The 900th thread about modding a Black Series Kylo Ren Helmet w/ Disney upgrade
- Thread starter TridCloudwalker
- Start date
-
- Tags
- star wars
Sandman0077
Sr Member
Someone in the Facebook group actually used a combination of fine sand, primer, and hammered finish paint. Looks awesome.
-The Truth is Out There-
I saw that yesterday. It's still a bit too textured, but it's very close.
clancampbell
Sr Member
Do you mean too textured overall? Or just the sand texture/hammered texture? I'm so confused.....also, i appreciate you're under the NDA, but can you say what sections of the mask/helmet are what basic colours? I've seen some that look too black, some that are too gunmetal, some too glossy, others too matt.....a lot with too much silver drybrushing.....any basic colour help would be great.
Rich
Too textured overall. The sand isn't fine enough or spaced apart far enough. But I'm nitpicking. It really is close.
As for the color, that's what my experiment will be about. If it works, you'll get both a black color or very very dark gunmetal depending on the angle/lighting. I'm trying a technique I came up with for makeing black resin guns look more interesting instead of just hunks of resin painted black.
Started my build last night, funny how many threads I've read and knowing mentioned using aves epoxy sculpt for the seems and even adding the layers and detail. This stuff is very very strong, I was able to mold the battery and halves together with it and a whole day sending today didn't even show signs of cracking. Welding the plastic is great and with this stuff instead of bondo, you won't even have to glass the inside, you still can it will only make it even stronger. The cool part about this stuff is you can not just mold with it but resculpt any part of the helmet. And I tested out the hammered at Walmart earlier, by itself something seemed off about it. Helmet is already sanded down with 60-120-160-220-360 grit sandpaper. Wetsanded with the 360. The snout is almost smooth but not quite, I plan on doing a few coats of primer with sanding at 800 grit between to fill up anything else. I'm gonna then hit some spots with gunmetal acrylic model paint-japanese brand) then hit it with gloss black spray. Ones its uniform other than a select few parts I'll go back over it with model paints- drybrush wash finalize the look before hitting it with a ton of clear to make it solid. One question ,anovos uses a screen, I think the prop did too, but has anyone picked up if they cgi a non reflective visor in the movie? I like the bs visor just not thhat its glossed. Seems more likely, especially in episode 8 that his helmet might have some sort of cyber tech in it depending on sevarety of injuries kylo sustained.
clancampbell
Sr Member
Thanks for that, i'm a loooong way from painting, so i'm really looking forward to what you come up with!
Keep up the excellent work
Rich
kevinc21ox
New Member
I would like to know you plans about the voice modulator. I actually returned the BS Helmet because the voice changer was so awful. Now I am thinking of buying it again because of this thread. I would really interested in how to get the voice to work.
I didn't buy the BS helmet for the voice changer. I bought it for its accuracy for price. While you can make some mods on the stock voice changer to make it mildly adequate, I'm just building my own with a voice modulator kit I bought online, and some other bits and bobs. That'll be covered later once I work out the bugs.
By the way, I'll be getting some major work done tomorrow morning on the helmet, after not having the time to even look at it for a week. Should have another update very soon.
Note on my epoxy scultp post- when doing a wet sand last night one seem partially split so I took off some sculpt and welded the whole litter seem. Not trying to hijack your post trid, just most recent bs hemlet one. As far as voice module, I've tried foaming all the inside and covering front speaker and nothing makes it good with the exception of if you could have a piece on the mask that went from your neck to bottom of mask to seal mask over face. Then the echo and problem with voice being heard before changed voice doesn't happen. Also have had a huge problem with it turning on by itself or when I touch any area where the button was/is at. I'm gonna put good stuff back in when I get done with helmet but going to change where the switch is and maybe the kind of switch. Also will see if I can put a mkc from a cell phone earbud thing there instead. Might work might not. If not oh well
Update, first primer was done and wetsanded with 320 then 800 grit. Parts where the plastic weld wasn't s!ooth were a pain and battery part may show lines so I epoxy sculpt over the outer weld limes and a few snout details like the vents. A Disney mask may be the way to go but not now. Well see how it finishes first. Snout and middle part of helmet are smoothed and get more textured as you go back. I have aluminium tape and I'm seriously considering putting it in select spots before final paints to give it a real metal look. Question in the 4-5 vents by snout? Are you cutting them out and fabric the backings of them. Not the ones by the silver the ones that are molded on bs and distinct on anovos?
I'm not sure what vents you are talking about.
EPISODE III - Revenge of the Sithy Plastic
This polypropylene is my bane. I understand why Hasbro uses it (it's inexpensive and easy to mold quickly), but it's torture to us modders.
It's made me a little crazy.
So, I didn't get as much done yesterday as I had thought I would, so apologies for this abbreviated update. Since I am attempting a Disney graft and accurizing like no one else has attempted yet, this is ALL educated guesswork and unexplored ground. As such, little roadblocks pop up unexpectedly and you need to MacGyver your way through them. That's what yesterdays session turned into instead of welding on the Disney face and bondo-ing the helmet like I had planned. So here is the story of my personal hell:
First thing I did yesterday was start out with something simple. I used a little bit of hot glue and partially filled in the speaker holes so I wouldn't have to pile as much bondo in there and worry about shrinkage or anything. There is adhesion promoter on the glue, but we'll get to that later. I used hot glue because it was cheap and quick, and had a glue gun sitting right next to me. Really anything will work that fills the hole (that's what she said).
I also laid in some glue on the back of the speaker vents in preparation of eventually filling those in as well.
Here's where things start getting tricky, and where I warn you that if you want to go for the full 4 layer look of the face and corrected helmet flair and cheeks, you're in for a LOT of hard work. I would recommend you just take those two top layer, and just slap them onto your BS. It'll look great. However, if you're way too anal retentive like I am, and insist on it being as perfect and accurate as possible, here's the self-imposed torture I'm currently going through.
As shown in a previous episode, I chopped off the little jowl piece from the Disney mask that sits directly under the filigree.
This little a-hole
This is necessary for some vent detail, the little jowls on the ends, and to close a huge gap that's created when you eliminate the BS face. However, getting this to line up and sit on the bottom of the BS filigree, is an exercise in patience and sanding things away a little bit at a time. The BS & Disney plastics are different thicknesses, and the curvature on the piece vary by a tiny amount. This means a LOT of chopping, grinding, and sanding...then later gluing, welding, and filling, and blending, is going to be necessary.
That piece now looks like this:
And to get it to sit more or less flush against the filigree, I had to do a LOT of grinding and sanding and chopping:
After all that, I can get the two parts to dry fit more or less like this:
Now obviously we have an ugly, uneven gap between them. I mean, there's supposed to be a line/separation, but this just looks gnarly. I'm going to have to carfully mask the chrome, and get some filler in there to smooth it out once I have it all glued and welded together. That will come in a later episode.
Next up, all the parts (minus the chrome) were sprayed down with an industry grade automotive paint adhesion promoter. This is what they spray onto plastic bumpers and fenders and such before laying down primer and paint. You can get this stuff at a professional auto body supply shop, and yes, it's expensive. If your budget is tight, I recommend Duplicolor plastic adhesion promoter in a rattle can. It won't go on a smooth or have as much of a bite with the pro stuff, but it'll work if you're not too rough with your helmet and handling it all the time. This layer will allow my resurfacing compound to securely stick when I cover the helmet to eliminate the wavy inaccurate texture, and on the Disney pieces, it will allow primer to securely stick without chipping or peeling on this awful oily plastic.
Here are the parts dry fitted together (with and without flash) to give you an idea of how it's coming along. I still have some mods to make to the bottom layer of the face that also includes the cheeks that will be getting attached to the BS dome, but that will be for the next episode. Stay tuned...
This polypropylene is my bane. I understand why Hasbro uses it (it's inexpensive and easy to mold quickly), but it's torture to us modders.
It's made me a little crazy.
So, I didn't get as much done yesterday as I had thought I would, so apologies for this abbreviated update. Since I am attempting a Disney graft and accurizing like no one else has attempted yet, this is ALL educated guesswork and unexplored ground. As such, little roadblocks pop up unexpectedly and you need to MacGyver your way through them. That's what yesterdays session turned into instead of welding on the Disney face and bondo-ing the helmet like I had planned. So here is the story of my personal hell:
First thing I did yesterday was start out with something simple. I used a little bit of hot glue and partially filled in the speaker holes so I wouldn't have to pile as much bondo in there and worry about shrinkage or anything. There is adhesion promoter on the glue, but we'll get to that later. I used hot glue because it was cheap and quick, and had a glue gun sitting right next to me. Really anything will work that fills the hole (that's what she said).
I also laid in some glue on the back of the speaker vents in preparation of eventually filling those in as well.
Here's where things start getting tricky, and where I warn you that if you want to go for the full 4 layer look of the face and corrected helmet flair and cheeks, you're in for a LOT of hard work. I would recommend you just take those two top layer, and just slap them onto your BS. It'll look great. However, if you're way too anal retentive like I am, and insist on it being as perfect and accurate as possible, here's the self-imposed torture I'm currently going through.
As shown in a previous episode, I chopped off the little jowl piece from the Disney mask that sits directly under the filigree.
This little a-hole
This is necessary for some vent detail, the little jowls on the ends, and to close a huge gap that's created when you eliminate the BS face. However, getting this to line up and sit on the bottom of the BS filigree, is an exercise in patience and sanding things away a little bit at a time. The BS & Disney plastics are different thicknesses, and the curvature on the piece vary by a tiny amount. This means a LOT of chopping, grinding, and sanding...then later gluing, welding, and filling, and blending, is going to be necessary.
That piece now looks like this:
And to get it to sit more or less flush against the filigree, I had to do a LOT of grinding and sanding and chopping:
After all that, I can get the two parts to dry fit more or less like this:
Now obviously we have an ugly, uneven gap between them. I mean, there's supposed to be a line/separation, but this just looks gnarly. I'm going to have to carfully mask the chrome, and get some filler in there to smooth it out once I have it all glued and welded together. That will come in a later episode.
Next up, all the parts (minus the chrome) were sprayed down with an industry grade automotive paint adhesion promoter. This is what they spray onto plastic bumpers and fenders and such before laying down primer and paint. You can get this stuff at a professional auto body supply shop, and yes, it's expensive. If your budget is tight, I recommend Duplicolor plastic adhesion promoter in a rattle can. It won't go on a smooth or have as much of a bite with the pro stuff, but it'll work if you're not too rough with your helmet and handling it all the time. This layer will allow my resurfacing compound to securely stick when I cover the helmet to eliminate the wavy inaccurate texture, and on the Disney pieces, it will allow primer to securely stick without chipping or peeling on this awful oily plastic.
Here are the parts dry fitted together (with and without flash) to give you an idea of how it's coming along. I still have some mods to make to the bottom layer of the face that also includes the cheeks that will be getting attached to the BS dome, but that will be for the next episode. Stay tuned...
Attachments
I took a straight on photo of my BS helmet and tried overlaying it over a photo of the display suit that was up during the convention and, to my surprise, the snout actually lined up pretty close together. The difference really was in the smooth surface vs. the texturing of the BS helmet. I was thinking instead of completely replacing the front snout to just sand down with very fine wet sandpaper and smooth it out and paint over it that way.
Initially I thought the BS snout was a bit too short, but from what the photos looked like, everything lined up with exception to needing to add some details under the bottom part of the snout and reducing the curved edging to be a bit more sharp.
Has anyone else modded the helmet without cutting that front part out?
Initially I thought the BS snout was a bit too short, but from what the photos looked like, everything lined up with exception to needing to add some details under the bottom part of the snout and reducing the curved edging to be a bit more sharp.
Has anyone else modded the helmet without cutting that front part out?
Tons. Join the Knights of Ren Facebook page and you can see dozens. People have made them look really good. But this thread is about going for as much accuracy as physically possible.
Thank you!! I had no clue this page existed. I just put in a join request. I appreciate the referral!
Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
I've no idea, as I've never seen the Rubies in person. From what I understand, the Rubies is a little bigger than actual size, but I'm sure one could make it fit with a little elbow grease.
Similar threads
