Hai guys. For some reason I'm wanting to do an Open Seasons deathwatch mando.
I decided to do a scratchbuild on this because A. nobody really sells these and B. Falin's OSDW helmet isn't quite close enough to how the comics look for me. I used my own artistic interpretation of the design; considering the darned thing looks different in every panel it's drawn in, this is the closest I could get while still making it a functional bucket.
Anyway, most people post new pictures of progress every few days/weeks, but not I... I'm done with this thing, so you get to see the whole process in fast forward.
First, I made a card stock mockup. The pattern was eyeballed, so I unfortunately don't have any templates. The dome is a temporary placeholder until I went out and bought a hard hat to use for the permanent dome.
I installed the hard hat dome, and coated the whole shebang with fiberglass resin so it would keep its shape through further work.
I thoroughly fiberglassed the inside (fiberglass cloth and resin) to about 2 mm thick. Though this SOUNDS thin it's actually very strong and you really don't need to go any thicker for the needs of a costume helmet. Then I used a dremel to cut out the T visor.
Coated the exterior with bondo. This photo is the aftermath of two bondo applications and spot putty (the red spots) was used to fill in any residual holes. I have a mouse sander, which is the BEST TOOL IN THE WORLD if you plan to scratchbuild using this method. Hours of hand sanding is chopped down to about 30 minutes-- as long as you apply the bondo appropriately in the first place (meaning, thin, controlled, and not glopping it on like whipped cream)
I bought some large 'dragon claw' steel spikes and bolted them onto the brow. One thing that bugs me about Falin's OSDW helmet (love ya, Falin!) Is that the spikes are molded into the dome rather than free-floating, as they are in the comic. I also wanted them to be strong enough that they could get whacked without cracking, breaking, or falling off. Because they're steel and bolted onto the frame of the helmet, anything that could snap them off would pretty much destroy the whole bucket, lol.
I also added some sintra panels onto the sides and back-- both to give ti depth and to replicate some of the appearance of the comic helmets. They don't have traditional Boba earcaps at all, but they do seem to have raised areas (again, it's drawn differently every time) so I again used some artistic interpretation to come up with something that looked good.
Anyway, below, the silver basecoat has been applied after three coats of primer.
Finally, we have the finished bucket. I obviously still need to install the visor, but that'll be the basic black, so just use your imagination. Weathering was done with a combination of additive and subtractive weathering, and the blackwash was done with siebring's leather dye wiped on and dabbed off.
