So before starting, I printed out WizardOfFlight's
Boba Fett helmet templates from TheDentedHelmet.com. They're a fan-based forum dedicated to building canon Star Wars armors, and have a tremendous amount of resources for anyone looking to start building.
1: All 28 sheets are printed and laid out before beginning construction.
2: I'm started using a regular pair of scissors and a roll of packing tape for this build.
3: I've began by assembling the helmet's left cheek.
4: The shape of the helmet requires that the upper arch is curved over the lower "cheekbone".
5: Moving forwards, I started putting together the right side of the helmet's outer ring.
6: Here I unknowingly knowingly made my first mistake. I used several long strips of extremely strong tape to hold the two sides together. Later on, this would make the outer ring bend unevenly. In hindsight, I should have left several tabs on the template to tape the pieces together with.
7: A closeup of the L&M joint
8: For the opposite side, I lay out and the J&K joint. It is eventually taped the same way as the L&M side.
9: The left and right halves are taped together at the rear of the outer ring. This time I actually left myself a bit of space to tape onto.
10: Here I laid out the inner ring for the helmet.
11: I attached the four pieces with one large strip of tape each. Next time I'd use pieces no longer than an inch.
12: These seams would bend awkwardly for me later on. But because this tape was laid on perfectly straight to the seam it was better than the L&M joint.
13: This is the base for the helmet. I made two cuts where the cheeks would sit and bent them out of the way. The witness marks (the semi-circles at points A and C) on the helmet's centerline show the specific points to line up the base's seam.
14: Here is where I began to get confused. I didn't know that I should've created a frame for the helmet, and attached the inner ring to it. Instead I decided lay aside the inner ring, and move forward with just the outer ring.
15: I attached the cheek onto the helmet's base, while paying close attention to the witness marks.
16: Again, this part should line up perfectly with the base's witness mark. Otherwise, the corner of the upper cheek won't properly fit into the cutout in the outer ring.
17: Attaching both cheek pieces went smoothly.
18: Looking closely, you can see the cheekbone backplate is providing support for each cheek.
19: Here things began to go wrong. When attaching the outer ring of the helmet, I accidentally overlapped the front edges by almost an inch. This made the outer ring too small for the upper arches of the cheeks, and too narrow in the nose.
20: Not realizing my mistake, I decided to trim the upper arch of the helmet's right cheek, and overlap the two pieces. The shadow of the two pieces can be seen in this picture.
21: Because the outer ring was too small, I decided that the base should also be altered to fit. I overlapped the base by another half inch so that the outer ring's nose would match. This made the overall diameter of the base too small, and again needed to be adjusted.
22: The witness marks no longer match up, and are positioned over top of one another. Also visible is the adjustment of the upper cheek arches.
23: Here is another angle of the cheek's upper arch modification. Problems compounding problems.
24: An anterior view of the base's modification.
25: After these modifications, I decided to stop working on this version. I consulted with several people online, who recommended that I retry building the helmet using different materials and hot glue, instead of packing tape.
No comments:
Post a Comment