Finally finished my paintup after around 6 months of slowly working on this thing. Primarily used archive-x with a few vallejo paints. This is my second helmet, my last helmet was painted back in 2020 and was the first time I'd ever used an airbrush and my first Boba related project so its nice to actually see the progress I've made. Overall I'm really happy with this helmet and I think the main thing I wish I'd done differently was the back panel green which I feel could be a bit "bluer".
I'll post this gallery in chunks but here is my initial prep work and working through the ears
Next I moved onto masking the back panels. I used Rafals ultra stencils for this helmet. These stencils were seriously so awesome to work with so a big thanks to him and all his hard work!
Once I had finished the main layering I went back in and hit all the shapes with fine brushwork to refine the edges and add any small details (i ultimately revisited these areas but I'll get to that later)
Next I started tackling the red areas thinking they would be a lot easier than the pack panels. I was very wrong. The red sections took the longest by far for me to work through so at the time I decided to give my eyes a break and work on the cheeks first. I followed the same method as the back panels. Masking off the main shapes and then refining.
Once I fully finished the red on the back band and mandibles I was able to move onto the dome. I took extra care with the cat scratch just since its such a major landmark on this helmet. Minutefetts cast made easy work of this with all the super clean details that pop through. It was around this point that I really started to hit my stride and feel much more comfortable with my fine brush work using references.
Killstripes were painted next. I used the ones I could clearly see in the cast as landmarks and measured out the rest. I liked my gradient but it was very vibrant. I wasn't too worried though since they'd be knocked back a lot during my washes. At this point I was just glad that I had a semi-fibished helmet.
At this point I decided that I wanted to revisit my back panels after having a better understanding of following the stencils. It might seem minor but I knew I'd be kicking myself if I didn't go back and fix these sections. It was also at this point that I learned what I thought were white sections were actually the pale blue priming coat, so I went through my whole helmet and corrected these areas as well.
Up next was weathering. I started with the killstrioe overspray. I tried not to go too ott with this but its a lot more noticeable in person.
Then I hit the whole helmet with a few acrylic washes. Primarily I used straight black washes but I also used some earth tones. I took extra time really working on the killstripes to dull them down to a point I was happy with.
Next I did some brush work on the right cheek to match references and then tried my best at splattering rust tones on the cheek and left ear. I definitely could have used more practice with this but overall I'm happy with it, especially since it can only real be seen when you're up close.
Next I misted on some grey on the back of the right ear and a little on the front to match some reference photos.
The last weathering step was airbrushing the cheeks and scorch marks on the cheek.
And with that I threw a few coats of testors dullcote and called it a day (6months lol). Really happy with how this came out and its in big thanks to a lot of the awesome people on this website. I'm still waiting on my SX-70 rangefinder piece and need to install some electronics but the painting is done (until I learn of something else that you guys discover lol).
It looks amazing!! The one thing I would suggest doing is one last comb over of everything and keep a toothpick with you to make adjustments because it’s those tiny things that make the piece really pop!! Really nice work though!!
