Ok, so I've gotten pretty far in the modding and paint job.
Still a few steps to go in detailing, but here's some updates thus far, kind of in order.
First, removed all inside face pieces, and sprayed the nose with Testors metallic silver.
Started basic taping off of the vents. ( and that is the bottom of my EFX Fett in the background of the 2nd picture) : )
Removed all innards of the jaw piece, and sprayed the whole thing Rustoleum Gun Metal
Then tried to use a transparent red spray for tail light repair on the outside of the lenses, but they just got too dark and kind of mucky.
Tried to maybe gloss them over to at least make them look better , but they got all boogered up. so it had to be taking a Dremmel to the lenses and cutting them out, and replacing them with 3M clear red repair styrene.
Worked great, but they have adhesive on one side, so I stuck to pieces together, which reinforced them, and made them easier to handle, cut the shape out to match the lense openings, and just lightly pinched them while holding a hair dryer to them to give them and outward bend.
Using an insta-cure styrene glue from a local hobby shop, the lenses sat into the visor opening perfectly.
Got the ROTJ style two tone paint job done on the mask using Rustoleum Gun Metal, leaving the black plastic of the helmet intact where the black needed to be. Gloss coat over the whole thing really brought out the black , and stopped it from looking like plastic.
And going to detail the head piece and greeblies on the mask later.
Replaced the lower jar grill with the metal grill mesh from an STP air filter, and black screen mesh behind it.
Left the speaker right in the middle of the bottom of the grill, and you can barely see it at all now, but still hear it clearly.
Was going to try to remove the tusks and order the aluminum ones, but I found this paper thin metal chrome foil for using on model cars, and it metallicized the tusks perfectly.
Sure, they're not ROTJ tusks, but at least they're ESB style.
Used this same foil on parts of the mask head piece as well.
Completed two tone on the jaw, and modded the interior wiring a bit in placement and coloring, and added a strip of black felt to the back of the neck piece instead of the plastic.
I used that same foil in the lower silver portions of the jaw interior, to make it more metal, but also cover up the screw holes to look more complete.
On the mouth grill, used the same mesh from the air filter, painted in black, and
glued a piece of black screen mesh behind it to fit.
Cut it down to properly fit in the mouth grill, and glued in the base of the original plastic mouth grill to cap the bottom so they stayed in place.
Cutting out the uprights from the original grill insert was surprisingly hard.
Popped the lenses in the mask just to see how it is looking.
Pretty nice!
The dome got about 5 coats of gloss black, and about 4 coats of clear gloss.
Filled in and smoothed out the mold point on the top of the dome best I could.
It's barely visible now, and only then even if you know it's there.
Was going to smooth out the widows' peak. but decided it wasn't a deal breaker, especially since I'm going to eventually display this in an exploded view , and have a special surprise to the display I'm concocting. : )
And finally, in progress on detailing the portions of the mask interior.
Sorry about the tons of pictures, but I hope you all enjoy it!
Thanks for all your motivations and information that helped me get this far!
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