Shredder Helmet

I made this thing back in June of 2014... It's taken a while for me to do a write up but here it is....

I have always wanted one of these, specifically the helmet from Secret of the Ooze, but after looking at the actual helmet in the film, I decided that the one is the film was pretty sloppy. I understand that it was supposed to be "fixed" after it was crushed in the first film... but I still wanted something nicer.

This is also a project that I made entirely off the cuff and did not make a blueprint for it.

So I had a horrible casting of a sculpting armature to work from... Let me try to explain this a little bit, I know it looks horrible but it will get much better in the next step.

I cut out a general shape of a face mask from some scrap ABS and screwed it into the armature. I knew that the ABS would not want to keep form so I covered it in some fiberglass mat and filled in the gap behind the mask up to the bridge of the nose with some sculpting clay and covered that with fiberglass as well. You should be able to tell the difference under the fiberglass (the black part is ABS and the brown is clay).

I think covered the fiberglass part in Bondo and took it down to a general shape with a rasp.

I added some strips of styrene onto the mask and bondo'd around it and blended it in to give the mask more of the correct shape and contour.

For the cut out parts on the mask, I made some "cups" in the correct shape by making bucks for my vacuuformer. I only had to make two of them because I could just flip them over to get the mirrored shapes for the opposite side.

These "cups" were "Frenched" into the mask and blended with bondo.

It was the coated in come filler primer to make it one tone to help me see symmetry.

Told you it was gonna look better.

now that the mask is the correct shape and smooth, I needed to mold it.

I mounted and blended the mask to a small section of PVC to act as a base and keep my silicone from dripping into the inside of the mask.

I then did a 2 part brush up mold over the master sculpt.

After the mold was ready I slush casted a mask from it.

The mask is cast in polyurethane casting resin.

The mask was then trimmed and I added some chicken wire to the inside of it to act as the grill area on the mask. This seemed to be the closest thing to what was in the film.

The mask was coated in more filler primer and then with Krylon Metallics Silver spray paint.

The mask is held on with a shoe lace through either end on the back of the mask.

So this was kind of a weird thing I did here....

I have a tape armature that I made of my head, that I first covered in tin foil. I covered the foil with fiberglass and then bondo to make a hard "cap" that would fit my head perfectly right? Right!

After the cap was ready and round enough, I wrapped it in a sheet of black ABS to give me that general shape that would cover the neck cheeks.

I then took this assembly off of the armature and coated the inside with a mix of fiberglass and bondo resin, backed that up with fiberglass. When this cured I was able to remove the ABS and I had a solid helmet shape.

It was pretty ugly at this point and WAY too big to wear. I trimmed the bottom profile and blended the rough edges of the sides into the cap with bondo.

The majority of the shaping was done with a rasp and a sanding block.

After getting the helmet to the correct shape and pretty smooth, It was time to add in the details.

I first glued down some twine to the helmet in parallel lanes and connected the lines with a hot glue gun to make a web pattern.

To seal in the details, I poured some polyurethane resin over the details, this also blended them in.

I then hit it with some more filler primer.

So all the tiles were cut from 1/8" styrene and glued into place with SuperGlue brand CA glue.

The bands are made from more ABS and held in place with pop rivets.

So because of the way the tiles are put on this helmet, I would get a bunch of silicone in between them if I were to try and mold it.

How did I fix this issue?

What do you do with tile? GROUT IT!!!

I didn't take photos of the molding for this thing because it's just like any other mold you've ever seen I'm sure.

So this thing was done pretty much the same way I made the face mask.

I made just about the ugliest armature for the crown out of ABS and pop rivets.

I covered the armature with bondo and smoothed it out, then trimmed it down to the correct shape.

I then cut about a billion saw tooth blades from more 1/8" ABS and glued them to the crown with more CA glue.

I also added weld lines to where the saw blades would have been welded to the crown. I did this by using Apoxie Sculpt rolled out to a thin strand and pressed little "C" shapes into it down the length of the strand with a loop sculpting tool. After I finished this, I ran my finger along the length of the clay with some rubbing alcohol to keep it from sticking. I think it looks pretty convincing when painted.

This was molded in silicone and cast.

(Sorry, I don't seem to have photos of the mold for this either...)

The helmet was slushed cast in polyurethane resin and the crown was brushed in with bondo-resin and backed with fiberglass mat.

This thing was painted with Krylon Metallics Silver, Rub n Buff and liquid leaf silver. The gold is just Rub n Buff antique goldm dry brushed over brown primer.

The cap of the helmet is painted with gloss brown from Rustoleum.

I had a buddy take some nice photos of this thing for me.

The interior was lined with a cork sheet that was later changed to basket woven leather strips to match the rest of my armor.