes from lighting and angle, but also its value, i.e. its darkness/lightness. It should be about the same or slightly darker than the dome green. You can only really gauge this by looking at it in black & white. The color I was hoping to use which I posted about earlier turned out to be no good. Even though it went on looking great, when it cured it got way too dark and brown. Something that seems to happen with these old Floquils. So my killstripes are a new mix. The problem with any orange, if you start making it darker, it gets brown real fast. I found that keeping saturation of the hue high is the only way to counter balance that.

killstripes on the original, just looking at the values (for those not familiar with color theory, 'value' is the 'v' in HSV colorspace... the location of a color on the black to white scale. Hue, Saturation, and Value (HSV) are the three best terms to use in discussing color IMO)...

I don't have weathering on my helmet yet so that will improve the balance even further than this, but already it's about where it needs to be..

I knew this color was going to be tough to get right going in. At this point I'm just happy to be anywhere close.

 

[Ord Mantell]