Stargate Horus Guard Build (Lots O Pics)

[Phantom017]

So from the very first time I saw the movie Stargate and Anubis and the Horus Guards came onto the screen I loved everything about them. I especially liked the head movement and the glowing eyes. I knew that someday I wanted to make one of these helmets. Well my available resources at the time didn't allow for this nor did I have any idea where to start.

Fast forward to 2013 and with the popularity of pepakura files flooding the costuming scene I decided one day to take a stroll through the interwebs and see if I could find some cool files to try. Then it showed up on my screen. A pep file for an Anubis and Horus guard helmet. I was instantly hooked. I downloaded the file and what you see here is my build of an Horus guard helmet. I chose Horus for 2 reasons. In the movie they are the pilots of the death gliders. I am an airline pilot so I figured it was appropriate. And 2 I like to usually go for the recognizable yet still a bit obscure characters. I seen several Anubis heads but only a few Horus.

I found RPF member HONUS67 who was instrumental in helping me build this helmet and getting the animatronics to work. I have never done anything with servos or programing circuit boards before and his instructable here Animatronic Stargate helmet really helped me piece this thing together.

This is my very first PEP build (I know nothing like taking a huge leap with both feet for an initial project) That with the electronics made things interesting.

So I started with a stack of Card stock. I used 110lb for extra rigidity. I also figured I would start with the head because on paper it for some reason looked easier....



One thing I noticed is that a lot of people use hot glue to hold there peps together. Let me just say is that Scotch makes a very quick drying white glue found in most hobby stores that sell scrapbooking supplies that worked superbly. The glue once seated dries in approximately 10-20 seconds (sometimes quicker) and I never had any problems with the bond.

So on to the head. There are a lot of curves on this thing and made for a very interesting time putting it together. I also ended up not building the eyes up because I was going to be covering it with paper mache' AND craft foam later and was planning on lighting the eyes so I left them unfinished. Which was also a time saver as they are one of the most complex parts of the entire build.





After assembling the Head I started on the front of the main helmet... I guess you can call it a chest piece even though it sits on your shoulders. The pep file has an interior wall build too that I did only for the edges to help hold the shape together.





The flare of the main helmet as seen in the previous photo was reduced once the rest of the helmet was assembled however in the movie the helmet flare is almost to the ends of the shoulders it appears. I do wish this pep would of flared out a bit more but it still looks good once put together.

Once I had the main parts together I set them up for a test fitting.... Looks like a Horus Guard helmet to me so far!







Next I used butcher paper to paper mache the entire helm and head to help make it more rigid and to try and smoothen out the corners and angles left by the pep. It worked great. The thick paper became really solid when dried. The only down side was that thicker paper holds more water and that water leaked out as it was drying into the original card stock and ended up warping the pep just a bit. It took a little bit of readjusting and forming when I used 3M Fiberglass resin on top of the paper mache to help strengthen that even more.

Here is a pic of the resin overtop of the paper mache as it is drying. The head piece also was covered in paper mache and resin to help with strength.





I know that most of the detail from the pep seems hidden under all those layers but this was intentional. I knew from the beginning that I was going to cover it in craft foam and all the detailing would be on top anyway so really the only thing the pep was for was the initial form.

Stay tuned for next episode... The craft foam cometh!

 

[Phantom017]

Here comes the craft foam!

I used basic craft foam sheets like those found at Hobby Lobby or Michaels. I used various thicknesses ranging from the thinnest to thickest they had available. The thicker sheets were used for the under layer and the thin more plyable sheets were used for the detailing work.



So like the pep work I started on the head for the craft foam application. I also added the detail to the foam before gluing it in place to have a stable platform since I was using the very advanced technique of applying the details with a blue paper mate pen.





The feather like details on the top of the head in the movie version were just lines in the sculpt to simulate the look. I wanted mine to pop a little bit more so I used thin foam and cut out my own "feathers" and detailed them with scribed lines like those in the movie. This gave the finished product a nice solid effect.





Also the circular detail below the "feathers" seemed a bit plain to me and while at Hobby Lobby I found these cool mock gems and thought a nice blue would look good there and also lend to the enhancement effect. Here is a test fit shot of one.





While test fitting the helmet before fiberglassing, I noticed that the PEP file was made for someone a lot shorter then me. I'm 6'4" and the bottom of shoulder section was a good 4 inches above my actual shoulders. This made the helm look ridiculous on me. So instead of scrapping the process I decided to extend the bottom of it using craft foam until it was resting on my shoulders. My head is still right at the top of the helm and touches it and will even lift it up if I crane my neck but the look and fit are much more natural now.



I used about 4 to 5 layers of the thickest foam available to make the bottom rigid and able to support the rest of the helmet. I also made it this thick to essentially clamp both sides of the PEP model to make sure it would hold firm.

Once the sizing was corrected I began to add the outer layers of craft foam to the main model.



Also because of the paper mache the bottom of the raised layers on the back of the neck were not as crisp as I would of liked them so decided to cover that area with craft foam as well.



Being that I had to extend the shoulder section I also had to extend the front neck down lower to match the look of the helm. The same technique was used here to lower the neck down.



Here is more of the outer shell being applied before detailing.



The seams between the foam sheets was hidden using cover sheets or design elements to prevent anyone even seeing them there.



The trimming of the foam lead to A LOT of scraps. But I tried re-using the bigger pieces as much as I could to reduce the waste on this project. I used a hot knife to slice the pieces of the model. I cut through like butter and worked really well. It also would heat mold layers together if I were cutting through multiple layers which helped give a uniform look.



The seams on the top and rear of the helm were covered with Egyptian style designs found on the original movie helms again hiding almost all the seams perfectly.



The detail work was about the hardest thing to do on this helmet. This part I did once the sheets were attached to the helm to help give it some symmetry and also with the rigid layers underneath I was able to not worry about damage to the helmet. There was so much detail it needed, I had many a hand cramp trying to press the pen into the foam hard enough to give a solid good line. haha There is really no good clear reference shots on the web of the helmets that I found online for matching up the detail lines. I used the detail shots of HONUS67's build here on the RPF as a reference point for my helmet. I even have a resin model of Anubis and looked at that helmet. While not exact to the movie design I believe my result gave it the feel and look of the movie for sure.



The "shell" or fan design on the rear of the bottom is a separate layer piece that was on the movie helm and was used to cover the seam on the back.





And of course what Stargate helmet would be complete with an Eye of RA integrated into the details. (Middle section)

With the detailing complete... now comes the fun stuff.... the paint job!

 

[Trigonous]

Subscribed. Looks really nice so far, just make sure to upload a video showing off this animatronics once you're done!

 

[DBmike]

+1 sub, this is beautiful. Like you when I first saw those guys years ago I thought they looked awesome, your doing an amazing job so far

 

[Phantom017]

Ok so now comes the painting of the helmet. I wanted to stick to more of a movie look. I've seen some great paint jobs on the few of these that are out there but there was always something off to me. In the movie there was a two tone metallic color look to these helms adding to the effect that they are of alien origin and made from exotic materials.

When I started painting I first sealed the craft foam in water based Polycrylic sealer from MINWAX. I Brushed it on so that the aerosol wouldn't eat away at the foam. Just for the heck of it I bought a can of the spray as well and tried it. It didn't eat the foam but also didn't cover it as well as I would of liked on the test pieces I used so I stuck with the brush on stuff.



Once that was dried I sprayed the entire helmet in metallic silver as a base coat. Once the sealer was on I just used normal Krylon spray paints since I didn't have to worry about aerosol damage anymore.







The silver really made the detail lines pop and give a good idea of the amount of work that went into detailing the lines on the helm.

I ended up putting 2 coats of silver on because even with the sealant it wasn't covering as well as I would of liked. After 2 coats though it was looking how I wanted and I moved on to the other colors.

The next color I added was a duplicate Primer/paint combo from Krylon. It was a metallic gold. Neither Walmart nor Home Depot had the gold I was looking for so I decided to use this combo paint and it actually worked out pretty good.





I put a light coat of the gold on as I plan on mixing it with a copper color made by Rust-Oleum called Burnt copper. Again to give it a kind of alien metallic look. The cans are small because of the "stylish" Spray head so I went through 2 cans of this expensive paint fairly fast but it gave it almost the exact look I wanted.





You can see in this last pic that the copper color gives it a nice darker look. Where the silver is I am going to add a dusting of Navy Blue metallic and then dust that with more Burnt copper to mix it up and let those metallic come through and sorta sparkle in the light.

 

[P4r4dox86]

This is looking fantastic mate! I've loved the guard helms from Stargate for as long as I can remember and often toyed with the idea of giving one a shot, so this is great to watch as it all comes together .

 

[Phantom017]

After painting the main body I gave it some time to dry and started work on the bird head. I decided to start by cutting the eye holes out. Since I was going to use RED LED's for the eyes I wanted to get them wired up and at least positioned in the head if not permanently mounted to make sure everything was going to work before I painted it all up.

Here I am using the very advanced method of eye hole placement of using a sharp #2 pencil for punching through the craft foam where the eyes will go.



As you can see here in the back of the bird head that it is mostly hollow except the beak which I reinforced with spray foam insulation. I left the head hollow to allow me to work in there and mount the eye LED's and all the wiring and have a place for it to come out. I originally wanted to mount the bracket for the servo arm attachments in here as well but the final placement would of made the head sit too low on the helmet and given it a kind of hunchbacked look.



Here is another shot of the back of the head before I added the rear craft foam and trimmed off the excess. You can see the spray insulation in the beak area as well.



After getting the eye holes cut I really was not happy with the way the beak and sides of the bird head looked. I then decided to thicken it up a bit and give it a more of a Hawk appearance. I first took off the detail feathers on the bottom of the beak area and added a layer of spackleing paste to the seams and then added a single layer of thin craft foam to the bottom beak area and to the sides. In this photo you can see the craft foam on the sides added, the white is the spackeling paste. This was a test of the Red LED's but shows a couple of the other steps I took on the head as well.



once I added the new layer of craft foam I made new detail objects and reapplied those as well. I then used spackeling paste again on some of the seams and then after sanding and sealing painted about 2 layers of metallic silver over the entire head just as I had done with the helmet earlier.



Once this dried I added a metallic gold for the beak area and used the burnt copper for the head portion. The same colors I used on the main helmet.

Here is a rough spray on the first coat....



And here is the final detail paint finished after the second coat.





This pretty much finished up the bird head until the final assembly of the helmet when I'll add weathering to it to give it a nice used look

Next up is the detail paint of the main helmet.

 

[Gary Pahls]

 

[Archangel]

I just finished my costume. It is a simple one, no animatronics just two led up in the head to make the eyes light up.

 

[SG Merc]

Very nice work Phantom017 and Archangel!

 

[Lear60man]

Great job guys. I made mine in 1995? I only had the commercially available model as a reference. I used a chicken wire frame with paper mache and fiberglass on top. The details were sculpted in with bondo. it took forever. The tassels were painted rubber strips.

 

[Elohim]

Hello, sorry for my english, please where to get it format to download ? Thank you for answear