Scratch-Built Boba Fett (RotJ Version) - Part 14, Painting the Helmet…

spidermanna

New Member
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Since I am not covering shin tools or how to suit up cuz I honestly didn’t take ANY pics of those, this is it. As I mentioned numerous times previously, the folks on Dented Helmet and Boba Fett Builders are WAY better at a lot of this stuff than I am and have covered painting of the helmet in excruciating detail. However, I shall give it my best shot but I did copy a lot of their techniques—at least the ones I read about, and there are a lot of them—my main focus was on building (I think most people buy and paint vs build and paint, but where is the fun in that.

Also, because painting the helmet is covered so extensively and I was so intent on getting it finished, I honestly didn’t take that many pictures of it while I was painting it. This seems to be a recurring theme. And keep in mind that the helmet is a massive hodgepodge of colors—worse on the ESB version which I think is actually better looking than the RotJ version, but we can’t have mixing and matching—that is not allowed (except on the rangefinder)…

BTW, Temeura said “Kia Ora”... probably

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Start with a basecoat of silver. I sprayed it a LOT of times, and even had to re-prime it and repaint it after finding little blemishes that also needed re-puttied and re-sanded. Silver does that—make every mistake stand out! Using the template I found on Dented Helmet.com, I started adding the various coats of masking agent and paint. Its best to use and airbrush and paint the helmet in sections—I would NOT recommend trying to do it all at once. I did the top (including the kill stripes), back, cheeks, and then the red face and head band last. As the ‘ear’ bits were removable, I did them separately along with the wand—those were actually pretty easy.

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Speaking of kill stripes, they are actually massively easy to do, at least I thought so. I cut out a bunch of rectangles and taped them together at the base and to the helmet as shown above. Using a spray bottle, I sprayed them lightly and pushed them down at the tops starting on one side and working my way down to the end to ensure none of them were crinkled or bunched up. While still damp, I taped them down at the top and sides. Then I applied the masking agent. Then airbrushed. I’ll come back to these later…

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The back has a bizarre color scheme so you have to do a lot of painting and masking and painting and masking—actually the whole helmet is like that. Sticky notes make awesome masking since they don’t stick for crap and are huge, and cheap.

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This is what I am talking about…

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Here is what we have so far with all the tape and masking removed. I forgot to document doing the cheeks/mandibles…oops. Kill stripes came out pretty cool though…

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At this point, I was terrified that if I used tape, I might accidently peel off some of the layers of paint, so I just covered the top and cheeks with masking agent. I wasn’t worried as much in the back because I could use sticky notes and sheets of paper in the more squared off flat section. FYI, there are a lot of details in these red bands…

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"With the mask shield down, I can’t even see. How am I supposed to paint?..."

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Very, very satisfying…

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Had to fix a spot in the back where some extra paint came off of the kill stripes. I think maybe Boba Fett should have taken some of his bounty hunter credits and invested in better paints...

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This is where a lot of people stop, but not me--on to some minor weathering...

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Boba Fett’s stuff is massively weathered and the helmet is no different, so like all the other parts, it got sealed with acrylic sealer and airbrushed with some carbon scoring, which is essentially shades of acrylic gray, black, and burnt umber. I wanted it to look like blaster bolts had literally scorched the top of his helmet. This also had the added effect of making the shiny bits less shiny…

Before ending this, wanted to show you a couple things I made while making this costume which helps explain while it takes so long to make them…

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A D&D table for my daughter's 21st birthday, complete with a 20, 12, and 4-sided dice pedestal, 6 drawers, outlets for mobile devices, and an LED in the middle to make the thing light up (she doesn't use the miniatures so no need for all that…

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Two shadow boxes (one for a Canadian Lt Col (and yes, of course its made out of maple--sort of), the other for US Army LTC Combat Engineer)…

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Dread Pirate Roberts (made everything but the gloves by hand), Roman the Roman (I made the helmet anyway (out of a giant rubber ball))…

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And a patio—the patio took months (we didn't make the cat)…

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So, thanks for sticking with me through this and hope I maybe inspired someone. Big proponent of using cheap, available stuff and doing it yourself since overcoming all the problems you encounter while building is most of the fun. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask as I enjoy responding and getting likes and comments. Hope to see ya’ll at the next GalaxyCon or MegaCon in Orlando this Feb (2025)! GalaxyCon is coming back to StL so that is good.

Feel free to comment.
 
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