Original ANH Stormtrooper helmet and Armor - Just the Facts

Pemberton is "an extremely talented artistic person" and is the one who should be outraged about giving credit where credit is due.

To answer this statement given by Ainsworth :-

Pemberton is a second rate scenic artist ( yes I have seen work that he produced) who has no portfolio of sculpting
 
289. Due to my expertise in plastics and vacuum forming the items I produced for Star Wars using vacuum forming was akin to making something on Blue Peter. It was Jackanory stuff for me but I was probably one of only a handful of people in the world in 1976 with that expertise. They came to the right person for help. That is where they were lucky. If they had not had the good fortune to find me I do not know how the film would have turned out.

:lol

AA is delusional...

Thermal forming was hardly a new idea or technique and he was FAR from some thermal forming revolutionist... The industry existed earlier but really took off in the 50's with that advent of new plastics, not in 1975 with AA...

He probably refined his 'superior skills' on a Mattel Vac-U-Form toy back in the '60s it was after all the EZ Bake Oven of vacuum forming machines...
 
If anyone wants to see Sithlords subjective comparisons I can just e-mail you the old thread from 2005, so we can avoid as what others have complained about, "opening old wounds".


In case you didn't notice there were like five or six other major threads after that. I find it interesting you like to refer to that one. The comparisons I showed here came from long after that 2005 thread.

How is it subjective to show what is actually there?
 
And exactly what right have you to tell me not to post?

If a smoker walks up to a bunch of people and his cigarette smoke bothers them, they fundamentally have a right to breathe clean air and are thus within their rights to -ask- the smoker to not smoke or to smoke elsewhere.
 
If a smoker walks up to a bunch of people and his cigarette smoke bothers them, they fundamentally have a right to breathe clean air and are thus within their rights to -ask- the smoker to not smoke or to smoke elsewhere.


Right, coming from the guy who was complaining about the warpage in the helmet when an original looks the same. :rolleyes
 
Right, coming from the guy who was complaining about the warpage in the helmet when an original looks the same. :rolleyes


I actually own an SFS fiberglass casting. It doesn't have the warpage an Ainsworth helmet does. I figure it's a pretty good three dimensional basis of comparison, since it's based on a laserscan, and it confirmed what I saw years ago even when you were siding with Ainsworth.

Please take your smoke somewhere else.
 
Robert-William-Greenyer-molds.jpg


The above are the molds supposedly in possession of Thomas William Greenyer. Note the distorted look as characteristic of AA/SDS.

I actually wouldn't have minded turning into a coffee table!



Are these the molds that were pulled from Ebay by LFL?
 
I actually own an SFS fiberglass casting. It doesn't have the warpage an Ainsworth helmet does. I figure it's a pretty good three dimensional basis of comparison, since it's based on a laserscan, and it confirmed what I saw years ago even when you were siding with Ainsworth.

Please take your smoke somewhere else.



I can't believe the nerve of you, telling me to post elsewhere.
 
About the original molds....

"Consideration must be given to the fact that these moulds are relatively unsophisticated and made from materials that only just hold up for production. They have been sanded, filled , refurbished and generally have the wear & tear of continuous production under conditions of temperature and pressure. As time goes on the surface details will drift further and further away from their condition in 1976."


Is this true?

By the way I should correct myself, two people have claimed to have seen the original molds.
 
From Ainsworth's statements on Facebook :-
" Pemberton contacted in 1975 to make the stormtrooper, questions whether Liz Moore was even employed by the studio yet."

Pemberton was not contacted until 6th January 1976 shown in his diary. Liz Moore left the film at the end of January 1976 having sculpted several prototype heads and suits for C3P0 so she was employed on the film towards the end of 1975

This is from the Court Judgement - Ainsworth changes the timeline to suit his purpose

In his first witness statement he suggested that he gave a prototype to Mr Pemberton at the beginning of February, and the latter in turn showed it to Mr Lucas. However, having studied Mr Pemberton's diary closely, along with Mr Mollo's diary entries, Mr Ainsworth changed the chronology and participation of the parties significantly. Having originally portrayed the situation as one in which he did not know who the end user was, and in which he did not meet Mr Mollo until mid-February, he then suggested that he met Mr Mollo as early as 23rd January. He also materially shifted the date on which he said he was asked to create other helmets from March to this January date
 
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I can't believe the nerve of you, telling me to post elsewhere.

Notice others expressed frustration/disgust at your comps, not me. I simply explained their reaction to your comps by relating the smoking analogy. Then you tried to bait me, so I said to take it elsewhere.

If you couldn't get pitch, roll and yaw orientations just comparing the shapes of Vader helmets without making the one you like larger than the one you're comparing against, then comparing details isn't helping you. I didn't say anything - others pointed out, not me.

So correcting others isn't the issue here, Thomas. You need to fix yourself first.
 
About the original molds....

"Consideration must be given to the fact that these moulds are relatively unsophisticated and made from materials that only just hold up for production. They have been sanded, filled , refurbished and generally have the wear & tear of continuous production under conditions of temperature and pressure. As time goes on the surface details will drift further and further away from their condition in 1976."


Is this true?

By the way I should correct myself, two people have claimed to have seen the original molds.

During the "smooth cap vs. bumpy cap" debates (as to which is more accurate) I recall that T*E made a statement (prior to being banned) - either here on RPF or over at The Prop Den - that the continued use of the molds without allowing them to cool resulted in heat buildup that caused the bumpy textures on the mold to be formed.

However, I should perhaps ask a question that challenges both sides of the argument: why would this have only happened to the cap and the backplate and not to the faceplate? This question, of course, assumes there is a 1 for 1 correlation between backplate/cap mold and faceplate mold.

If the faces were vacformed first, and done at intervals that allowed the faceplate mold to cool in between, that could explain the discrepancy.
 
I don't believe that's why the cap/back is bumpy. I have my own theory on why though and may post it later. Also if you look closely at many faceplates they have alot of texture to them too. Not as much as the cap/back but it's there.
 
Ouch... that looks almost flat. Not only does the detail appear removed but the surface looks FLAT. Can anyone verify that?

If we look back at this image:

photo-prop-store-of-london-stock-2177-prototype-02-x425.jpg


Assuming the above was made a while back on his molds, the molds of the time definitely had that detail.

If it doesn't have it now, then it bolsters the argument that so much rework and repair has been done to his molds that what made his molds intrinsically special 30 years ago are no longer there due to warpage, loss of detail, and reinterpretation of features due to wear and tear repair.

It gives his helmets no advantage over the better helmet offerings currently in the fandom.

I also maintain that the Ainsworth stormtrooper helmets look warped.


No they are not flat! just like the "look back at this image" one & they also made in ABS as per HERO not HDPE stunt! just the persective you were seeing was incorrect for the sds decal covered tear.

@ geordietrooper, it is the oval inside the tear they are refering too. AFAIK
 
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:lol

AA is delusional...

Thermal forming was hardly a new idea or technique and he was FAR from some thermal forming revolutionist... The industry existed earlier but really took off in the 50's with that advent of new plastics, not in 1975 with AA...

He probably refined his 'superior skills' on a Mattel Vac-U-Form toy back in the '60s it was after all the EZ Bake Oven of vacuum forming machines...

I agree he is delusional and a vacuum former plain and simple with absolutely no knowledge of sculpting, moulding and casting. He states on his Facebook site :-


It was Nick`s idea to create the mouth in the clay by using the Morris Minor grill, as detail of this sort is impossible to reproduce in clay. ( one reason why you don`t use clay in the first place for this type of product.
( I made the mouth detail up when I sculpted the moulds.. (see dvd from our site on u tube)

You can sculpt the finest detail in clay - see my website www.brianmuirvadersculptor.com for examples.

Looking at the photos of the mouth detail on his 'original' helmet mould compared the mouth detail he 'sculpted up' with wooden sections you can see that he has no sculpting skills and no 'trained eye' for detail and lines even though he had a year to produce this sculpting example and a 3 dimensional mould to copy.


image01.jpg


So called Original Mould

image0-4.jpg


Cut through section of Ainsworth's 'sculpted mould' for court
 
In the book , The Making of Star Wars, page 138, John Mollo said,"We got a model in a suitable size, did a plaster body cast, and Liz Moore modelled the armour on to this figure. Then everybody used to go in and say, arm off here , arm off there, and George changed all the kneecaps. This went on for several weeks. Finally that was all taken away and produced in vacuum form plastic."
Is this accurate as to what actually happened, where do you fit into this Brian, did you work on a started project, improve the sculpt like you did with the C3PO parts and why is the history so heavily reliant on memories and word of mouth? Thanks for any additional info Brian.
 
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