I've alluded to this project a lot in the past across numerous posts but it's gotten to the point where I think I can show it off. As the title implies, this project is an old one. I procured a Rubies "Supreme" Vader bucket here in the Junkyard for fairly cheap (125 bucks shipped, iirc) almost 10 years ago. It really started with this thread by SS3000 where, at the time, I thought this to be the best mod ever attempted on a Rubies Supreme, even with the extended dome flare. I thought I could do similar if I could ever find one cheaper second hand. Luckily, or unluckily, I did and I've been chipping away at it slowly ever since.
It's been well documented what the problems with this cheapy, crap, vinyl bucket are and the changes made to produce the helmet on a big scale by Rubies. I'd seen others do similar mods before and they all made it look so easy. I didn't expect however just how severe and challenging it would be to modify the vinyl itself to get it back into something resembling the original sculpt. Nevermind just how much of the helmet needed re-working.
It's been speculated that Rubies acquired the master that Don Post used to produce their higher-end helmets when Don Post was bought by Rubies, and that particular master was taken from an RotJ, possibly ESB, era touring helmet. My goal evolved from getting it back to the DP details to getting it back the original details of the production-made masks, as close as I can anyway. It's an odd, esoteric, and pointless goal but I want to make the best Rubies mod ever seen.
What has ensued has been slow and arduous adding and shaving off details, often millimeters at a time, cutting and chopping off whole sections of the mask to rebuild from scratch, and numerous trial and error additions and revisions the more reference material I could collect. The lineage JBR RotJ run on the Junkyard in the recent year has been a huge help to this endeavor.
This has been, and will likely be for the near future, a long-term project. However, the end is in sight; the light at the end of tunnel can be seen. The ultimate fate of this is to serve as a master for me to mold and make a fiberglass copy from, just as the original buckets were made. There's so much Apoxie Sculpt and primer on this, I'm sure I've more than adequately compensated for the shrinkage casting brings.
I'd list the mods made to get to it to its current state, but it's much too numerous to remember beyond broad strokes, so I'll say that everything you see in grey was an area that needed to be fixed to get it as close as possible back to the original details. The helmet is 1:1 and shadows of the original details are still there, you just have to repair 95% of the helmet to bring it back.
I'm very good at "hard edge" sculpting: anything with sharp geometries, I can sculpt. "Soft edge" sculpting, organic features, I'm not so good at. With Vader having such soft and organic details, my initial attempts looked really off. It didn't look like Vader, it resembled him; I couldn't get that organic element into the face. A lot of work went into retooling my first changes so the edges were softer, less sharp and flat, and a real concerted effort was made to bring back as much of the curves and imperfections back into the mask. The subtle, lumpy, sunken curves in the mouth and nose, the broadness of the eyebrows and the trailing lines into the nose ridge, these things took so much time to suss. Nearly the entirety of the facemask, with the exception of a strip across the lower neck, needed to be entirely resculpted to achieve similar idiosyncrasies.
The dome has much of the original molded details intact--more than the face, anyway--I just sharpened the lines on the strip/"mohawk" and the curves where the flare meets the dome. The most work done was on the right flare of the helmet. I don't know if this was a defect on this particular helmet or not, but the flare on the right side of the dome was terribly curved on this. It sunk in too close to the face and bowed inward. I removed what I couldn't repair with heat and used Apoxie to add a flare that suited this facemask and helmet while still trying to keep it accurate to the real costume's proportions. Thickness was added to the inside and outside of the brow and flare to bring back some thickness to the helmet as per the originals.
Working with the material the helmet is made of is the absolute worse. It needs to be scuffed very roughly for anything to adhere to it for any length of time and many concessions had to be made as the material just couldn't be shaped satisfactorily enough to really get it where it needs to be. The neck/chin area in particular. I have a sneaking suspicion that master used to make the master molds for Rubies' production of these things were sanded down, idealized, and certain areas broadened to cut down on the undercuts so the mask could be easily removed. Areas like the right side of the head had to be removed entirely and rebuilt because it was made flush instead of it curving with the rest of the mask. The neck and chin had details like the flare/lip at the bottom sanded flat, and the flare on the left side widened, flattened, and extended to, again, keep the undercuts down. The shaping of the vinyl was done with a heat gun and hand shaping it when it was literally on the cusp of melting and further refining was done with repeating layers of Apoxie Sculpt, added and shaved away until it looked as close to right as I can get.
The Rubies has the lower tubes extended to the back of the mask, as this was produced to tie into RotS, to mimic the details of RotS Vader. Unfortunately, that did two things: 1) It ruins the original silhouette of the mask, and 2) The tubes have become load-bearing. I originally wanted to cut them down but with the amount of putty I have on this mask, it will crack and never blend properly to the rest of the mask. It's currently that way now with the mod to the right side of the head I made. To compromise, I had to extend the upper tubes further back to fill the mask out to match the the change to the silhouette the lower tubes made. Coincidentally, the RotS Vader did the same. On the plus side, if I ever want to make a reveal Vader in future, the extended tubes will look better flowing into the neck brace (at least, that's what I tell myself to feel better about the choice).
This is where it stands at the moment. I'm still in the process of tweaking minor areas and need to thicken up others before I start figuring out the dome mounting set-up. I really want to make this into an ESB and make it as close to some of the production and lineage fan helmets that have pictures floating around. I have some of the greeblies acquired, like the three tabs that sit on the top of the head, just to add to the mask so those details can be on the fiberglass copy. The dome ring I'm still figuring out but, currently, the mask is sitting very close to getting molded. I'm thinking, maybe, 2-3 more years?
It's been well documented what the problems with this cheapy, crap, vinyl bucket are and the changes made to produce the helmet on a big scale by Rubies. I'd seen others do similar mods before and they all made it look so easy. I didn't expect however just how severe and challenging it would be to modify the vinyl itself to get it back into something resembling the original sculpt. Nevermind just how much of the helmet needed re-working.
It's been speculated that Rubies acquired the master that Don Post used to produce their higher-end helmets when Don Post was bought by Rubies, and that particular master was taken from an RotJ, possibly ESB, era touring helmet. My goal evolved from getting it back to the DP details to getting it back the original details of the production-made masks, as close as I can anyway. It's an odd, esoteric, and pointless goal but I want to make the best Rubies mod ever seen.
What has ensued has been slow and arduous adding and shaving off details, often millimeters at a time, cutting and chopping off whole sections of the mask to rebuild from scratch, and numerous trial and error additions and revisions the more reference material I could collect. The lineage JBR RotJ run on the Junkyard in the recent year has been a huge help to this endeavor.
This has been, and will likely be for the near future, a long-term project. However, the end is in sight; the light at the end of tunnel can be seen. The ultimate fate of this is to serve as a master for me to mold and make a fiberglass copy from, just as the original buckets were made. There's so much Apoxie Sculpt and primer on this, I'm sure I've more than adequately compensated for the shrinkage casting brings.
I'd list the mods made to get to it to its current state, but it's much too numerous to remember beyond broad strokes, so I'll say that everything you see in grey was an area that needed to be fixed to get it as close as possible back to the original details. The helmet is 1:1 and shadows of the original details are still there, you just have to repair 95% of the helmet to bring it back.
I'm very good at "hard edge" sculpting: anything with sharp geometries, I can sculpt. "Soft edge" sculpting, organic features, I'm not so good at. With Vader having such soft and organic details, my initial attempts looked really off. It didn't look like Vader, it resembled him; I couldn't get that organic element into the face. A lot of work went into retooling my first changes so the edges were softer, less sharp and flat, and a real concerted effort was made to bring back as much of the curves and imperfections back into the mask. The subtle, lumpy, sunken curves in the mouth and nose, the broadness of the eyebrows and the trailing lines into the nose ridge, these things took so much time to suss. Nearly the entirety of the facemask, with the exception of a strip across the lower neck, needed to be entirely resculpted to achieve similar idiosyncrasies.
The dome has much of the original molded details intact--more than the face, anyway--I just sharpened the lines on the strip/"mohawk" and the curves where the flare meets the dome. The most work done was on the right flare of the helmet. I don't know if this was a defect on this particular helmet or not, but the flare on the right side of the dome was terribly curved on this. It sunk in too close to the face and bowed inward. I removed what I couldn't repair with heat and used Apoxie to add a flare that suited this facemask and helmet while still trying to keep it accurate to the real costume's proportions. Thickness was added to the inside and outside of the brow and flare to bring back some thickness to the helmet as per the originals.
Working with the material the helmet is made of is the absolute worse. It needs to be scuffed very roughly for anything to adhere to it for any length of time and many concessions had to be made as the material just couldn't be shaped satisfactorily enough to really get it where it needs to be. The neck/chin area in particular. I have a sneaking suspicion that master used to make the master molds for Rubies' production of these things were sanded down, idealized, and certain areas broadened to cut down on the undercuts so the mask could be easily removed. Areas like the right side of the head had to be removed entirely and rebuilt because it was made flush instead of it curving with the rest of the mask. The neck and chin had details like the flare/lip at the bottom sanded flat, and the flare on the left side widened, flattened, and extended to, again, keep the undercuts down. The shaping of the vinyl was done with a heat gun and hand shaping it when it was literally on the cusp of melting and further refining was done with repeating layers of Apoxie Sculpt, added and shaved away until it looked as close to right as I can get.
The Rubies has the lower tubes extended to the back of the mask, as this was produced to tie into RotS, to mimic the details of RotS Vader. Unfortunately, that did two things: 1) It ruins the original silhouette of the mask, and 2) The tubes have become load-bearing. I originally wanted to cut them down but with the amount of putty I have on this mask, it will crack and never blend properly to the rest of the mask. It's currently that way now with the mod to the right side of the head I made. To compromise, I had to extend the upper tubes further back to fill the mask out to match the the change to the silhouette the lower tubes made. Coincidentally, the RotS Vader did the same. On the plus side, if I ever want to make a reveal Vader in future, the extended tubes will look better flowing into the neck brace (at least, that's what I tell myself to feel better about the choice).
This is where it stands at the moment. I'm still in the process of tweaking minor areas and need to thicken up others before I start figuring out the dome mounting set-up. I really want to make this into an ESB and make it as close to some of the production and lineage fan helmets that have pictures floating around. I have some of the greeblies acquired, like the three tabs that sit on the top of the head, just to add to the mask so those details can be on the fiberglass copy. The dome ring I'm still figuring out but, currently, the mask is sitting very close to getting molded. I'm thinking, maybe, 2-3 more years?
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