Andrew was kind enought o answer some off topis emails I sent him (about the see-through Alien) and sent me an interview he did about the storm trooper stuff.
I won't 'defend' him cos people will make their own minds up regardless- but here is some good info for anybody interested, taken from this interview.
Dan
Quote:
While at Shepperton Studios I meticulously kept all moulds on racks in an organised manner and all with protective skins moulded and left on them until further use. We used to sell the same props, or derivatives of, several times over, as new production companies came and went. This was standard practice at all studios and in fact the `prop stores` are without a doubt the most fascinating insight into movie history. The word `prop` means property. The items we retained from film productions were our property and it was our business to reinvent them or sell them again for the production of lesser movies or maybe ads. I remember one quite splendid helmet that I created for `Outland`, it not only appeared in another four movies but ended up as the main feature in a British Airways advert.
After finishing with the film business and requiring valuable space, I decided one day in the early eighties to have a clear out. Out went the Stormtrooper armour moulds, but I kept the protective skins for reference, and I also kept the moulds for the helmets, as they were better made , in pretty good condition and possibly one day may have a use.
4. Are the helmets from the original moulds?...
Yes they certainly are….except for the Stormtrooper Battle Spec, which is CNC machined and very good reproduction. Even I have capitulated and have started to use computers.
5. Who actually makes your current production of helmets.?...
I make the hand made ones from the original moulds and I get help with the Battle Specs.
6.. Debate over the rear swoop of the helmet and undercut under `vocoder`….
My original concept was to make the character without joints and to be as organically grown as possible. To achieve this all mouldings had to be undercut and blend into the next. With the Stormtrooper helmet, I had conceived to make it by rotational moulding, that is in a split female mould using PVC or PU polyols. Considering that the development budget was zero, my ambitions were curtailed into practicalities and so I looked around the workshop to find an alternative and something that would suffice as a prototype.
`Fishponds`…that was the answer. I was running a nice line in fishponds and rock cascades, made from HDPE, a tough flexible material in a beautiful` gungy ` green. I manufactured these fishponds from sheet material 1.5mm thick, heated to a semi molten state and sucked with vacuum over a male mould. The material is a pig to mould and really needs something as rough as the texture on a rock cascade to stop the moulded item shrinking back to its preformed shape. Its advantages were that it would form well in undercuts and was tough enough to spring off overcentre moulds without cracking.
Knowing the exact parameters of this materials moulding characteristics, I set about sculpting a Stormtrooper head mould incorporating the absolute maximum undercuts and tumblehomes that I reckoned I could mould the HDPE material around and still achieve a release. This is where the mould making material I used came into there own, by slowly increasing the undercuts on the sculpted head and trial running the mouldings, I eventually arrived at the maximum undercuts I could achieve. This method of trial and error, contributed significantly to determining the final shape of the head, and at the end of the day, although not quite as originally conceived, it was a pretty good effort.
OK. .at this point I had proved to myself that a reasonable undercut could be achieved…but it was vacuum formed piece and as such only part of an all enveloping structure. To make a complete head I was going to have to mate a few moulding together. If this was going to look any good at all I would have to be subtle on how I disguised the joints….It could not look fabricated…..that would really defeat the object of the exercise.
I ended up making the head from five mouldings, each one incorporating the maximum undercuts for that particular moulding and each one overlapping the other on sympathetic lines that disguised the joints and gave the overall appearance of homogeneous, organically grown being. Splitting the sculpted moulds up like this also gave me the facility to enhance certain aspects and characteristics. For example:- the ears which hid the vertical joint on the side of the head could also be used to widen the head and increase the intimidating presence of the being , such as can found in a lion’s main or aggressive lizard. The eyes, like a fly`s eye could be made to see in all directions, hence the `blister eyes` and again adding to the intimidating features of the character. Features like these allowed me to fine tune the character and hence the first prototype that I presented was eagerly accepted. A request for 50 heads soon followed.
This was fine, but I had presented a prototype that was made from a totally unsuitable materials and a material that was not really viable for reproducing a larger quantity than one.
However I persevered and made several more helmets in the green HDPE. The front face of the character held up reasonably well on shrinkage, but the looser back part was susceptible to severe distortion, and every helmet I made ended up a different distorted shape in this area. In actual fact I had overcome this previously with a cunning trick of moulding, but the budget restraints led me to abandon it. I had incorporated a serrated flexible hose as an insert around the back of the head, moulded over it and completely encapsulating it. Upon release the moulding brought the flexible hose with it and `hey presto` a beautiful undercut with minimum distortion.
The few initial samples of helmets were now being used on the film set, they obviously fitted the bill as I was asked to visit the studios to discuss the project. It was obvious from this meeting that the production team had little success in making headway with any characters, and so I was asked if I could also make the rest of the Stormtrooper character, along with a host of others. My contact after this meeting was John Mollo, who visited me at Twickenham for future discussions. One of the main points of discussion was the materials I could use to make the characters. It obviously was not viable to continue using the fish pond material and the minimum quantity of bespoke material that I could get made was I ton. Well a ton of plastic at 1.5mm thick makes a hell of a lot of mouldings and although the production company was extremely enthusiastic and encouraging for me to produce items for them, I had no order or contract.
I trusted John Mollo, but I was being asked to invest in a ton of material, only 1/3 of which would be enough for the requirements, to produce items that I had to develop at my own cost on the hearsay that I might get paid. Well that’s the film industry…..and of course I did it..
The material was a problem, HDPE was a nightmare to mould and when it came to the armour, you would have severe problems joining it. My knowledge extended to other thermoplastic materials and I opted. for and ABS with a high content of butadiene This formulation offered good impact strength with an adequate degree of flexibility that would allow an actor to perform in the armour and also allow me to manipulate reasonable undercuts from the moulded material at 1.5mm thick. It was also chemically weldable, which was a fundamental requirement if the required effect was to be achieved. Colour….well 30 years ago thermoplastic extruders were not thick on the ground. Materials were used for mainly engineering applications and so available colours were limited. At a minimum extruded quantity of 1 ton my options were black, grey or white.. My risk was to be left with the material if the job went pear shape, plus I had 2/3 ton to absorb into my stock that I would have to find a use for. I chose white as the most useful colour and that is why the Stormtroopers are all white as also are the X wing pilots. Other characters that I made were black and grey and in 3mm thick material, this was more of a stock item and easier to source.
