Daft Punk Thomas Helmet Final

EDIT - These helmets are now for sale, please email me at judd93@hotmail.co.uk for info

Finished with 6 days to go !

I decided to go for the leather jumpsuit version rather than a suit, so for Comicon I'll be using a leather jacket I already had, maybe upgrade to a good quality replica in the future.

The visor was made from a sheet on 1mm thick PETG plastic, tinted with car tail light tinting spray and attached with two part epoxy. The earpods were just attached with hot glue.

I ditched the airbrush paint I was originally using for the project, it was too finicky, and the finish wasn't consistent, the new spraypaint I used came out extremely well, the paint has a nice shine and reflects a lot. Spraypaint will never be as good as professional chrome but I think this is a nice compromise.

Guy Manuel Helmet

This helmet I had to try get done in a lot shorter time frame than the Thomas Helm, however I had a much more accurate Pepakura file for this helmet which made my work a lot easier.... slightly easier.. maybe XD 

The helmet was built up in 2 days from cardstock I bought at Staples, the inside was then coated in Sonite wax from smooth on.

I thinned down some body filler with resin and slushed it around inside the paper helmet, the wax layer kept the filler from bonding to the paper and as soon as the first layer was cured I added another few thickened layers to add strength to the piece.

I peeled the paper off of the cured piece, gave it a quick coat of primer and got to sanding !

Next I cut out the back dome piece so I could sand and shape it separately since it is meant to be a separate piece anyway. I noticed in my reference pictures that the panelling behind the ear should be thicker than the frame in front of the ear so I got to work on correcting that.

I drew out a template for the new sized back panel, this new thickness will be added the same way as the helmet was cast, using thinned filler.

Then more filling and smoothing and starting on the visor shaping.

The thickness of the edging was evened out, 

and the nice straight corners I had were rounded with a glob of filler and the lid from a resin can.

The visor was then sanded and smoothed:

I designed the ear pods in Solidworks and had them made on a lathe by a friend so they came out perfect.

Once the ear pods arrived I cut out the rough panel inside the ear recess and replaced it with sheet plastic that was left over from the glove plates. The actual helmet has a detailed circuit pattern in this recess but due to time restrictions that piece will have to be retrofitted after the event. Using the grinding wheel on my dremel I cut out the grooves on the sides of the helmet and test fitted the ear pieces, the visor was then cut out so I was left with the frame piece. I left 5mm of the original visor on the frame to act as a lip for the Vacu-form visor to sit on. I can then add the 5mm back onto the original visor piece with more filler and turn it into a buck.

The frame was painted using spray paint, I spent a lot of time looking for alternatives to professional chroming because it just wasn't in my budget and I had a looming deadline. The results I got were in my opinion extremely good for a spraycan, the gold isn't a mirror finish like real chrome but is very reflective and went on like a dream, pictures don't really show the finish well but you can see the colour of the tiles under the helmet reflected in the paint.

Daft Punk Thomas Helmet Phase 2

The mould for the Thomas helmet was made using Smooth-ons Rebound 25, before starting I mixed a small batch of the silicone and poured it into an egg holder.

I'll use these as mould keys to help the silicone mould lock into the fibreglass mother mould that will support the silicone mould. I was that busy making the mould that I forgot to take in progress pics but here's two of the finished mould inside and out :

To go into more detail of the process I basically brushed on a normal coat of mixed silicone as a detail coat to get into all the nooks and crannies, after that I waited for the silicone to become tacky and ready for the next layer. I added another layer that had been thickened with a thixotropic again from Smooth-on, I did this repeatedly until I had a good thickness to the mould which took around 5 coats. Two layers of fibreglass (the mother mould) were added to each side and bolted together to keep the rubber in place, this is where the mould keys I showed earlier come into play.

To mould the ear pod I built a mould box using lego bricks since I had them handy and they're easy to build different shapes rather than having to cut different shapes out of MDF or something; plus legos more fun !

Nice thick solid walls so there's no need for a support shell.

I cast a helmet in fibreglass, fibreglass holds the detail well and is also extremely light but strong, which is the right combo for something that's going to be worn for a length of time at a convention :D

I circled a few low spots where the cast needed a thin layer of filler to get the surface as perfect as I could. 

I then trimmed out the visor material and left a lip to attach the new transparent visor to. I then primed and wet-sanded the helmet with 1500 grit sandpaper and padded the helmet for a snug fit so there's no wobbly bobble head action when being worn.