Evan1701's Newbie ESB Fett Helmet Paint-Up

Looking good there Evan !! Nice detail on the ears !!
Thanks :D

if you look closely you might notice that the damage on the green LH ear on the bottom face is upside down! That's the only part I screwed up. Realized it after the second go-round of masking and just decided to leave it. I call it my personal signature... :lol:
 
Black is down on the upper cheeks and the ear decals are painted... sort of! I had trouble with the paint being too thin so it was just too watery to get a good solid coat. Gonna give it another try tomorrow. Bonus picture of my setup as I was getting started!

I gave the upper cheeks a quick sanding pass to clear off some of the orange peel buildup. I must have prepped those areas especially bad, it was just sandpaper in and of itself! I really didn't see any after the black was down, thankfully.

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Time for today's update! Got the purple down on the mandibles, trim, and keyslots, put the black down on my RF topper, and did a couple more coats of paint with the brush on both ears. The ears look pretty much the same as yesterday so I didn't take any pics.

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I kept having problems with the purple where the airbrush was spitting out specks of red and blue- what the heck! No matter how much I stirred or how much thinner I added, it just kept doing it, so I figured- screw it, the only one who might ever notice is me. Most of it gets painted over anyway. I also had some tape come loose on the RH ear, so I'll need to fix that before painting again.

This weekend, I plan to mask up the purple, potentially spray the bright red, assemble the RF (as long as I can get my butt over to Lowe's and buy some LEDs), and finish up the paint on the ear cap.
 
The red 73 is down, which means that it's time to start peeling away the masking to see all of my hard work!

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I also put the beautiful superjedi transfer decals on the ears, which means they are 100% complete (besides weathering of course):

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I also painted the smaller lens for the rangefinder and ordered the LEDs I need, so I should be able to finish that up this week:

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After all of my masking is removed, I'll be doing the kill stripes. After that, I need to add the "caboose" (red 60), black scorch marks, white fingerprint, and the light green "tape residue" underneath the kill stripes. I'm actually not sure what color that is supposed to be.

Then, it's just weathering, visor and borden installation, and bolting up the ears and RF for the final product! So excited! The finish line is RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!!!
 
So I've been peeling up the masking all over the helmet, and let me tell y'all, it looks so good. But you don't get to see that just yet... ;)

I got to a point where I had enough masking up to confidently mark out the kill stripes. I did a reverse masking process from what I've been doing, where everything *except* the kill stripes are masked. Took a little time, but I'm not sure of a better way to do it so there ya go!

Had to get a little creative with the location, they didn't line up perfectly with the damage, but with a curved surface that's just bound to happen.

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Tomorrow, as long as I can keep the temp up in the garage with my little heater, I'll be laying down the yellow and orange gradient. After all the TLJ troops this week and into this weekend, I won't be able to work on the helmet again till Sunday. But I should be able to finish it up between this coming Sunday and Monday! Very excited.
 
Thanks guys :D I have it sitting on the bar in my kitchen and every time I pass I just stand there and look. I can't wait to show y'all the final result.
 
Kill stripes are down! Unfortunately with TLJ coming out tomorrow night, I won't get the chance to see how the turned out until SUNDAY!!! Ugh! Also, the LEDs for my rangefinder came in today so I drilled holes and glued those in. It was a little late by the time I got to this, though, so I didn't get the chance to fully assembly the RF. When I do, I'll be sure to take pics.

MAKE IT LOOK LYK PIKTUR

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Yellow

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And... the gradient!

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Hehehe... well it's funny you should ask... I've been pulling random bits of masking off the past few days, but let me tell you. These kill stripes turned out A-MA-ZING. Even though the yellow was total garbage to put down. Like watered down mustard... awful!

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And a progress pic of course.

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This was a few days ago, as of today I've pulled up as much masking as I can find, as well as hit it with some wire wool to blend to colors and take down the green and red to a much more washed out, screen-accurate color scheme. Tomorrow (well, today I guess), I'll be doing the black weathering on the lower cheeks and the dome, the light red bits on the mandibles and trim (topical), the tape residue (also topical), and the rusty weathering on the stalk and the rest of the silver. Then, I'll glue in the visor and call it complete. I need to take a week off so my wife doesn't kill me, but after Christmas we'll be back at it starting with the armor.
 
Well... what do you know... it's done!

I spent 3 months of my life doing this. And that's not "working on it here and there"- that's every night, every weekend, 2 or 3 hours at a time.

There's levels of accuracy, too. I feel like I got to about 95% accurate. Getting to about 90% accuracy is possible for any newbie going strictly off of Rafalfett's templates. 91-99% accurate requires digging into reference images and getting creative with weathering. There's some features in this range I didn't feel like I have the skill to add- grease stains, putting down the scratches by actually scratching the paint, etc. Then, there's getting from 99% to 100%- this involves really being able to nail down paint colors to near-perfect screen accuracy, perfecting the wire wooling so you can perfectly blend the colors, etc.

But enough rambling... on to the pictures! I'm debating having a friend take some professionally lit shots to really capture that detail. As it is, you can't really see the rusty splotches I added on the RF stalk and the grime in all the edges around the trim.

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And yes, I did the thumbprint by actually covering my thumb in white paint and running it across multiple surfaces until I felt like I could get that look perfectly.

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And then of course a shot with the wife BH-50507, who's been a Mandalorian several months before I even decided to start my journey. :)

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So with that, that's a wrap on my helmet progress. I look forward to continuing my Boba journey after Christmas. I'm taking a couple weeks off. :cool:
 
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