Battle Droid and Mandalorian Style helmet

[jimmyscribbles]

Hey guys,

I have been rather bored over the past few days and so decided to make my first ever helmet and a battledroid head. I have no prior experience aside from a nightwing costume that I made a few months ago. I am currently on the last stage(with filler) but will post the pictures step by step. I really like how the helmet is turning out, and the head could be better but I'll try to sort it out with filler. xD



So I started out by drawing a template for the helmet, and marking out the rough proportions of a full size battledroid head.
If anyone is interested, I'll see about posting the templates/dimensions online after I finish up with my builds

 

[jimmyscribbles]

First I'll go through the battledroid head. I started out with a block of Styrofoam which I picked up from a scrapyard for free.

I traced the head on using the template and began chipping away! This was the longest part of the process.

 

[jimmyscribbles]

I sanded the head down to obtain the classic look, and found a scrap piece of Styrofoam to turn into the wedge at the rear.
Initially for the antenna/tubes at the rear I sanded down more Styrofoam, but that only ended with roundish lumpy tubes, and so I had to switch my approach.

I rolled (thick)brown paper for the small inner tube, and cut out 1mm thick craft foam which I wrapped around the brown paper.
The mouthpiece was another piece of Styrofoam which I had lying around.

For the disks at the side(that attach to the neck) I created a thinner tube of brown paper and made a base of 1mm craft foam for each side. I then proceeded to adhere this to the head's body.

View attachment 571765View attachment 571766View attachment 571768View attachment 571767

 

[jimmyscribbles]

After I was happy with the head's shape and features I applied two layers of polyurethane resin to provide mild protection.



Sorry about my hand in some of the pics

 

[jimmyscribbles]

This is where I up to now, hopefully completing it tomorrow - filler has been applied and I am waiting for it to dry overnight. I only applied it on the top/back, partly because I am not planning on using the bottom for moulding(if it turns out as well as I hope), and partly because I ran out of filler after coating the helmet(I went a little overboard)!



I'll make sure to keep you up to date(assuming someone is reading this lol)

 

[jimmyscribbles]

Now onto the helmet! After cutting out the template I cut out the foam according to the template, and heated the foam to get the bend before joining pieces.


This is my friend in another helmet I am working on right now(magneto), because I forgot to take pics when the mandalorian helmet was in this phase.

After joining the four pieces I realised that I wanted some cheek indentations and so made more templates for those, allowing me to fit indents in my helmet.

 

[jimmyscribbles]

I encountered a brand new problem - the cheek indents stopped my helmet from fitting properly with the visor width that I desired. I took inspiration from scout troopers, and made a ventilator style mouthpiece out of craft foam and floor mat.



- - - Updated - - -

I decided to add a few more details before coating the helmet such as an elevated ridge:

 

[jimmyscribbles]

The most recent of my failures was calculating how much resin I needed, and how long I had to work with it before it hardened. Needless to say, I wasted about half a bottle. I managed to slap two coats of resin on with what remained, giving the helmet a nice smooth finish.

 

[jimmyscribbles]

Final stage was filler again, using the majority of the tin:



I'll post updates as soon as I get this done! I hope that this filler will work out - I've never actually used it before so I've just been following people's guidelines aha
I also purchased a £8 motorcycle visor which I will cut up with a rotary tool.

Thanks for checking it out

 

[Blaxmyth]

Good stuff! Great to see a hands-on, old school build in action. Keep those pics coming. :thumbsup

 

[jimmyscribbles]

Okay, so I've run into a problem. The filler is still soft in most places, even though I left it overnight! Is this because the hardener wasn't mixed in properly? And is there a fix? Like maybe diluting the leftover hardener and brushing it over the top? I leave tomorrow for six months so I really need this done by tonight - thanks

Edit- it is 9 Degrees here, could that be slowing down hardening?

 

[jimmyscribbles]

Okay so I have just had a very productive/unproductive two hours(depending on how you look at it).

I attempted to add hardener to the surface of the filler and left that for half an hour, with a heater pointed at the head and helmet, but that didn't help at all.
Instead it left me with a huge mess to clear up.

I scraped off the majority of the filler and scrubbed off the rest with a warm sponge. I then spray painted silver over the resin which gave me a rough idea of which areas were most lumpy. I have just finished sanding the helmet's lumps and wil soon be applying the next coat to check for lumps. After that comes the visor!

 

[jimmyscribbles]

A long way to go on the helmet, but it is slowly getting there. While sanding I filed through the resin on some parts which exposed the foam and made for uneven painting. I kind of overcame this by using an extraordinary amount of battledamage (most significantly at the rear). I realise that the colours aren't the best, but I'm trying to save money for uni next year and a can of spray paint is still quite a lot for me, especially since I already had some lying around!



Now I just need the visor done. For a first helmet it could have been much worse, but I managed to learn what not to do