mr paul

Helmet Paint Tutorial I have carefully removed the forehead, snout and lens of the Anovos helmet to make painting a little bit more easier.I have sanded back the previous paint application with sanding blocks. Starting off with a grey primer. For the brown this time around I am using Halfords Ford Rio Brown. As we know the texture was applied using the beige so the rio brown needs to be flat and smooth to repicate the dark brown resin that the ST armour was cast in and is visible showing through from underneath the beige in a lot of reference pictures. There are some parts of the ST helmet that appear not to be textured so I carefully mask the following areas. Forehead rim. Notches on the cheeks. Heat sinks. Bands on the temple. Neck ring. Vents on the rear and 2 longer vents at lower rear. Small ovals on each ear. Vent inside each ear. Recessed detail above lens under forehead. Note that I have used torn masking tape to recreate the paint damaged effect seen immediately above the blast shield rims of the Screen used helmets. I use liquid mask in some parts where its tricky to get tape positioned. Once all the areas are masked I use a clear lacquer to gloss the dark brown. When the gloss lacquer is dry the areas where I want the paint flakes to appear are masked using Humbrol masking fluid. For personal preference I have painted these harder to hit places first with sahara beige straight from the can just to get some proper coverage on them before I start with the texture. From a reliable source I was informed the texture of the ST helmets was applied through a paint gun. The paint was colour matched to the Montana Gold Sahara Beige then somehow I suspect using the settings on the gun the paint was allowed to be texturised. I want to try and mimic that process without using off the shelf texture paints.These Montana paints are used for graffiti and already the pressure is low when the paint is dispensed. I have switched out the standard nozzle for another that will splatter the paint. I want it to drizzle from the nozzle and not to be too atomised when it leaves the can. You can see how the paint is laying. I will build up the layers trying to keep them even despite the low pressure and tricky nozzle wanting to flood areas. It is a messy process but effective. You can see the texture is soft and not gritty. I do not want a gritty or coarse finish. The texture should be loose to allow the muck to sit in it correctly when I start to weather it. Once the beige is dry I can get the emblem on the forehead. The horizontal lines of the cut out in the emblem should sit at the same angle as the horizontal bands on the side of the helmet. These are good guides for achieving the correct orientation of the emblem. Mask. Paint. Peel.I remove the rest of the masking tape and fluid then paint the black details in. The snout, lens and forehead can be put back. These are the tools I use for weathering/ageing the helmet. I do not want to fiddle too much however I want a lot of muck and damage on the bucket whilst keeping the marks true to what is seen on the displayed costumes. The muck sits in the recesses of the textured paint. A variety of mark making around the bucket will give an authentic appearance.40 grit sandpaper by hand and belt sander will tear away paint to create the scuff marks and the masked areas once peeled will reveal the paint chips. A comparrison picture of the my finished helmet on the left and the screen used on the right. It is a much more accurate paint app than my previous attempt so I am happier with it. The texture is a lot softer than beofre and the weathering is applied with confodence using broad strokes I hope achieveing a more convincing dirty look rather than a painted one.

I have carefully removed the forehead, snout and lens of the Anovos helmet to make painting a little bit more easier.I have sanded back the previous paint application with sanding blocks. Starting off with a grey primer. For the brown this time around I am using Halfords Ford Rio Brown. As we know the texture was applied using the beige so the rio brown needs to be flat and smooth to repicate the dark brown resin that the ST armour was cast in and is visible showing through from underneath the beige in a lot of reference pictures. There are some parts of the ST helmet that appear not to be textured so I carefully mask the following areas. Forehead rim. Notches on the cheeks. Heat sinks. Bands on the temple. Neck ring. Vents on the rear and 2 longer vents at lower rear. Small ovals on each ear. Vent inside each ear. Recessed detail above lens under forehead. Note that I have used torn masking tape to recreate the paint damaged effect seen immediately above the blast shield rims of the Screen used helmets. I use liquid mask in some parts where its tricky to get tape positioned. Once all the areas are masked I use a clear lacquer to gloss the dark brown. When the gloss lacquer is dry the areas where I want the paint flakes to appear are masked using Humbrol masking fluid. For personal preference I have painted these harder to hit places first with sahara beige straight from the can just to get some proper coverage on them before I start with the texture. From a reliable source I was informed the texture of the ST helmets was applied through a paint gun. The paint was colour matched to the Montana Gold Sahara Beige then somehow I suspect using the settings on the gun the paint was allowed to be texturised. I want to try and mimic that process without using off the shelf texture paints.These Montana paints are used for graffiti and already the pressure is low when the paint is dispensed. I have switched out the standard nozzle for another that will splatter the paint. I want it to drizzle from the nozzle and not to be too atomised when it leaves the can. You can see how the paint is laying. I will build up the layers trying to keep them even despite the low pressure and tricky nozzle wanting to flood areas. It is a messy process but effective. You can see the texture is soft and not gritty. I do not want a gritty or coarse finish. The texture should be loose to allow the muck to sit in it correctly when I start to weather it. Once the beige is dry I can get the emblem on the forehead. The horizontal lines of the cut out in the emblem should sit at the same angle as the horizontal bands on the side of the helmet. These are good guides for achieving the correct orientation of the emblem. Mask. Paint. Peel.I remove the rest of the masking tape and fluid then paint the black details in. The snout, lens and forehead can be put back. These are the tools I use for weathering/ageing the helmet. I do not want to fiddle too much however I want a lot of muck and damage on the bucket whilst keeping the marks true to what is seen on the displayed costumes. The muck sits in the recesses of the textured paint. A variety of mark making around the bucket will give an authentic appearance.40 grit sandpaper by hand and belt sander will tear away paint to create the scuff marks and the masked areas once peeled will reveal the paint chips. A comparrison picture of the my finished helmet on the left and the screen used on the right. It is a much more accurate paint app than my previous attempt so I am happier with it. The texture is a lot softer than beofre and the weathering is applied with confodence using broad strokes I hope achieveing a more convincing dirty look rather than a painted one.

The screen used shoulder bells appear to be held on by 60mm black elastic and 15mm silver snap fasteners.

Another mock up on the mannequin.

The back plate is pretty much finished regarding hiding the seam lines. The back boxes are in situ and the rubber greeblies in position. There are a couple of very small tweaks I think are needed but overall I am very impressed with it and the Creality CR-10s also continues to impress me. It would be hard to tell some of these parts came from a 3d printer. The big test will be wearing them and seeing how they look on the body, juxtaposed to the other armour parts.

The back box greeblies on the Shoretrooper were cast in rubber and appear to be dark brown. Thanks to Neil Ellis we now know they were originally intended to be used for the corset of the L1 droid that appears in a brief shot during Rogue One and were later reused on the ST. I love how Mr Ellis described them being cast from a large sheet of greeblies and Glyn Dillon "picked a couple of bits to cut out and stuff in the shoretooper back". It seems during this process some air bubbles were trapped whilst the rubber was poured into the moulds and it has been great to replicate these whilst casting my own rubber greeblies for the back boxes. Here is the screen used next to my dark brown, rubber back box greeblie including the aforementioned air bubbles.

A mock up of the back boxes in situ. A lot of clean up/filling to do as I said before but everything is in it's place and looks great so far.

The back plate was printed in 4 parts and has gone together beautifully. I have sanded the 4 individual parts as much as possible before fixing them together using Plastic Weld. There are a few gaps where the prints warped a tiny bit on the heated print bed but most importantly all the key features match up. So a little filler and some more sanding to hide the joins and it will be good to go.

Here is the new, screen accurate collar/yolk.

Some teaser pictures from around the newly printed chest plate.

The leather strap that attaches to the top right side of the abdominal armour looks to be held in place with a cap rivet. It could also be a chicago screw but from the images I have here I am going with a 12mm antique brass, cap rivet. Another bit.

Chest plate Pt 1. Literally. First pass with the sandpaper. I'll get that looking smooth as F while the other parts are printing. Printing it in 4 quarters. We were fortunate to be provided with some measurements for the chest so once again this should be scaled correctly. Very exciting.

This is looking fantastic. Really looking forward to getting it off the print bed and in hand. Our designer has done some magic here.

Thank you Joshua Rhoads for choosing my bucket for your new patch design. The patch will be available through Pathfinders forum, Shoretrooper Fam and 501st collectors groups as of next week. Very honoured to be poster boy thanks again Joshua.

A quick mock up of the right arm. This new armour captures the subtleties of the screen used costumes and the shapes of the individual pieces are far more complex than is thought. Each part is shaped to accommodate the anatomy of the body it is designed for. there is a left and right side for each part including the shoulder bells. Each bell is different.

I would still like another crack at it and will get a chance to with the new helmet arriving this year however I am happy with the array of marks made around this bucket. They are convincing and mimic what is seen on the screen used. There is a lot more muck on it this time around however I have still been careful not to over do it.

Here is the finished result of the helmet repaint. I am happier with the applied texture although I think it could possibly be improved further to closer match the screen used. Not sure, need to live with it for a bit. I had an opportunity to get the belt sander out and also used a few other techniques and products to match the variety of marks and colours seen on the post production screen used buckets. Mine. Screen used.

As they used what appears to be white R1 TK TD end caps on the ST cans as replacement parts I figured why not do the same.

The paint application on the Shoretrooper if looked at closely is quite complex. Not only on the helmet but around the rest of the armour as well.

I have been experimenting with the paint application for the helmet today revising my previous techniques. This time around I want to the correct looking texture without having to use texture paints. I am happy it has been quite successful so far. I will be exploring this further when it comes to repainting the Anovos and Haskell/Nico's upcoming bucket. Here is the test piece from earlier amongst some comparison pics. I have used burnt umber, grey paint and Dirty Down ageing products to break it down to something more in line with the screen seen finish. I am really happy with it. It looks good from all angles, lighting conditions and the muck sitting in the recesses really makes it pop.