torsoboy
Sr Member
Hey everyone! With the palpable excitement surrounding The Mandalorian, I wanted to make something to join in on the fun for DragonCon, but I thought I'd go in the exact opposite direction from everyone else. So I decided to go back to the source of it it all - one of the Ralph McQuarrie concepts for Boba Fett! It also just so happened to be on my to-do list for like a decade now, so win win!
I really wanted to focus on the gesture of the original sketch for this build. Disregarding the obviously round dome up top, it has a distinctive squareish shape to it that's very prominent down the ears and on the sides of the visor. The sketch also has some details on that aren't commonly used in a lot of reproductions or products depicting this helmet, so I wanted to include those in my build. Where the sketch ran out of details (since it's only a top/front 3/4 view), I opted to fill in details with a few select details from some of my favorite representations of this build (statues, art, etc.), but I was selective in what I felt best paired with the sketch.
There were also some minor design decisions that had to be made for the sketch to work in physical 3D space, but such changes attempted to at least honor the spirit of the design. For example, the sides of my visor are rounded, where as most representations are flat. I opted for a round side because the left side of the sketch clearly shows a round side to the visor. I liked the rounded side better than the flat, so I just had to make it work. Doing so altered the joint where the visor meets the ears, so a slight redesign of that area was in order. But doing so naturally fixed the top area of the cheek inset geometry, so all in all it was a positive redesign.
This started off as a 3D model, and subsequently a 3D print. However, a lot of the surface detailing came in the form of layered plastic sheet.
Here's where I did the surface detailing with plastic sheet. This is just thin styrene hand cut from patterns I made over the 3D print. I don't like to do all the detailing in 3D printing because I like to retain at least some hand-crafted element to it. It also eliminates the mindless tedium of cleaning up tiny 3D printed details.
Creating the patterns for the ear details in masking tape. The little round detail is done in a way you might not expect of this detail. I thought it looked particularly cool to do it with this negative space cutout, and I felt it was very Syd Mead in style. I know he has nothing to do with this concept design, but since he's one of my favorite artists, I thought I'd honor his recent passing by giving him a tiny little influence in my work here. Plus it just solved the issue of not wanting to carve panel lines.
I repeated that same styling for the little circular detail on the front of the ears as well. Here you can also see the detailing I included that you don't see in a lot of other representations of this helmet design (busts, statues, etc.). The inset lower cheeks create space for these little vents, which you can clearly see in the original sketch.
Continuing with the mixed media approach, I opted to turn some resin chunks on my lathe for the mouth greeblies. The bases to these parts were 3D printed so I'd have sockets that perfectly fit the pegs in the mouth area, but the "hero" side to these are all hand-turned resin. The two main tubes were subsequently modified with some sintra for the interior details.
At this point in the build, the main helmet and the mouth greeblies were ready for molding. Aside from the little antenna piece shown with the mouth greeblies above, I hadn't made any progress on the range finder. But I'll get to that in a later post.
I really wanted to focus on the gesture of the original sketch for this build. Disregarding the obviously round dome up top, it has a distinctive squareish shape to it that's very prominent down the ears and on the sides of the visor. The sketch also has some details on that aren't commonly used in a lot of reproductions or products depicting this helmet, so I wanted to include those in my build. Where the sketch ran out of details (since it's only a top/front 3/4 view), I opted to fill in details with a few select details from some of my favorite representations of this build (statues, art, etc.), but I was selective in what I felt best paired with the sketch.
There were also some minor design decisions that had to be made for the sketch to work in physical 3D space, but such changes attempted to at least honor the spirit of the design. For example, the sides of my visor are rounded, where as most representations are flat. I opted for a round side because the left side of the sketch clearly shows a round side to the visor. I liked the rounded side better than the flat, so I just had to make it work. Doing so altered the joint where the visor meets the ears, so a slight redesign of that area was in order. But doing so naturally fixed the top area of the cheek inset geometry, so all in all it was a positive redesign.
This started off as a 3D model, and subsequently a 3D print. However, a lot of the surface detailing came in the form of layered plastic sheet.
Here's where I did the surface detailing with plastic sheet. This is just thin styrene hand cut from patterns I made over the 3D print. I don't like to do all the detailing in 3D printing because I like to retain at least some hand-crafted element to it. It also eliminates the mindless tedium of cleaning up tiny 3D printed details.
Creating the patterns for the ear details in masking tape. The little round detail is done in a way you might not expect of this detail. I thought it looked particularly cool to do it with this negative space cutout, and I felt it was very Syd Mead in style. I know he has nothing to do with this concept design, but since he's one of my favorite artists, I thought I'd honor his recent passing by giving him a tiny little influence in my work here. Plus it just solved the issue of not wanting to carve panel lines.
I repeated that same styling for the little circular detail on the front of the ears as well. Here you can also see the detailing I included that you don't see in a lot of other representations of this helmet design (busts, statues, etc.). The inset lower cheeks create space for these little vents, which you can clearly see in the original sketch.
Continuing with the mixed media approach, I opted to turn some resin chunks on my lathe for the mouth greeblies. The bases to these parts were 3D printed so I'd have sockets that perfectly fit the pegs in the mouth area, but the "hero" side to these are all hand-turned resin. The two main tubes were subsequently modified with some sintra for the interior details.
At this point in the build, the main helmet and the mouth greeblies were ready for molding. Aside from the little antenna piece shown with the mouth greeblies above, I hadn't made any progress on the range finder. But I'll get to that in a later post.
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