(Another) Iron Man Helmet

[Mole]

First thread and first time I've ever tried doing anything like this....

I picked up a cheap IM helmet on the bay a while ago and I've finally found some time to work on it. It's a gift for my husband so I'm having to find time when he's not around to work on it so it's pretty slow going at the moment.

Please excuse the quality of the pictures, they were taken in poor light with the camera on my phone.

Here's the helmet as I received it. Not a bad cast but lots of little bumps and dips on the surfaces and some nasty air holes in some of the cheek details. It was pretty distorted at the back so I put it in hot water and reshaped it some. It's not perfect but I was worried that I'd distort the rest of the helmet. It looks fine from the front and as it's going to be a display piece I'm not too worried.

My daughter going to nose to nose with Iron Man. I think Iron Man would loose...

First lot of filler, sanded and ready for first coat of primer.

First primer coat showed up a lot of spots that I'd missed with the filler.

Second lot of filler. I may have overdone it a bit.

Here's the back. You can see how distorted the back is and that's after reshaping. The picture makes it look ten times worse but I may go back and give it some more tweaking to try and improve the shape some more.

I've sanded it again and going to get another coat of primer on it today. Final colours have been picked (tho for the life of me I can't remember what they are right now) but I'm still wondering how I'm going to pick out the lines and cheeks.

So... opinions? Thoughts? Should I just give it up as a bad job and get back to the kitchen?

 

[pr3dato8]

lpooks good so far

sorry i cant make any advise on paint. i cant even find the right golden colour at the moment

 

[Skor]

Looks great!

As for the cheeks, I used Tamiya XF56 metallica grey for my eye surrounds and cheeks.

Then I used a cheap water based grey paint (it was their standard emulsion type), grabbed a tester pot of the brown colour too (both from Homebase) and watered them down slightly. It was grey with the brown paint at a 60/40 ratio, watered down about 8/2 paint to water.

I then washed the paint over the entire dry, fully painted helmet and worked the paint into the cracks, runs and screw indents. Then, wiped the helmet over with a cotton cloth, leaving the paint in the indentations.

It picks out the details well and gives a slightly weathered look, especially if you then (gasp!) take very fine grit paper to your lovely pristine finished helm and rough it up a tad.

I even worked PVA glue and cigar ash into a section of the top of the helm for a bullet ricochet/explosion detail. It looked awesome, but i did end up removing it as it looked like the helmet had been in the wars a bit too much for me!

Oh and I used this gold:

http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav.jsp?action=detail&fh_secondid=9254111&fh_location=//catalog01/en_GB/categories%3C{9372013}/categories%3C{9372030}/categories%3C{9372123}/specificationsProductType=spray_paints&ecamp=cse_go&CAWELAID=266946836

However I wasn't entirely happy, so I gave it a bit of jazzing up with an antique gold paint I had left over from another job. Iron Man's gold is much lighter than the one I used - however I'm still happy with the outcome as the darker gold makes it look more 'worn'.

 

[pr3dato8]

thanks for your amazingly detailed advise

 

[Mole]

Thanks for the pointers. I think I've got some of that Tamiya paint knocking around somewhere. I haven't decided about weathering yet. I may just leave it mint for the time being and see what hubby wants to do with it.

Did some more work on it today. Here it is sanded down to within an inch of it's life.

And now with three new coats of filler primer...

I may try and get my first coat of colour on it tomorrow if the weather stays warm, otherwise I won't get to work on it again until sometime next week. Incidentally, the colours I'm using are Toyota Red 3E5 and Ford Arizona Gold.

 

[MooCriket]

Your doing great!

 

[Mole]

Thanks! Every time I work on it I worry I'm going to screw it up. This is the first time I've ever done anything like this and I'm finding it really interesting but at the same time kinda scary. I really don't to mess it up.

 

[Skor]

You're doing an amazing job. You must have done something similar before, surely?!

 

[Mole]

Nope, first time. I do have a bit of an obsession with all things handy but I just never seem to have the time to do anything about it (I've got two small children). If this goes well my next project is a full sized set of Halo Master Chief armour.

 

[Heatshock]

hey Mole (moley moley moley) same mole from over on sci fi heroes?
nice work
as for fear of messing it up - just remember, theres never a problem so big..... that bondo (or isopon or u-pol for us brits!!) cant fix

Nate

 

[Mole]

Don't mention the bloody mole!!! Aye, tis me!

LOL! If in doubt, more bondo!

 

[VeeLegend]

Thats really cool! Very nice detailed too

 

[Mole]

Just a quick update as didn't get that much done over the weekend. I decided to spray the inside of the helmet black just so when someone picks it up to look at it it won't have the white resin with yellow primer overspray showing.

Wrapped up like a Christmas present...

Nice dark interior. Citadel Chaos Black is excellent.

I've also been thinking about how I'm going to light the eyes. The blue lens from the sunglasses I picked up on eBay aren't quite wide enough to fit the eye holes so I'm going to have to build a surround for them. I picked up some black craft foam which I'm going to have a play around with. I've still not decided what to do about the lights tho. LEDs are obviously the way forward but I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to electrics. Think it's time to start trawling the 'net for wiring diagrams....

 

[aquila125]

You might wanna take a look in the Junkyard. Darkjerre started an INT thread on creating some electronics for IM. The eyes are also on the list.

 

[aquila125]

I did a quick lookup: http://www.therpf.com/f13/iron-man-electronic-kits-eyes-hands-feet-arc-100089/

 

[Mole]

Thanks. I had seen that thread but I'm trying to do this on the cheap and those eye kits are probably more than I'll need as this will just be a display piece. If I can't figure it out maybe I'll end up dropping him a line anyway.

 

[Skor]

Well, I wired my helm myself with parts from Maplin and it came to £30 for all the LEDs, 3 9 volts (two spare), wire, resistor and switch.

I then sandwiched the LEDs between two bits of DVD case, cut to shape and buffed with sandpaper to make it opaque and filled the gap with hot melt glue.

Cheap and effective, although it does require some mucking around!

 

[thomp]

When u first described the condition of the helmet it sounded to be in quite a state. But from your pictures u have done a excellent job of cleaning it up. Gonna look great once painted

 

[Mole]

Skor - I've got a Maplin's quite close to where I live so I guess I'll be making a trip at some point. Managed to find some nice explanations online about how to wire LEDs so I think I should be able to figure it out without too much trouble.

thomp - My helmet is the same as the one BadBoyHouse has in this thread: http://www.therpf.com/f24/iron-man-helmet-finished-25-07-10-a-90650/ His pictures are better than mine and show the defects in the cast.

 

[Raffles]

Try RS components. They're about half the price of maplins and deliver to your door usually free next day. Maplins are a rip off.