Fettastic Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup

Fettastic

Well-Known Member
Hey Team!

This is another Boba Fett ESB style paint up for Kyle, NoirShadow. The canvas is a WastedFett FPH2 bucket with some damage mods.

Like most painters, I like to start with the back panels because it is the most involved and they take up a large portion of the helmet.

Concrete color airbrushed, drawn out, and masked off.
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Deep blue sea color airbrushed, edges tightened up, and light weathering.
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Silver damage topically added.
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Gray damage and light gray/blue topically added.
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Back panels practically finished. Just a few scratches, scuffs and weathering left.
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Base Green (dome and lower cheeks), base red (mandibles and hat band), and black (upper cheeks) airbrushed on.
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Topically started apply silver and gray damage to the dome starting with the iconic "cat scratch"
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More updates soon...
 
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Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

Beautiful! Never get tired of these paint jobs. I did one about nine years ago, sold it and got a FPH, started the back panels on that one and stopped.

It takes so much out of me painting one of these, I need years and years to do another!

Your progress pics are really inspiring, though. Thanks for sharing!

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk
 
Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

I'd love a great Fett lid. But I'd have to find a builder & painter. I have the MR, & love it, but I know there are more accurate options out there. I almost sold it, with eFX saying they were making one. SSSOOOO happy I held onto my MR.
 
Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

Beautiful! Never get tired of these paint jobs. I did one about nine years ago, sold it and got a FPH, started the back panels on that one and stopped.

It takes so much out of me painting one of these, I need years and years to do another!

Your progress pics are really inspiring, though. Thanks for sharing!

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk

I totally understand that. It can be a little overwhelming especially starting with the back panels. I know my eyeballs start to bleed after 30 minutes of looking at the reference photo's and the lid back and forth. Just have to do it in steps, for example for the dome, I just do one large iconic damage and the surrounding minor damage and then call it to give my eyes and brain a rest.

I'd love a great Fett lid. But I'd have to find a builder & painter. I have the MR, & love it, but I know there are more accurate options out there. I almost sold it, with eFX saying they were making one. SSSOOOO happy I held onto my MR.

Yeah, the MR is really great and super iconic... but it's not really accurate as far as screen accuracy goes. MR mistakenly used the preproduction 3 helmet as a reference instead of the Screen Used ESB Hero Helmet. I think they noticed there mistake and then kinda blended the two since the paint jobs are very similar. Did you fix the mandible angle and straighten it out? I know that bugged a lot of people. And I hear you on the eFX lid lol.

If you're looking for something more screen accurate, I'm sure you could sell the MR and use that money to fund an accurate casting with an accurate paint job if you're willing to commission it out. There are a lot of talented Fett Helmet painters out there and most of them have very very reasonable prices for a reasonably screen accurate paint job. It just depends on what quality you are going for...but in my opinion the ESB Fett Helmet with an authentic "walked off the set" paint job is the coolest thing to have in your collection of Star War Replicas. I am a little biased though :D
 
Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

Small update...

I worked on the front damage above and around the "turning signal" arrows but I left some small details out. I'll wait until I line up the hat band and mandible damage to make sure everything is in the right place before I add those smaller details near the band.
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I also worked on the iconic dent area. I'll wait to add the base gray/blue damage until after I've weathered and shaped the major dent and scratch damage. This way it will accentuate and give a bit more dimension as it appears in reference photos.
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Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

And here he goes again, and again i‘ll bow down in pure respect to your talent, mate!
I‘ve done various paint jobs on helmets in the past few years but never dared to start a Fett helmet.... I’m not worthy! :rolleyes

I‘ll watch with great interest though...
 
Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

amazing work!!!!
what type of paint you use and scratches you make them on the paint or peel them with some tool?
 
Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

And here he goes again, and again i‘ll bow down in pure respect to your talent, mate!
I‘ve done various paint jobs on helmets in the past few years but never dared to start a Fett helmet.... I’m not worthy! :rolleyes

I‘ll watch with great interest though...

You just gotta go for it! It will no doubt be time consuming but I'm sure you'll love the process ;)

amazing work!!!!
what type of paint you use and scratches you make them on the paint or peel them with some tool?

For this one I'm exclusively using acrylics, like model master, tamiya, and polly scale. It depends on the scratch, if it's considerably noticeable as a gouged scratch from reference photo's I'll use a steel toothpick type tool to make the scratch and then fill it in with silver paint or light gray/blue base.
 
Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

Killstripe Success!!! I'll elaborate a bit for this post since the killstripes seem to give a lot of people trouble.

For me, this part always stresses me out. I always test the yellow on a practice swatch that has the dome green on it, but when I see the freshly painted yellow on the stripes compared to the yellow on the surrounding masking tape, it always plays tricks in my head and I start second guessing myself. Especially with fading the stripes on the end to orange. Because everything is taped off, you can't judge the color balance and contrast very well until you take off the masking tape and see the colors side by side...if you get it wrong you have to mask everything off again and make changes. Important thing is, practice, make a decision, and trust your instincts.

My method for painting the stripes is quite basic. I use masking tape that I've cut and make sure that each stripe is the same size rectangle and to scale for the helmet. after the stripes are masked off to perfect rectangles (with the exceptions of a couple that need to be mis-shaped a bit) I use masking fluid to draw out some of the damage and imperfections. I make sure to spend extra time taping off the stripes and making sure I have a really, really good seal. Then I'll airbrush a very very light mist of the yellow mix and let it dry and get tacky. Once it's dried for a while I'll go ahead and lay down the "first" coat. I find yellow paint to be the runniest most messy paint out there and will find it's way into any crack and crevice. The key is to take your time.

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Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

excellent work, I hope one day you do a video tutorial, because it looks awesome
 
Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

Made some progress on the Killstripe side of the dome including the "tape pull" section and "broccoli" damage.

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Started to move back over to the cat scratch side and do the "arrow" damage above the cat scratch.
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Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

Made some progress over the weekend. I primarily worked on the lower cheek areas and more dome detailing. I will move on to the upper cheek areas and the mandibles and hat band next.

Pictures Pictures Pictures...
ESB Fett Helmet Kyle.jpg ESB Fett Helmet Kyle 14.jpg ESB Fett Helmet Kyle 15.jpg

ESB Fett Helmet Kyle 8.jpg ESB Fett Helmet Kyle 7.jpg ESB Fett Helmet Kyle 6.jpg

Some close ups of the cheeks with the weathering.
ESB Fett Helmet Kyle 12.jpg ESB Fett Helmet Kyle 10.jpg

Added the light blue/gray base scratches to the major damage on the top of the dome along with some more dings and scratches.
ESB Fett Helmet Kyle 16.jpg

I added the carbon scoring streaks to the dent area. This is a very very subtle feature and it's important not to over do it. I still need to add the light blue/gray base scratches in the dent but I like to add these after the weathering as it appears to me from reference photos that these were added later in the process.
ESB Fett Helmet Kyle 17.jpg
 

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Re: Boba Fett Helmet ESB Paintup for NoirShadow

Just another teaser as I make my way through the mandibles...(clean left side mandibles yet to be weathered and finished)

IMG_0678 Spliced cropped.JPG

And now this photo is one of the most natural and what I think to be one of the most accurate depictions of the true colors in photo form of the original ESB Hero helmet. (obviously just discussing the face colors, Green, Gray, Base Gray, Red, Dark Red, Black and Silver colors for this example)
Original Natural Lighting.png

And just for comparisons sake...
Original --------------------- Replica
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