Second Sister from Jedi: Fallen Order

[thorssoli]

I tend to be pretty late to the show when it comes to video games. I didn't pick up any of the Halo games until Reach came out and my first Fallout game was the fourth one. That said, I'd been hearing so many good things about Jedi: Fallen Order that it didn't take me long to pick up a copy for the PS4. Now I pretty much suck at playing video games, so I'm still only about halfway through the story. Specifically, I'm stuck on the part where we meet this lady for the second time:

That's the Second Sister, one of the Imperial Inquisitors on a mission to hunt down the remaining Jedi.

Now I suck at gaming, so she's been repeatedly kicking my butt in a lightsaber duel that is likely going to take me days to figure out. But that hasn't stopped me from wanting to bring this character to life. Originally was just going to shop around for a nice, smooth 3D model so I could print the helmet and call it done, but I never came across one that I was happy with. Instead, I decided to start with the in-game 3D model which someone was good enough to rip and post online. Here it is imported into Netfabb:

At first glance, the model is a bit of a mess. That's because it includes everything. Soft parts, body parts. Even her hair, eyes, and teeth are mixed in there. After deleting the geometry I didn't need, here's what the hard parts looked like:

Much better.

Here are the hard parts imported into Armorsmith for a digital test fit on a slightly taller than average female figure:

Taking a couple of slices out of the helmet model, I printed a quick and dirty size tester. Here's Dr. Girlfriend trying it on:

It fit her 21.5" head with room to spare, but it was a bit snug on my 23.5" head:

Satisfied that this was a good size for her (and potentially an adequate size for me) I went ahead and printed all of the helmet parts:

At a glance, it looked good, but it turned out to be really snug in the cheek area:

Looking back at a full-color render of the in-game model, it was even worse for the on-screen character:

That bit of skin tone is her cheekbone sticking out through the geometry of the helmet. So I had to make it a tiny bit bigger. I also changed the angle of the cheek vent area to make the cheek indents a bit shallower. The larger modified model is almost indistinguishable from the original test:

When Dr. Girlfriend tried it on, it still looked good:

So I got to work smoothing it out. Step one was rough sanding the whole thing to knock the corners off of the low-poly print:

Then a layer of Bondo and some more sanding:

At the end of the day it looked like so:

 

[thorssoli]

The next day I printed the shoulders, belt buckle, ears, and rank bars:

I also printed the inner skirt section:

In order to fit a wider variety of sizes, I decided to widen the neck opening a bit:

Here's the helmet after the second bodyshop session:

In order to get someone's head in through the tiny neck hole, I've decided to mold and cast the jaw separately so it can be removable. To ensure the two parts mate up properly, I covered the end of the jaw in masking tape and a thin coat of vaseline. Then piled up some Bondo on the edge of the inner skirt and pressed the jaw into place. When the Bondo had mostly cured, I roughed out the shape with a knife:

To make the jaw thinner (and more importanly, lighter) I ground out most of the inner geometry with sanding drum on my Dremel:

Then did a quick and dirty job of fairing it out with some more Bondo and 60-grit sandpaper:

At the end of the third bodyshop session, I gave the helmet dome a coat of gray primer to see where I stand:

So far so good. Stay tuned for updates as I keep churning on this project.

 

[thorssoli]

Progress continues, but it's not very interesting. Mostly it's just smoothing and sanding and filling and sanding:

Most of the work that's left to do on the helmet prototype is sorting out the interior of the jaw part:

I should be about ready to mold the helmet in another day or two.

 

[thorssoli]

Haven't had as much time to work on this as I'd hoped, but I've finally ironed out the mating surfaces on the inside of the jaw:

The mating surfaces on the helmet body are done too:

Now I'm in the final stages of sanding and priming and smoothing before it gets molded:

In other news, the shoulder plates are just about ready to mold as well:

Stay tuned...

 

[thorssoli]

Just about done smoothing out the helmet, so I gave it a gloss coat of paint:

So there it sits, off-gassing while I get around to molding it:

This is one of probably three helmets I'll be molding in the coming week. Stay tuned...

 

[thorssoli]

Moldmaking has begun.

I started by mounting the helmet to some cardboard scraps:

Then wrapped it in plastic wrap:

The surface was covered with a 3/8" layer of oil-based clay with ridges here and there to act as registration keys and allow bubbles to escape:

Then I added a mold flange:

And laid up the first half of the fiberglass mothermold:

Once the first half was cured, I removed the clay parting wall and prepped the other side for layup:

At the end of the day, I was pretty exhausted and neglected to photograph the second side of the mothermold, but it's done.

Now I'm about to separate the two halves of the mothermold, remove the clay, reseal the mothermold in place, and pour in the silicone. This creates a rubber jacket with a nice uniform thickness and no wasted rubber, but there are tons of things that can go wrong in the process.

Wish me luck.

 

[thorssoli]

Alright, so here's the other side of the mothermold:

Yesterday I went ahead and drilled bolt holes into the mold flange:

Then I removed the mothermold:

Here it is after a quick trim with some shears:

I smoothed out the clay around the base of the helmet and added some dimples for registration:

Then I reassembled the mothermold around the helmet prototype and used hot glue to seal all of the edges:

The glue was then given plenty of time to cool:

Finally, I finished off my evening by pouring silicone into the void where the clay used to be:

Today I'll be removing the board underneath and removing all of the clay and cardboard so I can make up the bottom section of the mold. I also need to mount and prep the jaw for molding. The day's getting away from me in a hurry though, so I might not get around to pouring the silicone for them until tomorrow.

 

[Halliwax]

Seriously clean work, that filling and sanding is pretty intense. All pays off in the end, your pictures are the proof. Really nice work

 

[thorssoli]

Thank you. I've definitely put in the hours on this one.

So I did a decent job of sealing up the edges of the mothermold before pouring the silicone. What I didn't anticipate was the rubber finding a way under the tape around the edge of the cardboard base:

Fortunately, I clamped it off before too much dripped out:

The only other problem area was under the nose where I couldn't reliably reach with the hot glue gun. I tried to just pile on more glue, but apparently I missed a bit somewhere. Somewhere overnight, a few drops found a way through:

Still, I'm counting it as a success.

The next day I got to remove all of the cardboard and hot glue and clean up the clay that was underneath:

Then I built up a clay jacket much like I did for the top of the helmet:

After covering the mold flanges with a layer of vaseline for a release agent, I laid up the third and final piece of the fiberglass mothermold:

I also went ahead and set up the jaw for molding. Here's the beginning of setting up the clay jacket:

Here's the clay jacket at the beginning of the fiberglass layup:

And the first two of the three sections of the mothermold laid up and curing:

Today I'll be pouring the silicone for the bottom of the main mold for the helmet and the outside of the jaw mold. I'll also be prepping the shoulders for molding in fiberglass.

Stay tuned...

 

[Helix6187]

It's always a pleasure to see your step by step workflow !

 

[thorssoli]

It's always a pleasure to see your step by step workflow !

Thank you. With the shortage of comments I was starting to wonder if anybody was reading the thread. I'm trying to explain the processes, but I'm at least a little bit surprised that nobody has any questions. It's weird.

In any case, the mothermold for the bottom of the helmet came out fine:

After clearing off all of the clay and masking tape, I noticed that a bit of fiberglass resin had leaked past all of the clay and formed this lump in the cheek indent area of the helmet:

The only problem is that pulling it off took a tiny patch of paint off the surface of the helmet:

It'll mean that there will be a bit more work to do on each of the castings that comes out of the mold, but a tiny bit of sanding should be all ti takes.

The next step was to drill bleeder holes in the high points of the mothermold:

Once the mothermold was bolted in place and the edges were sealed up, I started pouring in the silicone. The bleeder holes prevent bubbles from being trapped in the peaks of the mold. The trick is to keep an eye out for the silicone to start drooling out of the hole:

Once the drooling begins, I just plug the hole with a wad of clay:

Once the silicone is filled all the way to the top and the bleeder holes have all drooled and been plugged, the mold gets to sit overnight and cure:

While I was doing all of that, I also finished the outer sections of the mothermold for the jaw section and cleaned them up. Again, I started by drilling bolt holes:

Here's the re-assembled mothermold bolted back together:

Once I'd wiped out all of the dust from the trimming process, it was set in place on the jaw prototype:

Then, just like the main helmet mold, the edges were sealed up with hot glue and the whole thing was filled with silicone:

Today I just about got the inside of the jaw ready for the mothermold, but otherwise much of my day was spent sneaking out of quarantine to pick up materials from my local supplier who's kind enough to offer no-contact pickup. Tomorrow I'll be rotocasting the first copy of the helmet body and pouring the rubber for the inside of the jaw by the end of the day.

Stay tuned...

 

[smoothrat]

Thanks for detailing your moldmaking process. I can't wait to see the finished pulls.

 

[13doctorwho]

This is all very interesting. Your write ups are always so thorough. Great work.

 

[thorssoli]

Thanks for the comments, guys. Feedback is like fuel for these kinds of projects, so it helps to know someone is interested.

Yesterday I pried open the mothermold for the main helmet:

The whole thing came off without any issues:

Here's the upper end reassembled without the helmet master inside:

The lower section looked a little less pretty before I finished trimming the mothermold and the edges of the rubber:

Here's the little rough patch from where the fiberglass resin leaked onto the helmet master when I was making the mothermold:

After cleaning up the edges, I bolted the mold back together. Now it's waiting for me to get back to the shop and roll out the first cast:

While all of that was going on, I also went ahead and prepped the inner section of the jaw mold for making a mothermold:

I didn't get any pics of the mothermold in progress, but once it had cured, I cleaned up the edges, sealed it all back together, and sprayed in a release agent. Then poured in some silicone:

So by now it should be cured and I just need to get out to the shop, pull the prototype out of the mold, cut in some sprues and vents, and pour the first cast.

Pics to follow. Stay tuned...

 

[thorssoli]

So, as luck would have it, the jaw mold came out perfectly. Here's the rubber jacket after I'd pried off the mothermold:

And here's the inner and outer parts of the rubber jacket after trimming the edges and fitting them back to the mothermold:

I used a syringe to inject resin into a small pour hole cut in one back corner of the jaw until it came out the vent cut into the other back corner of the jaw:

While that was curing, I rotocast three layers of resin in the main helmet mold. Here's the first set of cast parts out of the mold:

Then I took them into the dusty/noisy room and trimmed off the bits of flashing and cut out the eye slit:

Here it is after wiping off the dust:

Today I'm going to install magnets to attach the jaw to the rest of the helmet. For now, a bit of masking tape is doing the job:

Until then, it's a pretty good-looking bit of kit that just needs a tiny bit more work to make it ready to paint:

Now I need to finish tuning up the forearm prototypes and do a bit more work on the belt buckle to get it ready to mold.

Stay tuned...

 

[thorssoli]

So now that I've cast a few good copies of the helmet, I've started experimenting with how I'm going to light up the visor. I started by cutting out a piece of 1/4" clear acrylic that was cut to shape. Then I used a hacksaw blade to scratch a rough and dirty crosshatch pattern onto it before heating it in a toaster oven so I could bend it to fit into the helmet. Here's the end result:

The edge was notched and fitted with LEDs which I soldered together in parallel:

Here they are all powered up and edge-lighting the crosshatched acrylic:

Here's the assembly in place in the helmet:

Of course, this makes it pretty tricky to see out of the helmet, so I add a piece of green-tinted transparent acrylic to block out the red light:

That piece gets placed inside the clear acrylic so the wearer doesn't have any red light shining in their face. Here's what it looks like on the outside:

It's less great in close-up view:

As you can imagine, visibility is much like looking through a pair of scratched sunglasses, but with a more uniform crosshatch it'll come closer to looking through a screen mesh. In any case, it looks like I'm heading in the right direction:

Now I need to call in a favor and get a friend to laser cut a more refined version of these parts while I focus instead on molding the shoulders and gauntlets. Stay tuned...

 

[smoothrat]

Loving the progress. It looks badass!

 

[ECOLI]

Hmmm what other helmets you molding??? Always a great process to watch !!!

 

[thorssoli]

Loving the progress. It looks badass!

Thanks. I'm really proud of this build so far. If you need a helmet, I've started a sales thread in the "Project Runs" section.

Hmmm what other helmets you molding??? Always a great process to watch !!!

Right now I'm working on a mold for my HALO Locus helmet:

It too will be cast in two sections because the neck hole is too small for a person to fit their head through.

Last week I molded the helmet for my Flametrooper build:

I've got two almost painted, so I'll be updating that build thread sooner than later.

Meanwhile, I really need to hurry up and make more progress on the Second Sister build.

 

[Dtrasler]

So, as luck would have it, the jaw mold came out perfectly. Here's the rubber jacket after I'd pried off the mothermold:
View attachment 1293395

And here's the inner and outer parts of the rubber jacket after trimming the edges and fitting them back to the mothermold:
View attachment 1293396

I used a syringe to inject resin into a small pour hole cut in one back corner of the jaw until it came out the vent cut into the other back corner of the jaw:
View attachment 1293397

While that was curing, I rotocast three layers of resin in the main helmet mold. Here's the first set of cast parts out of the mold:
View attachment 1293398

Then I took them into the dusty/noisy room and trimmed off the bits of flashing and cut out the eye slit:
View attachment 1293399

Here it is after wiping off the dust:
View attachment 1293400

View attachment 1293401

View attachment 1293402

Today I'm going to install magnets to attach the jaw to the rest of the helmet. For now, a bit of masking tape is doing the job:
View attachment 1293403

Until then, it's a pretty good-looking bit of kit that just needs a tiny bit more work to make it ready to paint:
View attachment 1293404

Now I need to finish tuning up the forearm prototypes and do a bit more work on the belt buckle to get it ready to mold.

Stay tuned...

This is a FANTASTIC thread. I've always been curious about casting, because I just couldn't get my head around the process. This has laid it out for me and let me know two things: One, I should never, ever try to do this. Two, I should never , ever try to do this. Your work (at every stage) is outstanding! Thank you for sharing it.