DtailedREPLICAS
Active Member
Thought it was about time I posted another build thread. Ive only recently finished this commission (this part anyway) and thankfully remembered to take lots of photos of the process. This is gonna be a long one.......
In a Nutshell..........
Here we go......
The build was a commission for a client down in Victoria by the name of Shannon Burnett. His team, UTOPIA PRODUCTIONS approached me about a film he was directing/producing that needed a large quantity of custom designed and built props. The film has a great background and plot and shows real potential. Im definitely excited to be a part of it.
*Beware of build spoilers* You can check out updates on the film from Facebook, here.
I love the opportunity to take on custom builds and bring something to life thats never existed before. The film is heavily science fiction based, something else that I definitely enjoy and needed a lot of one on one design work to bring the film's technology into a form I could create, all of which came together very well with Shannon's help. Other clients can be MUCH less helpful and fluent in getting across exactly what it is they want.
The build started with a bunch of reference material from various sci fi sources and a lot of concept art of UTOPIA's vision of the world theyve created. I used all this to produce a basic blueprint that I would work from. As the piece was completely custom, I had some room to move in producing the helmet and this meant I could feel my way through it a bit and makes things 'how they felt they should be' and not just what was represented in 2D in front of me. That is to say, these blueprints were more of an 'idea'. I greatly dislike being restricted by precise designs on custom pieces.
From here it followed a pretty standard helmet build process. The blueprints were transferred to mdf and a basic spine structure was glued together. This was then lined with polystyrene off-cuts. This whole form was them cut and sanded into the rough shape I needed. From here it was coated with car body filler (Ill call it bondo for simplicity) and then sanded near smooth. What followed was many, many hours of filling, sanding, fillling, sanding, etc until I had a relatively even form. Quick tip; Dont worry too much about sanding down the bondo on the first few layers. Take too much off and youll only have to add it agian in the next pass.
This was then covered with a generic putty that sands very smooth and the process was repeated to produce an even smoother form. At this stage I cut out a few areas for later details and refined the shape of the chin a little more. These exposed areas were also filled. Bondo (at least the version I use) does not get along with polystyrene. Quick tip; paint any exposed areas of polystyrene with a couple of coats of watered down PVA (wood glue) prior to applying the filler. This will stop your helmet, etc. dissolving into sticky goo. No-one wants that after all.
At this point I also produced some accurately scaled stencils to see how the added details would fit around the helmet. The vents at the back are for filtering and exhausting the very unpleasant air in the world of the film.
Much, much more to come. Stay tuned.....
In a Nutshell..........
Here we go......
The build was a commission for a client down in Victoria by the name of Shannon Burnett. His team, UTOPIA PRODUCTIONS approached me about a film he was directing/producing that needed a large quantity of custom designed and built props. The film has a great background and plot and shows real potential. Im definitely excited to be a part of it.
*Beware of build spoilers* You can check out updates on the film from Facebook, here.
I love the opportunity to take on custom builds and bring something to life thats never existed before. The film is heavily science fiction based, something else that I definitely enjoy and needed a lot of one on one design work to bring the film's technology into a form I could create, all of which came together very well with Shannon's help. Other clients can be MUCH less helpful and fluent in getting across exactly what it is they want.
The build started with a bunch of reference material from various sci fi sources and a lot of concept art of UTOPIA's vision of the world theyve created. I used all this to produce a basic blueprint that I would work from. As the piece was completely custom, I had some room to move in producing the helmet and this meant I could feel my way through it a bit and makes things 'how they felt they should be' and not just what was represented in 2D in front of me. That is to say, these blueprints were more of an 'idea'. I greatly dislike being restricted by precise designs on custom pieces.
From here it followed a pretty standard helmet build process. The blueprints were transferred to mdf and a basic spine structure was glued together. This was then lined with polystyrene off-cuts. This whole form was them cut and sanded into the rough shape I needed. From here it was coated with car body filler (Ill call it bondo for simplicity) and then sanded near smooth. What followed was many, many hours of filling, sanding, fillling, sanding, etc until I had a relatively even form. Quick tip; Dont worry too much about sanding down the bondo on the first few layers. Take too much off and youll only have to add it agian in the next pass.
This was then covered with a generic putty that sands very smooth and the process was repeated to produce an even smoother form. At this stage I cut out a few areas for later details and refined the shape of the chin a little more. These exposed areas were also filled. Bondo (at least the version I use) does not get along with polystyrene. Quick tip; paint any exposed areas of polystyrene with a couple of coats of watered down PVA (wood glue) prior to applying the filler. This will stop your helmet, etc. dissolving into sticky goo. No-one wants that after all.
At this point I also produced some accurately scaled stencils to see how the added details would fit around the helmet. The vents at the back are for filtering and exhausting the very unpleasant air in the world of the film.
Much, much more to come. Stay tuned.....
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