Monday, August 13, 2012

Iron Man / Boba Fett crossover helmet



 This project idea came about while goofing off with 2 builds,  I had taken  an Iron Man faceplate that I recently finished from a pepakura model done by my friend Alan, and rested it on an unfinished Mandolorian helmet for a picture, and this is how it started !  I was inspired by all of the really cool projects coming out of the As You Wish Helmet Project and wanted to do something like it on my own. Unfortunately, I had no idea that one of the well known artists selected for the project had the same idea, only our 2 helmets are very different.
Basically, I took my Iron Man Mask and did some basic trimming, the mask was made a little bigger than normal, so it matched up pretty good. I then heated it up a little and epoxied it to the Mando helm.



 Here I have done the basic filling and sanding using ApoxieSculpt and Bondo

 I cut out "ear" holes for the ear pucks that I made
 The Ear pucks just plug in to the holes for easy mounting

 I shaped a piece of styrene with a little heat and trimmed it to finish off the top vent/scoop



After drawing the rough shape of the scratch marks, I used a dremel to carve them out

Then I scored the panel lines in with a hobby knife, and carved them in with a hobby saw, a hack saw blade would probably work as well

I had to fix alot of spots where the polyester resin didn't cure properly. I carved them out and filled it in with body filler.

After several coats of filler primer and lots of sanding, I wet sanded the helmet with 1000 grit before painting it dark hunter green. During this project, I always considered the "balance" between Boba Fett and Iron Man asthetics. I chose to do Fett colors, but keep it glossy like Iron Man usually is

I transposed the gold and red in Boba's helmet to keep the iconic Iron Man gold faceplate. I painted the "ears" red to maintain a Boba color scheme

I did the cheek bones in navy blue, that was kinda tricky to mask off properly

I decided to do the Fett kill stripes and masked those off

And here it is assembled ! I brushed in black acrylic paint into the scratches and wipe the excess from the surface
 My camera phone can sometimes make the perspective look off and distort the picture a little


 My Boba Fett helmet was my first real prop build, and here it is with my newest build. This picture was taken while it had the bright red ears, I repainted them the darker red in the other pics after this was taken.
I hope you like it and thanks for looking !