Star Trek Police Mask

Impressed beyond words.

it's amazing what you are doing with just cardboard!
stellar work. I'll be watching this one :thumbsup

Nice job! Been wanting to do this in miniature along with that flying motorcycle for a long while!
Here's a couple of pics, hope they help:

Thanks for all the wonderful feedback. It's really inspiring.

The jobby situation may just work out in my favor. Interview went well, I think. Waiting now on a call back. As for the idea of fiberglass, Caveneau, I don't know. I think that if I fiberglass it, it'll only be on the inside to provide extra rigidity. I figure I'm gonna bondo the crap out of this thing in order to fill some of the holes, and sand like a madman to finalize some of the shapes. If you look at the source material, I'm missing a lot of the rounded bits, and some of the extra built up areas. I don't want to put too much Swedish everywhere, because I don't want to get to bondo stage and start sanding into cardboard. I have the distinct feeling that I'm going to be mixing bondo three ounces at a time in order to have enough work time to do this. It's going to take forever.

Mutant Enemy, I am amazed that you found a left side shot of this guy. Thank you for posting it. A great help.

Now, on to the other big question. Will I do castings of this mother when it's done?

Last night, while laying in bed, I decided that even though it's not screen accurate, it's good enough that I'd be willing to sell it in the end. I'm going to cast these things, and my long term goal is to sell them on here for $100 or less. That might be impractical, and I will probably end up eating the cost of a lot of this project, but I don't care. I don't like the concept of props and replicas that cost so much that you're terrified to touch them. It doesn't make any sense to me. While I appreciate the efforts of some of our more notable Daft Punk inspired members (the reason I found this board in the first place), and I thoroughly understand their pricing, I just can't bring myself to stick a $300 price tag on this thing, and wouldn't be able to even if it was a perfect exact replica. I'd rather make something that people are able to finish out themselves for under $150. And not be terrified to mess up. Or play with. Call me naive. Or stupid. I've been called worse. In the long run, I just want to be able to offer something fun to play with.

However, at the rate I'm currently moving, casting is a few months away, so a lot may change. But mark my words, $100. Or bust. Anybody want one?

Thanks again. See you soon.

Also, as an aside, this thread popped up last night. I'm glad somebody else is interested in the same obscure difficult stuff I am. Good work.

Thanks. Yeah, I capped it directly from the movie because, as I said, I'm interested in building a miniature of the Cop on the flying bike.
Wondering if you have given any thought to final casting of this?
Seems like it would be easy enough to bondo it up, smooth it out, detail it and then cast it in such a way as to make a stone positive and then have that vacu-formed?
Just thinking out loud here!

I'm definitely going to bondo it, sand it, detail it. I watched Volpin slush cast one of his Guy helmets in his "My Drunk Workshop" video, and I figure if he can do it after having had quite a few beers, I'll probably be able to get close while sober. I figure I'll cap off the back end with some scrap cardboard, bondo over that so it's smooth, and make a full helmet style mold out of it. Then I'll resin slush cast to start. I think that ultimately, It's going to be easier and cheaper to do it that way. I don't know, though. As it is, I'm going to have to build a vacuum table to pull the visor piece. I may try to do a really thick resin pull as a positive and vacu-form it, but I don't know how much detail that would actually capture. As it is, I pulled all of the little lensy doo dads off of the mouth area for the third time. I figure I'll redo all of them and either cast them separately, or wait until I've bondoed that area on the mask and all of the pieces and then reattach them for molding. It depends thoroughly on how the bondoing goes, and I'm flat broke at current moment.

I also really want to stay as close to that $100 per piece budget as possible. I'll have to wait and see how things go. In the mean time, I've pulled two plastic casters from an old office chair for the breathing cannisters. I've already cut them down. I'll post pics of the cannisters later this week. When I actually have something to post.

Thanks again for the screen cap. I owe you one.

Sounds good. One word of caution though and you may already know this but it bears repeating: Not all resins are "slushable" so make sure the kind you get works for that application or you could end up with a big expensive mess on your hands.
I myself am trying to track down a good slushable silicone right now for a head sculpt I'm having done.
Good luck, look forward to the results!

Back again for more pain and inaccuracy!

Somewhat small update today, and possibly the last for a while (at least until I can afford some Bondo and other supplies). Here we go:


I was fairly unhappy with how the previous respirator cartridges turned out, so I decided to remake them. I had two plastic casters that came off of an old office chair one night while my friend was trying to use it as a dog sled in our neighborhood. Decided they'd work. Chucked them in the vice, and cut the edges off.


Here you can see them both cut, one unsanded. Final sanding will happen later, so I'm not worried about it now.


And here you can see just how awful my cuts were. This plastic sucks to work with, and took forever to cut even this poorly.


Cut and glued some more Swedish to make the base discs. Used my handy compass cutter to mark out where I beveled to.


I used plumber's epoxy putty to smooth out my horribly rough cuts on the casters, sanded it down. I used a drill to cut a hole in each disc and then a Dremel to bevel the edges to match and allow to the casters to recess into the discs. All guesswork. The great thing about this is that the casters already have a threaded hole in them. Which I will inevitably end up filling before casting. Good for now, though.


Both respirators recessed, beveled, and put together. Boring.


I affixed some more Swedish on the back of the discs, and figured out where to mount them. Used some drywall anchors stuck into the casters to temporarily attach the respirators to the mask. Easy enough. This is far from finished, and definitely far from screen accurate, but I'm fairly pleased considering it's all made out of trash and superglue. The discs are a little bit big, and I think I may modify them further, but for now, I'm gonna let this one sit. Good enough for today.


One more for now. Detail of the left side. Fun!

I got me a jobby, so I'll buy some supplies as soon as I can, but it may be a while til the next update. Thanks for the support, the suggestions, and for taking a look at a heap of cardboard!

Al

Hope you get $ for supplies soon! Love this build. :thumbsup

Agreed, can't wait to see how this evolves.

What a great beginning! I always loved that mask.

Cheers

A

Update time!

I finally spent the twelve bucks I don't have to buy some Bondo. I decided to forgo the resin, partly because I just don't have the money, partly because I'm impatient, and partly because I figured the cardboard is stiff enough to withstand the process on its own. Here we go:


I've never worked with this stuff before, and I'm sure that I'm not mixing it to the proper ratio, but it's working. You can see the difference in the different micro batches I mixed up. The really pink stuff is from much earlier. I got about 45 workable seconds before it started setting up. Decided to use a bit less hardener from there on out.


Starting to work out the contours and the details.


The last one for now. You can see my impressive array of Bondo applicators in this pic. I used a hobby knife to knock off some of the excess in order to make sanding easier on myself later.

Sanding is going to be a pain with all of these tight contours and spaces, but I'll make it work. I'm fairly pleased with the results so far. Sorry for the small update, I'll try to get another one up soon. Thanks for taking a look.

That's gonna be a LOT of sanding! :eek :lol

Looking good!

Looks like fun! Looking forward to your progress.

I've seen alot of builds with 3D-printers, CNC machines and a sorts of custom tools and you are making this awesome thing with cardboard and a pencil and a knife....

If you were stranded on a deserted island and they would find you after a few years, you'd probably have made a functional C3Po and R2D2 from the bark of a palm tree and spit or something. Take that Tom Hanks, with your lame Wilson-ball build!

Blend - I know. It's really going to suck. A lot.

ShinyOne - I appreciate the kudos. I would pray that the island had a washed up shipment of super glue, or else I'd be screwed.

Thanks for the kind words, and thanks again for watching this come together.

Al