All right chaps,
It time for me to dust the crap out of this thread and start posting here again ! Last time anyone posted here was a long time ago, 4 years as a mater of facts, but I had'nt left. I kept learking around, looking at amazing work from you guys, dreaming of the day where I could take back my bondo and take a crack at it one more time ! Of course, like many of you, school, work, and other priorities got the best of me. I was for those four years going trough school on week days, spending 9 to 12 hours awayt form home studying and doing animation assignments. Then to pay for school I worked on week ends at staples 20h more or less on week ends. I have to say it's meen mighty hard to keep time for myself. Money was scarce...
Now, since I'm finished with school ( for like, ever ) I have time. Every week night is mine, and the week ends alike : I'm an adult ! Still living at my parents, yes, but that's the beauty. during the time I have left until I gather enough resources to finaly get my own appartment I can reserve a decent budget for suppies I could not afford back then. For example Styrene is something I now greatly consider for detailing the helmet with panels and greeblies visible in the refferences.
Now to get you up to speed with what I did four years ago : I basicaly bought an eod cast from HyperBalistik, a member of the 405th. It was an unfinished cast that I planed to finish with paint, lights and interior padding. As I got to examin it closer when it arrived I decided to reshape it a bit, to brig it as close as I could to the game model as possible. To do so, I first starter by filling in the low spots, scatered around the helmet geometry with bondo. The I decided to work on the top of the bucket to re sculpt ( also out of bondo ) the sort of " T " shape that is there. Aftert this relatively spread out process ( spanning from december 2012 to the start of this summer ) I ended up with this montrosity xD :
Now this was all fine and dandy looking, with all those wonderfull shades of... ... bondo, but I could'nt see if the surface was nice and pitless anymore ! So I primed it to see where most of the less sanded and smooth areas were, and it looked like that :
I was shocked to say the least, to finaly see shape again, after four years of uglyness. The hemet looked good, but I could see I had stuff to work on again. The is a lot of places where some layers of bodo where not smoothed correctly so I decided to use some spotting putty in the areas in need of leveling ( I bought a new one because the old one was just to hard to work with... I guess four years is to long of a time for this stuff opened ). As of tonight the helmet looks like that :
I'm so happy I can at last get back to this ! Its sitting on my drawer unit in my room, every day I look at it, get a fix of inspiration and go on with my day ! Now as for the future of this project, I will detail the surface accordingly with styrene sheets to match the mutiple reffecences I assembled throughout the years. once the outside is finished, I will go on and instal electronics, breathing apparatus and fans to keep eveything cool. I will create the back brim maybe out of foam or I could always sculpt one out of clay, mold the thing and cast it out of rubber like others on the 405th did ( namely, impact props with thier mark V, comando and recon helmet ). Finaly, to finish the piece, I will create the back brim maybe out of foam or I could always sculpt one out of clay, mold the thing and cast it out of rubber like others on the 405th did ( namely, impact props with thier mark V, comando and recon helmet ). Finaly, to finish the piece, I will line it either in a custom way, or with a motorcycle helmet liner...
Anyway... That's it for tonight, will be posting details of the sanding process this week, ( with pics ) and in the meantime, I will research where I could get styrene sheets for detailing the helmet ! ( mainly by looking on amazon ). If you guys know where to find this stuff and want to drop links and stuff, feel free to do it.
Have a good one, keep building !
Vivid.
