SS Celtic bio review

[hez1]

Well my SS Celtic just arrived so I thought I'd post up a little review for anyone still on the fence about getting one. I'll try and do this as logically as possible...

Good Points:
1) Construction. This thing is built like a tank. It weighs easily double what my cold cast bronze P1 does. My immediate worry would be for any floors it would hit if it fell off the stand. If the Scar bio was built like this, I'm surprised even Dan's car managed to crush it.

2) Errr...it's from the movie mold? I'm not gonna lie, after getting used to the Hird version, this thing looks freakin' WEIRD. Much narrower (it won't fit on my monsterroom mask, although it will fit on my xdmray mask) and much more elongated than the Hird bio. I'm sure I'll get used to it, and it does have that movie provenance, which is always nice.

3) It comes with a stand. And batteries for the LEDs.

4) It doesn't appear to have any hairs or paint brush bristles in the finish. It says a lot about Sideshows quality control in the past that I'm listing this as a good point.

Negative Points:
1) I could have painted this better with my eyes shut. It's a basic all over dark silver, with random patches of black airbrushed onto it. A minor mercy is that those SUPER bright copper accents on the prototype they showed? Not nearly as bright on the production pieces. They actually give a bit of contrast to it, although it they'd just done a decent job of weathering it in the first place, it wouldn't have mattered.

2) The lenses. It was inevitable. The lenses are just solid resin. What really gets me though, is that they've failed by their own low standards set by Scar. They're pretty much just painted them the same colour as the bio, and then not bothered to mask them off so there is a light speckling of black on them as well.

I guess that'll do...given that I expected to have to fix it up, I'm not disappointed. The sheer thickness of the thing means that I'll probably have to alter my approach to fixing the lenses though. Wonder if I have any spare silicone left...

Anywhere, here's some pics along with a direct comparison to the Steve Hird version. As far as exact sizes go, my SH is 10.75" at the widest point of the dome, and 9.5" at the widest point in the jaw. The SS is 11.25" at the dome, and just about 9.4" at the jaw. I'm guessing it wouldn't fit on my monsterroom mask because the cheeks are seriously around 1" thick on either side. Sorry if these screw up anyones screen by posting them side by side...

Oh yeah, and the lenses on my SH? Paint. Way to go, Sideshow.

 

[frosty]

What is it with sideshow cheaping out on the lenses, that sucks, its a nice bio though

 

[Viper15]

What a load of crap!!! i hope you can fix this thing up dude, not that you should have too of course!!!! i can't believe they didn't bother with any lenses, not only that but they didn't even bother to paint them a different colour? it ruins an otherwise brilliant sculpt, whats going on over at sideshow...

 

[chocoboy83]

damn, i thought mine just got messed up with the paintjob. but guess there all gonna be like that.

 

[Skullsplitter]

I prefer Steve's over the original anyway... Gonna ditch mine to another person, but would've canceled otherwise...

 

[PredatrHuntr]

I still prefer my Hird Celtic any day of the week...

 

[IxSL4Y4xI]

Wow, sideshow really needs to step it up if they want people to keep buying their bios.

 

[MisserCraig]

actually i really like this bio. from the pics and from your description, it really seems like it'd be a worthwhile piece to own. call me crazy, but i'm a fan...

 

[hez1]

actually i really like this bio. from the pics and from your description, it really seems like it'd be a worthwhile piece to own. call me crazy, but i'm a fan...

You know, it's growing on me. The paintjob just seems worse everytime I look at it unfortunately, unless of course they were going for the careless spraycan user look, in which case they nailed it. There's little flecks of black paint all over it, as if from the excess spray from a rattle can.

It's sad, because the actual quality of the piece itself is great. Even the lenses, if they had simply sprayed a reflective silver and then masked, would have been acceptable (just barely) for a display piece.

Anyone who's seen an Icons bio knows that it is more than possible to get great looking weathering on a production piece. The one I owned was outstanding. That sideshow apparently feels they don't need to bother is the most galling thing to me.

 

[armandb1]

Don't really care for it much myself and glad I didn't spring for it!

 

[predator666]

Such a class bio and it is screen accurate. Unfortunately the over all crappy paint up completely takes the appeal away from it.

 

[carlart]

Sharing Brian's affinity for as-accurate-as-possible props, it's no mystery why Steve's bio looks the way it does. As I recall, he modified an existing P-1 helmet, it was not created from scratch. Under that circumstance, there's no way it could have resulted in a 100% screen accurate bio. It's a fine looking piece, he really busted his rear end on modding that thing, just wanted to clear things up for people who don't know.

 

[PredatrHuntr]

Carl - are you saying that Steve Hird modded a P1? I don't know if I have ever seen that. Do you have any pictures of it?

 

[ROBOSTEVE 0671]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the kind words, I do still love what I did with my Celtic, I got pointed tot his thread by another member as I dont get on here much although I do intend to as I'm wanting to complete my Celtic suit.

Any way I did a tutorial for how I created my Celtic from a P1 as stated above.. I'm placing it in here.

Sorry for the Hijack but as your reviewing and comparing to mine, here's how I built it ..



Building the Celtic Bio Helmet from AVP

Start to finish.

Ok, this is a piece I did like 3 -4 years ago now. It's one of very few projects that I've done that I've taken photo's of through out the project and I'm glad I did. I wanted to share the processes of how I did the build and then how I went about painting and finishing the piece.

First off, I started with an Original Predator helmet from the Original film and from this I set about working over it to create the Celtic from the forthcoming AVP film at the time.

At the time, I had no experience of using clay of any kind but I was determined to own this helmet and I'd never sculpted anything either although I'd made a few scratch built items.

Anyway on with the pics and the description.

First off we see the Predator helmet here in it's raw form in Fibre glass.

You can see that I started to look at the helmet in pieces and started the build in layers of thick sturdy card which I'd made templates of the detail. I started to glue these on with Araldite after I was happy with the scale and shapes I'd drawn out and cut.

Here you can see the crude build up of how the templates started to build up and look. At this stage I wasn't too sure how it was going to turn out but I persevered and and later on you'll see how these templates helped me to sculpt over the top

A card piece cut out to make the nose bridge, Again this was cut out maybe several times until I was happy with how it fit snugly to the rest of the face.

Here you can see the shapes before they were glued to the face of the Helmet, I drew out 1-1 scale sketches and then from this I made my card templates.

From my sketches I worked out how the new Celtic parts were going to fit snugly onto the Original helmet underneath

The red line indicates where the profile of the original helmet sits and then the rest are the details of the new parts I had to make from scratch.

Once I'd glued the parts on I then started to fill out over the top with MilliPut.

This allowed me to work piece by piece and slowly fill in the bad edges and poor fitting card.

MilliPut is a two part Epoxi that can be sculpted like clay but, once its set it can be drilled, Sanded and painted. It's brilliant stuff and I use it for just about anything. Once I mix the two even parts I then apply the mix to the surface I'm sculpting and then apply warm water to help me smooth and sculpt the shapes I need on the surface. No sculpting tools were used here, Only my fingers to shape the parts and the face of this piece.

Here you can see by using the template how I got the size for the 'tusks' on the front of the Bio.

These I cut out from 6mm MDF and then using a Dremil I trimmed each one and then sanded the edges to create a smooth curve to each.

I then worked out I'd need to mount these onto some kind of roll or piece of pipe. I used UPCV plumbing pipe showed here and then I also made the small green outer and inner supports from Pill case lids trimmed down the the right width again using a Dremmil

Before I could mount the pipe and it's parts I checked the size of the pipe and cut out sections at the back to make sure it fit snugly.

You can see from the above images that I had quite a way to go before this helmet was going to look anywhere near finished but I was determined to get the helmet accurate so I carried on. As the build continued my confidence grew in the piece as I could see it taking shape.

You can see here below that I continued to build up the MilliPut and as I went I compared the shapes I'd sculpted until I got something very close to the screen used Helmet.

I looked around many shops and hardware stores for cheap plastic parts that would help me with some of the more machine made details, The nose was one of four Yo-Yo's and I bought from a pound shop. Cut in half, they made the nose for the helmet. Perfect!

After much sanding and re shaping of the face I was happy. and then I went about creating the smaller detailed parts from the helmet starting with the small air intake pipe on the left hand side temple.

Other small details I made from cut out MDF for the main outer wheel you can see here and then the inner details were made from Door stoppers and the smaller dashes are chopped up match sticks.

The inner cheeks have spikes and I made these from glue pot lids, I dremmiled out the lids and sunk the spikes and these were set in Milliput to hold them in place within the outer lid shape.

Also here below you can see the laser site housing I made the base from Milliput and then the three bars are Match sticks and the three risen caps are chopped from the end of pen lids. All very useful handy parts found from pound shops.

Once all the parts are glued in place I then used MilliPut again to sculpt and fill in any area's that needed blending in.

I carried on this process until I felt I was happy with the over all shape and then I decided to spray the entire Helmet with a layer of primer.

Once the primer had dried I could then see where there were any imperfections and so I went about using more filler and then sanding down again.

Here you can see how all the parts turned out and each section primed up ready to be painted.

The Helmet is now complete with the build process and so now I go about creating the metal coat finish.

The first step is to paint the enter helmet in a flat Satin black.

Once this is dry I then start to cover the helmet with a stippled 'ragged' on silver enamel paint

I used an old piece of towelling and dipped this into a large tray of silver paint, I then ragged the paint 'off' the towel until there was hardy any paint. The towel is then ragged onto the surface of the helmet, I used a towelling material as it's gives a better broken up surface.

Then next stage with the silver paint was to get a tighter and more controlled weathering by 'dry' brushing the paint on with a wide household paint brush.

Here you can see how I've carried on applying layers until I have covered the black more and more.

The reason I use Black as base is so that the silver has some depth to it and the black gives the helmet form and so in the end you'll have some black still showing but more so in the crevices of the sculpt.

You can see here that I've continued to build up over the entire surface until I've got the desired look.
The smoother area's I've used the same paint but through an Airbrush so get that smooth blended in look around some of the edges.

In the background you'll see a second Bio that came out of the mould that I made from this very first helmet.

Once I was happy with the helmet The entire thing was then sprayed with a clear coat acrylic. I then applied mirrored lenses to the Bio to give it's that dark menacing look.

and a few final shots of the helmet mounted onto a Predator bust with dreadlocks.

 

[hez1]

No worries about the hijack...I'm sure there's a bunch of people who had no idea how this piece was created. I've seen it before, but the creativity you used is fantastic. Good to see you around!

 

[Bovine13]

Steve...the man himself! Glad to finally see you in here. I have to say I like Steve's better my self. It looks to me that the face/chin area looks elongated/stretched out on the SS piece.

 

[Viper15]

At the risk of harping on, look how much better that celtic looks just with the addition of mirrored lenses as opposed to paint... why couldn't a huge company like SS who were aided by ADI achieve that?? Great work Steve.

Paul, will you be modding your SS celtic at all? id love to see one with proper lenses installed.

 

[roninpredator]

Good to have ya back Steve!
I love what you did with your bio and I'm the proud owner of one of your beauts
I'm still going to try to get a ss celtic but I still think yours is a master piece.
stop by more often

 

[hez1]

Paul, will you be modding your SS celtic at all? id love to see one with proper lenses installed.

Yes...but I plan to modify a replica, rather than the original. (take from that what you will ) I'm pretty sure that with some actual effort put into the finish this could look great.

 

[PredatrHuntr]

Thanks for posting the process Steve! I remember when you had them all posted on the old Lair...I looked at them for a long time and am still proud to own one. You did a bang up job taking pictures of the whole process - let alone building it from scratch. Kudos to you sir...