Years ago I had purchased an Iron Man mark 3 helmet off of the rpf from a member by the name of finhead. After it sitting in a box and collecting dust I thought it would be a cool idea to let my facebook fans decide how the helmet was to be finished. As it was about a month before Iron Man 3 was released and a few trailers were out that showed a very destroyed version of the helmet. I posted a poll to help me decide, either a clean unused version or the destroyed version from the trailer. Well as you might have guessed the destroyed version won.

Since there is not a lot of build up here, as the helmet was already built, I will just go through the paint up process.

Actually before I could start the paint process I needed to cut the slit into the front of the helmet as seen in the movie. To do this I took a screen grab from the trailer and made an outline of the crack in Adobe Illustrator. I then printed it out and traced the crack onto the helmet.

Next step was to carefully cut out the section with a dremel tool. I made sure to keep the edges kind of rough as if it was really broken it would probably not be a clean break.

Now on to the fun part... the paint up!

This paint job had to be done in several layers because it had to look scratched, chipped and really weathered. The first pieces I started painting were the 2 halves of the face plate. I used a spray paint called Montana Gold. They make all different kinds of colors, but of course I used shiny gold. At the time I had never used this type of paint, but always heard good things about it. As you can see from the photos I was very pleased with how it came out.

Unfortunately because I knew I was doing the destroyed version, I knew this paint couldn't stay shiny for long. I scuffed it up with a light sanding pad to take away some of the shine. The top picture shows the shine of the untouched paint and the bottom shows the scuffed up side next to the shiny side. It still retains a bit of the shine, but not the way it was before.

As for the rest of the helmet it needed a base coat of sliver so that all the scratches and chips would show through the red top coat.

To make the paint look like it was chipped off I cut out shapes that matched parts from the movie trailer out of a vinyl sticker material and placed them on the helmet.

Now it was time for the top coat of Pepper Red automotive paint. This was sprayed through an air gun to get the perfect finish. Once the Pepper Red had fully cured, I used an x-acto knife to carefully peal off the vinyl stickers.

The next step was to tape off the chin so it could be painted to match the face plate.

The final step was to add the scratches and burn marks. This was achieved by using acrylic paint with different shapes and styles of brushes. Here is the final version with the lenses placed in sitting next to my scratch built arc reactor.

The New Batch

It has been a while since I posted any new updates, because I have been super busy. Many new projects have been created, but lets get into some projects that have been completed but not shown on here. First up Gizmo from gremlins!

Last we left off I had all the pieces cast and the eyes airbrushed. Basically everything was ready to assemble, so lets get into it. After completing my first gizmo I decided that he seemed a little too skinny so I wanted to cut the body in half and make him a little wider.  I sawed the urethane foam body in half and laid the 2 pieces on a blueprint of gizmo that I had used to sculpt him to size. From there I could figure out how much wider he needed to be.

Once that was achieved I drilled a couple screws into him to hold the 2 halves together so I could glue the 2 pieces back together.

As you can see from the picture that only the shoulders needed to be expanded out. Since the body was cast in a urethane foam I used the spray foam in a can (the stuff used to seal crack and gaps in your house) to seam him back together.

As soon as the foam completely dried I was able to carve back the shape of the body and add a little bit of filler to smooth out the section. Now it did not matter if the section was completely smooth as fur would be glued over the top anyways and you would never see where the seam was created. The picture below shows the finished seam along with the hands, feet, head and ears attached.

Now that the base of Gizmo was finished it was time to start the long process of applying the fur. I had templates made from my first Gizmo that aided me in speeding up the fur process. Each piece was cut, trimmed and seamed very carefully into each other as to not see where they connected.

The final step in assembling this Gizmo was adding his claws. Because his hands and feet are silicone I wanted him to have hard claws instead of silicone cast in claws. I ended up using plumbers putty to hand sculpt each individual claw. They were then super glued to the silicone and painted.

Once that was completed, Gizmo was finished. He was finished up right before Phoenix Comic Con 2013, so of course he was one display at my booth. Here are a couple photos to show the finished project.

Game of Thrones Dragon Egg

This project came about when I wanted to get someone I knew something special for her birthday. She is a huge Game of Thrones fan and relates to the character Daenerys Targaryen. If you follow the show you know she has 3 dragon eggs in the first season. I looked around to see what was out there and came across blind squirrel props egg that he had built, but alas his were unavailable due to the fact that he needed to remake his molds. So after looking at his build I decided that I could easily just make one my self.
 

First step is always a lot of research, pictures, video whatever you can find to help you to complete the final piece. After that it was on to search for an egg for the under structure. I have seen people use a lathe to shape out the egg, but I have never used a lathe nor do I have access to one so I had to go a different route. A friend of mine had suggested large Easter eggs from craft stores, but unfortunately it was no where near Easter and stores dont keep them in stock all year round. My friend then told me he had one I could use but he had cut it up for another project and if I wanted to use it I would have to repair it. At this point I didnt have any other options and I knew it would be an easy fix.

 

I added some foam and glued it all together to recreate the egg shape, knowing it did not have to be perfect as the scales would cover it up.

I started with the stone texture on the bottom of the egg first. I used several different textures including 3 different rocks and a piece of cement all to stamp the texture onto apoxy putty that covered the bottom of the egg.

Next I made a template off of a scale from the original I found online and began drawing out all the scales onto a thin foam material. Then cut them all out by hand with a hobby knife.

Once I had enough scales cut out I started gluing them down with loctite super glue gel.

 

After they were all glued into place I sprayed a coat of primer just to see how it would look all in one color.

I then added some apoxy putty around the bottom of the scales to blend them into the stone bottom. Now it was all set up and ready to mold.

I wont go into all the molding steps, as I have covered that all before, but I will show the pretty pics of the steps.

I dont have pictures, but the other half of the mold was built the same way as the first. The mold was filled with smooth-on black onyx and closed up and slushed around until it hardened, and this was the result:

It was lightly sanded and the small bubble holes were filled and it was ready for paint. I used a hunter green spray paint for the under coat with a lime green pearl for the top coat. The bottom was applied by brush to the stone texture to give it an uneven look.

The stand was built from different pieces from home depot and the plaque was printed on to brushed aluminum.

 

Here is the finished piece on display in my girlfriends house.

With flash

Without flash

Voyage Trekkers Prop Montage

With season 2 of Voyage Trekkers starting this week I thought I would share a video of some of the props I made for this seasons episodes. Check it out!

One More Time a Daft Punk Tribute

A while back I was commission by a friend to do some clean up work on their new set of helmets that were needed for tour and photo shoots. They needed to be super smooth because they had to look flawless once they were chromed.

This is how they looked when they were dropped off. The gold and chrome ones were their old touring helmets and were left just for reference.

On the blue helmet there were a bunch of imperfections that were left in the casting from the key locks on the mold. They had to be filled and sanded smooth several times just to make sure there would be no issues with them.

The other helmet had a few minor spots that had to be fixed, and my friend wanted the helmet to be a little thicker. Another coat of fiberglass was added to the inside and then covered with a black resin to completely seal the fiberglass. Also a waste mold was made so a vacuform buck could be made so we could make clear visors in the future.

Once I had a good piece for the vacuform buck I could then cut off the dome on the helmet.

Here are a few of the unedited promo shots. Helmets look super smooth and super clean!