Hank Pym Ant-Man Costume WIP (VERY Picture Heavy)

So, My partner decided he wants to do a Hank Pym Ant-Man costume, and since the actual costume part is the easiest bit, we decided it'd be a smart idea to make up the helmet first.

We decided to base the helmet off of this version:


We started off with a base helmet pepped out of foam, from JFCustom's file (BIG help, thanks for that man!), we used plain old craft foam for it and got it to a size where it fit over Lee's face, and then I coated it in some rotocasting resin, and fibreglassed the inside.

Due to the fit of the foam helmet being so tight, the helmet no longer fits onto Lee's head, but we're not too worried, as we've built up over the base helmet so much that we know it'll fit.

I neglected to get photos of the helmet before we started bondoing it, so here's the first photo!


That's just a few layers of bondo, a bare start to the helmet shape.

We did a lot more fillign and sanding to shape it, then threw a coat of filler primer over it to get a look to see where needed more filling


After that, more filling and sanding was done (story of this build, just a whole TON of it), and I took some milliput to shape the eyebrows and general eye area, as it was a lot faster and easier than attempting to do it in bondo.

I've used milliput to shape organic stuff like this before, and I've found that overloading it with petroleum jelly helps a lot, it causes the top layer to go slightly slurryish, which makes shaping with fingers extremely easy.







That was left to set up overnight, and the next day work continued on it, just some light filling and sanding over the milliput areas.

This brought the helmet to a state where we were extremely happy with the shape and smoothness but needed to do a fitting, and as I mentioned before, it no longer would fit on Lee's head!

Luckily, I had some old silicone laying around that needed to be used before it was thrown out, and some spare fibreglass and some rotocasting resin, so I made up a mould of the top half purely to test the fit of the helmet.





After these thin coats, I applied two thickened layers all over and specifically in the eye cavities to they would be the same level as the rest of the mould



(Keys have been added here, and I've marked the middle split for the mothermould)

After this point, I neglected to do another thin coat over the thickened silicone, which presented me with issues when making the mothermould.

After my experience of making a mothermould from fibreglass, I can say that's not for me - despite the cheapness of the method, it's simply a pain to do, so when I make the actual mould for this, I'll be making it from some resin thickened with polyfiber II for my ease)

We got a pull from the mould, and well, the mothermould wasn't exactly the best, so it resulted in the casting being deformed all over, there are pits all over, but the size of the helmet was the same, so we did a fitting:






The casting is also sitting a tad too far forward on the forehead, this is due to the casting getting a huge deposit of resin right there (Lee did it, and it was his first try)

After seeing that the top fits just fine, we started on adding the mandibles to the helmet


They're sintra, glued and bondo'd onto the helmet, and heat shaped round the front.

They were soon covered in a lot more bodyfiller, to start building up the correct shape, this is the stage we both hate, since it can make all your work look crap, but we know it'll look a lot better when it's actually done







We were thinking that the helmet was looking a bit "off" after looking at these photos, so I took them into photoshop and tried something I thought would fix them, and they started to look a lot better.

The issue was that the mandibles were just sticking out of the helmet (which was making the helmet look like a tauntaun to me), so we filled in the space behind the mandible up towards the back of the helmet, which has made it look a whole ton better







That's the state the helmet is currently in, there's more work being done to it today, and tonight I'll be taking some more milliput to fill in the corner area between the bottom of the eyes and the mandibles, as it's throwing off the look of the helmet, and needs to be filled so that the helmet will look right.

From start point to now, it's been just over a week, so we're hoping that we'll be able to get this all done within another week or so, but I'm sure we'll hit some bumps in the road somewhere that'll delay us.

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet

Nice job so far.

Funny, I've been thinking about making an Ant-Man helmet for a while.

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet

Very nice!
I'm really looking forward to the Ant-Man film, and more importantly Iron Man 3 in 33 days... not that I'm counting down or anything!

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet

There is a hugely increasing number of Ant-Man builds, and I am so totally okay with that. I was planning on going a similar route for my helmet build (using that cap pep file as a base) so that's awesome to see it's working for someone else!

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet

Very nice indeed! I look forward to seeing your progress

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet

Thanks guys!
We're looking forward to seeing what happens with the Ant-Man movie too, can't wait to see how his costume is interpreted for the big screen.

We got some more work done today on the helmet, just a whole ton more bondo-ing and sanding, with a bit off additional milliput.







You can see from the first image, the left side is sticking out a bit more than the right, we prefer the look of the right hand mandible, so the left side will be sanded down tomorrow.

We also added milliput onto the inside edge of the mandibles, as the flat edge looks a bit off, and we wanted it to look rounder (which it should do, and hopefully will when actually worn), it hasn't been added all the way up to the edge, as milliput is difficult to sand, so once it's cured overnight, we'll be adding some more bondo to it to blend it into the main part of the mandible.



Can't wait to get some more work done tomorrow, so close to getting this helmet finished!
Ordering the silicone and whatnot for moulding and casting is certainly going to put a biiiig dent in the wallet though.

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet

Well, last few days winter has decided not to leave the UK, so we've seen bouts of snow and a whole lot of rain (at least we have up north!), so progress has been slower than usual.

We were lucky enough to get a day with no rain or snow, so got out and did some powersanding on the helmet in the back garden, which helped reshape a lot on the mandibles. After that it's just been a lot more body filler and sanding, with some added Milliput, we noticed that the mandibles were off on one side around the eye area, so measured and added to make them a bit more equal, and reshaped a bit down at the bottom, unfortunately, it's been made too big on the other side at the bottom now, so more shaping is required to fix our mistake!

I still need to get some stuff laser cut to make the small round bit on the front, along with a bunch of other stuff for other costumes and projects, so that'll likely be the next step after this shaping.

Hoping to get some more shaping done this evening, but we'll see how it goes, we want to get this finished and looking good, but don't want to burn ourselves out on the project, so taking things a little bit slower now.









We're also looking for some new eyes on this thing, so if you guys have any suggestion on where fixes can be made, please let us know!

You can also see, from all the wet sanding going on, the pringles can holding this thing up has deformed and developed a slump! Certainly a pain in the back side.

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet

That's looking incredible! Youve got me wondering if there is a pep of this helmet around anywhere?

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet

Thanks =]

As far as I'm aware, there's no pep of Ant-Man's helmet, at least, I've never seen one around.

Progress has essentially now ground to a halt on this, need to do powersanding on it, which has to be done outside, and well, outside looks like someone opened the casket of ancient winters.

We have made a small amount of progress though I suppose, the front has had the middle cut out, and the blank to be put in has been made - I'll try and snap a photo of them together to put up for folks to see.

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

Here's how he's looking as of now, and will continue to look until we can get a power sander onto him.

The round part is going to be glued and bondod into place to mount different mouthpieces onto, obviously it needs more cleanup right now, bu it gives an idea of how the helmet is actually looking with the round part on it!

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

It's been a while since I updated this thread, but I do finally have an update to share!

We've been busy working on another project recently (you can see it here), but now that that's almost finished, we decided to start up work on the ant-man helmet again!

There's been some general filling and smoothing (as always), but the biggest change, as you can clearly see, is the addition of a mouth piece to the helmet.
With the addition of this, it really pulls the look together on the helmet, now it really is looking like an ant-man helmet, and we're both extremely pleased with how it's going, and the general look of it.

So, here's a few photos so you can see the changes and updates







We were goign to do some more work, but have been delayed by the british weather (again!), threatenign to rain, and the bigger issue of - some one decided to nick our garden table!

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

Well, we finally got our hands on another table to use in the garden, so more progress has been made on the Ant-Man Helmet.

The mouth piece has been blended in better to the mandibles, and just some more general sanding.

I still need to place my order with the laser cutters for the grille of the mouth piece, but other than that, this is rounding out to finished, it's pretty much just that that has to be added, as well as bits for the antennae to attach into.

I'm really liking how it looks in profile, it really screams "Ant-Man", so I'm itching to get it finished.

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

Getting close now! Nice work.

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

kickass work... love seeing people try something different.

Looks great and I will have to try that vaseline tip for the putty

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

Looking great thus far!! I'll love to see it finished

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

I never really followed this comic book character, but from the reference photo you totally nailed it. The work is very clean and smooth, which is a lot harder than people think. Very impressive work.

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

Thanks Guys!

We've decided against molding the helmet with the grille in the mouthpiece, which cuts down on the time it'll take to get this finished by a fair amount, and makes it easier for us to put in the electronics we want in it.

So next thing to do will be to cleanup the hole in the mouthpiece so it's actually round (as it has a flat bit in it right now), and to plug it from the back.

Once that's done it's just adding the stubs of the antenna and lots of wet sanding to get it as smooth as we can =]

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

Got a little bit more work done on the helmet today, including getting the hole on the mouth piece rounder.

Decided to give it a coat of silver paint, as it really brings out imperfections on it, in terms of scratches or small bits of pitting etc., after doign so saw just how much more sanding work was needed, and we've begun doing that, at the minute we've been using some coarse steel wool to do it, but wil be switching to wet sanding pretty soon, as we want this thing to be smooth as possible.











So right now, with the sanding being done, it's looking more like a mess of black and silver scratches!

We'll do more sanding tomorrow, and hit it with some filler primer to get rid of as much of the surface imperfections as we can, then more sanding and filler primer.

Possibly the most boring part of the process, but a very important on, as it's the one that makes everything nice and smooth!

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

So, not really made much progress in the way of physical work, as it's been dour weather the last couple of days, with rain and winds, but I was able to make some non physical process.

I started designing the LED array to fit inside of the mouth piece.



There are 24 5mm LEDs and a single 10mm LED placed in the centre, they're going to be running off of a single 9V, which will fit inside the mandibles, when the helmet is cast, and will have a microphone hooked into the circuit, so as to have the LEDs light & dim in reaction to voice.

With the LED set up it can be used with both the grille design for the front, and this design we've decided on also:



I'll be having the black cut as vinyl decals, and they'll be put over frosted acrylic.

Re: Hank Pym Ant-Man Helmet WIP (Picture Heavy)

We got all the sanding work on this thing pretty much finished up today (or, it was finished until lee dripped some polyester resin down the outside when fibre glassing the gap closed on the front!)

It has had a few more layers of paint and sanding, at the moment it's only sanded up to 600 grit, but we'll probably be going into the thousands tomorrow, after we take a trip to a local car supply place and pick up more sandpaper and body filler.

It's coated in gold paint just because it's what was on hand (it isn't gold any more, it got another sanding after these photos), and as you can see, we've added posts for the antenna to attach to when it's cast up.







here you can see the posts that have been added:



To give an idea of how this thing actually looks with antenna attached, we just temporarily attached what we'll be using to the posts on the helmet with some clay.







We've been trying to decide how we want the antenna to look too, when completed, as the options are either as you can see above, just ending in a tapered point, or with a small bobble on the end, like this:







I'm leaning more towards the antenna with the bobble, just looks "right" to me, what d'you guys think?