Destiny Warlock Helmet (Nerigal Savant III or Obsidian Mind)

QEProps

New Member
Who doesn't like a little bling on their Warlock? So several months ago I was commissioned to make this helmet, specially requested to be a smaller scale to fit the customer's head and they absolutely needed it by the end of January 2015. No exceptions. I can't sculpt, and I can't 3D model organic shapes like a helmet. I'm an engineer, It just doesn't click for me. So I searched around for a pepakura file of this helmet for a couple weeks and came up empty handed. Mid November timeframe, my fall back plan was to get my hands on another prop maker's casting, take a bunch of photos and then generate a 3D model using the 123D Catch program available from Autodesk. That fell through and I was left searching for a modeler to create a Pepakura file for me. This was around the last week of December, enter panic mode.

I ran across the 405th forums where there was a fellow (goes by Jico) that had done some modeling of other helmets. I sent a message off to him asking if he could save my bacon. As soon as I heard back from him we were able to strike up a deal and in no time at all had whipped up a model of the helmet for me. Beautiful isn't it? He does amazing work!
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He even made a low definition model of the helmet for me to put together really fast to make sure the scaling was right for my needs.
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Once we had verified the scale was correct, I got right to work on the high definition model. It took about 10 hours total to construct the main helmet. The unfold was fantastic, really easy to assemble. I used cardstock on the final model to give it some rigidity and CA glue since I was trying to make up for lost time.
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I used polyester resin on the exterior of the model to stiffen it up a little more. I tried to keep the coat as thin as possible because I really didn't want to spend 2 weeks doing bondo.
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Once that was complete I slush cast about 6 coats of Smooth Cast 300 on the inside of the helmet. The thickness of the resin varied between 1/8" and 3/8" by the time I was done, but I had a very solid helmet and I didn't have to worry about fiberglass on the inside. I was able to start sanding right on the outside of the helmet right away and took off the points from the pep file with some 80 grit paper on the orbital sander and some spots done by hand.

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Bondo was applied over the outer surface to fill in the flat spots between the points. Because of the resin and pre-sanding I only had to do one coat of bondo and then followed that up with 3 passes of spot filler over a few surfaces to fill in the rest. I used self etching primer to make sure it would get a strong bond on the resin and bondo.

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While my spot sanding continued I cut out the surface from the visor areas using a dremel. It was a little thicker than I wanted in a few areas so I had to do some delicate sanding on the inside to get the contour I wanted. I had a couple 16" square pieces of 1/16" thick smoked acrylic. I planned to cut and heat form that to the inside of the helmet. If I had had the time, I would have made the face plate area of the pep file again and made a forming buck, but there just wasn't the time to mess with that. I placed the acrylic on a cookie sheet and warmed it up in my gas grill. It worked rather well for heating, but the cold January air made it difficult to form the entire piece in one shot. I ended up having to cut out 4 separate pieces of acrylic and doing them one at a time.

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With the visor in place, I filled the gaps that were left between the visor and the acrylic with Apoxie. Let that dry and sanded it smooth. The pep file for the helmet does have one of the little pucks with it, you would need to print that page 6 times total to get all of the pucks that mount to the back of the helmet. I didn't want to mess with that since I figured I could set up a little jig on my disc sander and make all 6 pucks from MDF in a lot less time. The pucks have a 1/4" dowel inserted into them and there's 1/2" sticking out. The clear vinyl tubing fits perfectly over these dowels and holds them in place.
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The rest of the fiddly bits on the sides were done with MDF as well. I used a couple aircraft rivets on the sides that I had lying around. Masking the visor for paint went smoothly enough and I was ready for a final coat of primer and paint!
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The vinyl tubes were removed for the gold paint. There were many Goldmember jokes going through my mind while painting this.
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I decided that I don't use my airbrush enough and I brought it out for this job. I'm really glad I did.
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I hope you all like the build! Again, this pepakura file was commissioned by me from Jico over on the 405th Infantry forums. As promised, here is the .pdo in a zip file with my compliments and Jico's. Please feel free to download and share!
View attachment Nerigal_Savant_Helmet_Final_04.zip
 
Looks fantastic and thank you for sharing the pep file. I may redo my warlock helmet in the future (or create an extra) and this is definitely one that I am interested in trying!
 
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