Vivid's EOD and Commando Bulid

[VividT E X]

So i did some work this past week, so lets jump right into the smal update :

I instaled halo reach on my xbox one last monday to get in and check for things my original refference could lack and, surprise surprise, there is quite a few things that are going to be fixed before I start thinking about the painting phase !

To be straight foward, there were 3 main areas where the normal maps revaled to show more deffinition that the concept art... The very back ( same area where chief iserts cortana into his helmet ), the temples roght under the triangleish plate on the ears and the respirator. In the back there are litle lines present that I missed since I did not have any good shot of the back... So the were drawn for future work in this area... I started the work on the temple area. This section has some accent color different than the base one the helmet had so to define thos two areas when the helmet will be weathered I added the panel lines to contour it.



This section will also have a raised section up to the lef of the region shown in the picture... Since there was rain all week here it was no bondo time... Ill get around doing it tonight though. Also I added the missing line on the respirator that was missing. I then proceded to deepen the insde curved section of the "T" shape on the top of the helmet. This area needed further work as it was not smooth enough. I also sanded the surface woth a mouse sander to make sure it was realy smooth and even.



Finaly I aded the cutlines that were missing last time in the front of the helmet



This is it for today, I will try to do a more detailed post tonight with more photo refferences so you know what Im talking about and how I plan it.

Have a good one,

Vivid

 

[VividT E X]

Update time

So I got out my 4 years old can of bondo, I decided that tonight was time to fix the warpage that had occured in the back of the helmet. There were massive low spot that had me bugged since I recieved the helmet. I started buffing it dow with a file but the helmet is not 3 inch thick so the rest needed some body filler to tie it all together. I decided to invest the 6 canadien pesos the bondo plastic mat and spatulas costed, I'd say they are worth the money, they're easy to clean up and work with, you cut down on the mess afterwards !





Eventhough the bondo inside that can looked 4 years + it work as it should. I applied the bondo in one batch in those 3 spots and finished just whe the sky turned too dark and the bondo was starting to get way to tacky to spread around.







afterwards came the razor edge phase whe I trimed the exces and I also preped the temple areas for thier raised details :





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Now I found an image file a while back with the decals which are part of the helmet paintjob. It's poor quality and I was wondering if other EOD builders had any of those files in thier possesion. If any of you have these and would not mind sending them my way I would be very pleased



Anyway that's realy it for today, until next time !

Vivid

 

[VividT E X]

UPDATE POST and MASSIVE PHOTO DUMP

All right folks, I've been working in the shadows for quite a while ! I decided after my last post that my work schedule wase so spaced out that making a lot of posts with little change was not as great to see as a long one with lots of pics and quite the progress. So here I am, a month since my last post with about 20 pictures to show and comment. Let's start right away where we left last time :

I had prepared and sketched out the areas that needed to be shaped more to ad some interest in an otherwise, quite plain helmet. I looked at the model in game and realised that the white patches in the first picture were actualy raised up and thus I needed to step those up with boddy filler. I first tought I'd use styrene for such parts, but after looking on amazon ( canada ) everything I managed to found was verry expensive ( much more than I tought anyway ) and I was not quite sure if it was actualy what I was looking for... I would have gratly prefered to buy it in a physical store, but eventhough I live quite near and work in Montreal ( which is quite a big city ) I could not find any craft stores or home improovement stores that carried it. I tried Michaels, home depo, canadian tire and rona ( rona is a local equivalant of home depo that has recently sold itself to lowes... fun fact ) ... Have I seen it in person I would have bought some and skiped the tideous process of working with a 4 years + old can of bondo...

I work on the temples areas and under the front part of the bucket :

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Then I went on sanding everything down to see if I needed a second coat. I realised the every spot neede some again because the bondo was so old that it was tacky right in the bucket before the activator... It had the tendency to form cavities when spread and it was not fun to work with it... SO I proceded to repeat the same steps for the second coat and when I was satisfied I applied some spotting putty...

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After all of this I re sprayed a coat of filler primer to see some last effort spots to fix before I started the process of sanding the helmet for the last time. As you will se in the photos next, there was some spots in the back that had some irregularities in the smoothnes. This was due to varying hardness of the different coats of bondo and how they erroded diffenrently when sanded. I proceded to the big sanding next.

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Now at that time came the moment I am the most saddened about the wole process. I was about to follow the usual steps to fit a motorcycle visor when a lot of things went wrong... At first I prepared the iside with epoxy putty in order to secure some anchors to later screw my visor in... The visor I was planing to instal was the old visor I bought back in 2012 wich I had cut to an interesting shape on the band saw to one day have a decent looking helemt interior. Well spoiler allet this visor is dead... But not for reasons one might think... In fact the most risky parts all went well ! The cutting went well, the piercing went well ( just used progessively larger bits uintil the hole was big enough, worked well )... But all went a wire when stubborned ol me decided not to wait until I bought some painters tape and used some other tape to protect the visor from the bod I would apply on it to fill the gap between it and the helmet... Well the glue on this tape was nasty in the long run and ate the reflective finish off of the visor... so I ripped everything out and ordered something else... XD stupid me ....

here are some pictures of the process :

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Thinking about this mistake now, I'd say the bondo I used would probably have caused me way more trouble because of the tackiness... I was only able to do a sloppy and gainy job of wedging it down between the helmet and the visor which I was not happy about... Anyway, the new visor match more closely the color scheme I chose for the helmet than the old blue/green one ...

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So after the great sanding, I sprayed 3 coats of grey filler primer and 2 coats of regullar red prop primer. ( here I say prop primer because it's so iconic ) And then it was time to paint the damn thing !!! It was all about painting the collors in the order they would be the easiest to mask. For masking I used green painter tape and vaseline for battle dammage... ( I used it as a liquid brush on mask alternative and it worked as I expected )





Then I unwraped the helmet ( like a christmas present ) to reveal a quite toyish looking helmet... xD but still nice... Now the colors striked me at first... they wor faor from the spartan two color scheme and mor like the spartan 4 ( halo 5 ) one... But I was stil happy on the two tone paint job I decided to go with... Also I recieved the visor and it is so awesome. I need to plug this right now : you want a hexagonal pattern on you visor, you want it a uniform reflective color, in this case, a flawless yellow gold ? then you save 40 bucks and you order one of these puppies on etsy asap as they are amasing and the visibility is good and without distortion ! I did not instaled it yet, it was just to try the whole thing with the paint... Also its a big sheet, from memory its like 25cm / 50 cm ( at least )... so yeah !



I added the white stripes.



And tonight was the night where I did the weathering on the whole thing ! it came out great an I like the fact that it toned down the brightness of the greens and darkend it a bit !




I have to say I am pretty happy with the result and I cant wait to start on the electronics ( lights and fan ) and finaly instal that visor to get it ready for halloween ! Let me know what you guys think of it, and leave your toughts on future things I could add to it !

That's it for me tonight, have a good one and keep building !

 

[VividT E X]

Is there anyone here knowing why the pictures at the top of my last post are not showing up and are said they are a broken link ?

 

[Reclaimara]

Is there anyone here knowing why the pictures at the top of my last post are not showing up and are said they are a broken link ?

In order to get them to work again, just delete them and upload again.

 

[VividT E X]

Thanks a lot Mara I'll do that today !

 

[Reclaimara]

Just wanted to say I'm amazed by your helmet. For a second I thought it was a cast of Asgardianhammer's helmet... but you did it from scratch. Great work! Especially now that you finished and painted it.

 

[VividT E X]

Oh how I wish it was made from pepakura but its not... Unfortunately, 16 years old me ( back in 2012 ) had to many failed atempt at pepping... I tried a halo 3 recon and an hd mk V from reach and both attempt wew failed ones... I did not have the ressources and assurance in learning new skills I have nowadays and it is why I ultately decided to go out and order a cast from hyperbalistik I originaly "finished the helmet as it was with little to no bondo work and grew to hate what I did as time passed... It was all glossy black with a lot of surface imperfections...

So in july this year I decided to start it from scratch rip the paint off of it, reshape all the details that Hyper missed or passed and arrived to a result that is much closer to my expectations ! To complete the " spartan II " ish color scheme I gave it I will soon start on a gen 2 mk VI armor. Its a set I always enjoyed and I think it will be fun to finaly make something all by myself. Now as I live in a country where snow is something that happens a lot i may just pep the pieces and wait for next summer to glass the whole thing, we'll see !

I thank you verry much for your comme t and your build is certanly one of my motivations at the moment !