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 !

Boba Fett / Iron Man crossover helmet wip

For thos who  are unfamiliar, the "As You Wish" movement headed by Art Andrews of the Dented Helmet and The RPF is raising money for the Make A Wish foundation by having a large group of talented artists make unique helmets from a raw Boba Fett helmet cast which will all be auctioned off at Star Wars Celebration in Orlando this year. There have been so many awesome and inspiring builds from this fundraiser that I wanted to make something along those lines also. This is not  affiliated with the "As You Wish" fundraiser, just inspired by it. Maybe one day I will be lucky enough to be asked to participate.  Here is my work in progress of my Boba Fett, Iron Man crossover, I will post another full blog on it when I finish it. Progress can be seen on my fanpage www.facebook.com/VectorSigmaCreations

EE3 Boba Fett style blaster pistol built from scratch

I decided on doing a full costume for next year of a Mandalorian Assasin/warrior. My first item to build was the pistol I will have in a thigh holster. I modeled it after Boba Fett's EE3 blaster rifle from Return of the Jedi, which is made from a Webley and Scott flare gun. I started off basically making a replica of the flaregun, and then turning that into the blaster much like the original propmakers for the movie.

I downlaoded and printed a blueprint for the original Webley flaregun made by Alan Sinclair (Wizardoflight) on the Denated Helmet forum and used that for measurements and reference. I cut the main frame of the gun from mdf and the barrel from a piece of pvc pipe.

next I cut the hand grip sides from some 1/4 inch mdf and glued them on, I think in the future with a gun grip, I will finish the grips seprately and attach them later in the build.

using a pattern I made from a piece of cardboard, I cut out the reciever shell from sintra, heated it up some and wrapped it over the barrel, gluing it in place.

I rounded off the edges of the handgrip

I cut another strip of sintra and formed it to a similar shape as the bluprint for the trigger guard

The trigger and hammer parts were cut from.... can you guess... SINTRA ! thet were shaped accordingly and glued into notches I made in the gun frame. after that, it pretty much looked like a Webley and Scott flaregun !

Up to this part in the build I only have a couple hours in this, so things are going smooooooooth !

i used Bondo to finish the reciever shell and fill in the rear of the gun.

me holding the pistol for scale

Next, I decided to lengthen the barrel rather than adding something over it, which was easy enough !

I then decided to use my x-acto knife in an unsafe way.

After applying first aid, (paper towel and duct tape) I moved on. I cut some thin strips of sintra for the barrel fins with my new(ish) band saw. I'm so glad I didn't have to cut those by hand, especially after cutting myself already. I marked out even spacing around the barrel to line these buggers up right the first time.

After that, it got some touch up sanding and a coat of primer

I painted it mettalic silver first, so that after the final paint I can weather/damage it by scraping and sanding down to the silver layer, giving it the bare-metal look. I coated it in a gunmetal gray charcoal, added some grip detail using self sticking black foamies, and made the barrel tip from a conical shaped rubber foot I found digging though my junk boxes. I also took an old cheap rifle scope and cut it down shorter for the pistol. I notice that a lot of pistols in the Star Wars universe have scopes for some reason and I felt staying with tradition would help make this custom blaster more recognizable.

In that last picture I started light weathering and a light inkwash in the details to age the blaster some. I will add a matte clearcoat to it later to dull the finish down some as it is too shiny. Thanks for reading !

Iron Man Arc Reactor build.

I wanted to do something a little different for my next project and with my friend starting his Iron Man helmet, I wanted to make an Arc Reactor. I used 2 main references and kinda went with my own design, so It's not screen accurate. I checked out an "instructable" by Honus, and a build by ThrowingChicken on his website for some tips.  I printed out a picture from TC's website as a blueprint to start, and cut a ring 1" deep from 4" pvc pipe for the outer bezel.

I then cut out 2 rings from Sintra for the inner ring the same size as the one in the blueprint

Next it was time to cut out an acrylic ring for the light lens/diffuser. I started with a 3\8 inch (aprox) thick of acrylic and traced the outer and inner lines on both sides with a sharpie. I then cut out the center section with my rotary tool. The cut was kinda gnarly so I needed some serious sanding to get it round and smooth.

I wrapped some medium grit sandpaper around a tube around the same diameter as the hole, this trick make a perfectly round hole that looked like is was done on a bandsaw by someone who knew what they were doing !

and again for the outer cut

I scuffed the acrylic ring with some fine steel wool to hopefully diffuse the light some.. I made a template to use so I could make sure the copper wrap would be evenly spaced

I cut some little squares out of Sintra to put between the copper wrap and the clear ring to simulate the tops of the transformers, then I took some light guage power wire left over from car audio installations and cut them into about 2 foot lengths. I layed the wire flat and carefully using my hobby knife, sliced off a strip of the casing lengthwise and pulled the bare wire out. I wrapped the wire tight around the Sintra square and clear ring and trimmed the end of the wire to be on the bottom of the ring, then superglued it in place.

Based on a tip from a youtube video, I checked out the cheesy car accessory aisle at Autozone and found a package of blue LED lights that came with a little 12 volt battery box and switch so people could try the lights out in the package. I thought this was perfect and saved me alot of time and headache soldering led's and trying to wire my own contraption.

The Arc reactors similar to mine on screen had 10 lights around the outer ring and 1 in the middle. The lights I bought only had 10 led's total so I cheated and put 9 on the outer ring and 1 in the middle, it turned out good for the spacing in the final product. I mounted them to another thinner acrylic ring the same diameter as the main ring, which fit nicely on top.

I took one of the inner rings I cut from Sintra and drilled holes in it, keeping them "grouped" in 3 even sections , and used some small screws and spacers saved from a fried computer I painted the top ring black and the bottom ring silver and mounted the 2 together as shown.

I used a faucet aerator for the center bit. The one I bought from Lowe's was a pain in the behind to cut apart too.

Here you can see the 2 inner rings together, and the back plate of the reactor. I used a dvd shiny side up thinking it would look cool, but you really can't see it, so that was a waste. I glued little pieces of Sintra between the wires so I could mount the center part above them and not damage the wires. I hot glues the wires in place so as not to pull them out from the lights from the back, that string of wires is bound to catch on crap occasionally when showing off.

I glued the backplate into the bezel first, then the light ring, and I also cut a short piece of chrome 1 1/4 sink tailpiece to put in the middle for mounting the whole center section, it fit perfectly inside the rings and the sink aerator fit right on top. Before mounting this however, I glued the last led into the sink aerator.

 In the previous picture, you can see the 12volt battery box and switch that came with the lights. The last thing was to make a trim piece for the back, cut from a sticky foam square from the craft store.

 All finished !!