Before I moved back to Utah, I got a hankering to make my own helmet design. Lo and behold, the amazing Evil Ted Smith came out with a video series on how to make foam armor and costumes, and the first series he put out focused on helmets! You guys may remember the end results of that. Well, a good friend of mine invited me to help her out at her booth at Anime Banzai, and in return offered to display a few of my things for sale. I didn't have anything made at the time, having just moved back here, but I figured why not make a few more helmets? So, it being an anime themed convention, I decided to go generic space anime helmet! Nice, simple, same-old same-old foam floor mats. I used the same pattern I made in the previous build (which is up for sale in the Store if you want to make your own), and prepped the base to 4 helmets. I grabbed the first, and put the other three aside for later! Now, just so you don't get confused, this one is extremely simple and doesn't really have a lot of photos. I also did a lot of the next helmet - the Cyberpunk one - at the same time, so a lot of the pics will overlap. On with the show! I opted for a super basic helmet, keeping it recognizable as an anime style, but not as any one specific series. The ears and horn were completely freehanded, and I beveled the ears inward with my dremel. Once that was done, I grabbed the next helmet, then ended up grabbing the third helmet and chopping it to pieces. Kind of hard to tell, but I cut the third helmet in half horizontally, turned it backwards, and attached it to the front. Then I took the bottom half, turned it backwards AND upside down, then stuck it on top of that. The goal here was to make a sort of visor screen thing that covered the eyes entirely. Also made some tubes and stuck them to the back for the wires and tubes and things. Tried something new with the caulk from before. Was suggested to me to thin it with water and paint a few coats onto the foam - told it would fill the seams and work about as well as the Plasti Dip. I wasn't as successful with that method, so from now on I'll just be doing it the same way I used to. Anyway, on to paint! The anime one was simple: paint the upper horn yellow, tape it off, then paint the ears red and tape those off. Once that was done, I also painted the front of the helmet blue (don't worry, it'll make sense in a minute). The Cyberpunk helmet I painted a metallic black, then the upper visor and wire tube things silver. After that I taped off the front of the anime style one, then painted everything else silver. Tape came off, and I got to see firsthand how terribly the new sealing method worked. Can you see all the bubbles on the yellow horn? Not terrible, but not up to par. You can also see all the seams, though I wasn't too worried as it kind of accented the look of the Cyberpunk one. Anyway, sprayed a little, light bit of orange on the horns and a darker red on the ears, to give it a bit of a gradient look. I wasn't weathering it at all, so that added a bit more depth to it and made it look a bit better. Anime helmet done! (Final shot pre-gradient) To finish off the Cyberpunk helmet, I used a method of stenciling I learned from Punished Props: print a stencil, lay it on some painter's tape, cut it out with a hobby knife, lay it in place, then paint it on! This was a lot of fun to add, though definitely time consuming. I will absolutely admit to some of those splotches being on purpose! Fit the look anyway, even on the accidents, so I was happy with it. Test fit: Hooray for craptacular selfies when you can't see! Time for some tubes and random wires. A good friend of mine, Keelah Monster Cosplay, sent me a ton of random computer parts and wires, so I put them all to good use! Also snagged a random plumbing tube from Walmart, then arranged them all and hot glued them in place. Tied 'em all up with a zip tie so they weren't bouncing around loosely and bashing the wearer painfully, called it good, and took another silly selfie! After that I had a ton of fun messing around with acrylic washes, drybrushing, and actual painting. I messed around with a bunch of different colors of paint, giving it a really nice, rusted, dirty grungy look. Hope you had as much fun reading about these two helmets as I did making them. They were a big hit at the convention, and even though neither of them sold, I got a lot of compliments on them! Here's some finished fancy shots to send you off with. If anyone is interested, the Anime style helmet has been purchased already but the Cyberpunk helmet is still available! You can find it here.
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