Star Wars: Painting a Clone Trooper Helmet - YouTube

hey robot fans welcome back to the build today we paint no I will not be using a

roller but yes I am painting today so now my helmet is nice and smooth I could

start laying down the white for this I'm using Kryolan fusion for plastic this is

great for 3d printed parts I used it for all the white parts of bb-8 and it

worked out really well my general philosophy for spray painting is lots

and lots of light coats you shouldn't be getting too much coverage on any one

particular coat sand as needed in between coats just to get rid of any

bumps that you didn't catch before and overall you just want a really nice even

cover cuz this is the foundation that all the other colors are gonna go on so

it might be the simplest in terms of masking and skill but it is definitely

the most important okay all the whites are done I think I did about five or six

coats overall made up of probably three sub coats each so I was pretty much in

and out all day just giving it a little bit of paint here and there the spray

paint itself says that it's dry within a day but it could take a full week to get

that nice hard shell and I tend to fully honor that request from the can so this

will sit for a week and let it really cure my general rule with curing paint

is if you can still smell it it's not done yet and I can definitely still

smell the spray paint so I'm gonna let this sit in a nice dry space for the

next week so if you've been following my channel and saying wow why is this video

taking so long to come out that's because I am a full die-hard

listen to the can drawing instructions kind of guy so we'll see you in a week

these are gonna be the tools of the trade for the rest of this video first

off we have Tamiya masking tape this to me is the gold standard of masking tape

it's super thin which makes it really easy to use and mask off curved edges

the tack on this is perfect it's sticky enough to hold itself down but it

doesn't pull up anything on the other side this is usually my first line of

defense it's the first line that goes down and then I follow that up with

regular blue painters tape I have that in three different widths as well we're

gonna be using liquid latex on all of the blue parts which is coming up soon

this is going to be used for masking I have a little pic here which helps me

get some of that latex off a ruler for measurement and a exacto blade here

which is good for both the sharp end of the blade and the blunt side of the

blade which really helps you get the tape into those corners that you need to

get it into I have some high grit sandpaper for fixing all my mistakes and

a pair of scissors to cut the tape I'm gonna start by masking off the parts of

the helmet that need to be painted gray this includes the frown portion of the

helmet which is where the teeth are in front of the face and a gray strip that

goes all the way around the back of the helmet I start with the Tamiya tape

which is super thin and it gives me good flexibility with the curved surfaces I

use the front and back edge of my exacto blade to really make sure that I'm

hitting those lines that I want to hit I cut the tape where I need to cut it and

push it in two corners where I need to push it in two corners once I have that

first layer of yellow Tamiya tape down I start building on that with blue

painters tape until I have a good inch all around the parts that I'm trying to

mask at that point I can start really building up with larger pieces of tape

or pieces of paper just to get the whole helmet covered so that the only parts

that are exposed are the frown and that strip going around the back

now we're ready to paint and this is my first chance to give a real bona fide

painting tip we are painting gray on top of white here but the first thing I'm

going to do is spray a layer of white there's a lot of masking tape on this

helmet and the chances of there being no bumps or cracks are little tiny raises

in that tape is pretty slim to none by spraying a layer of white first it fills

any of those little tiny bumps with white paint so it doesn't leak through

onto the helmet this way when we spray the gray all those little cracks are

filled and it'll be left with a much cleaner line next we spray the gray for

this I'm using rust oleum two-in-one filler primer I'm also being sure not to

cover too much on any one coat again and I hit this with about two or three coats

okay a painting tip number two a lot of people say to wait until the paint is

completely dried or dried overnight before you take off your masking tape I

don't necessarily subscribe to that theory I like to take it off while it's

still pretty tacky so this paint for example says it's dry to the touch in 15

minutes and completely dry in an hour I usually would probably wait about 20 to

30 minutes and then take my masking tape off and then let it dry completely

before I do anything further but taking off the tape while it's still a little

bit wet is beneficial because then there's no real seals that get cracked

by pulling that tape off and you end up with a nice even line taking off the

tape and the paper can usually be a bit of an anxiety attack but in this

particular instance I think I did pretty well there's no real bleeds anywhere and

the lines are super smooth so I'm really happy with this step

this is where the fun begins we're gonna start masking off the blue for the

five-o first look just like the previous section we're gonna start with the thin

Tamiya masking tape the costume reference library has a pretty good

amount of information to follow for the measurements for this particular masking

it's really helpful it takes a lot of the time out of the guesswork because

there's a lot of gray areas when you start curving all this tape so having

these measurements is helpful I started using the Tamiya masking tape to measure

as well as to mask off I was cutting little strips to certain lengths

according to the measurements and applying them to the helmet and then

just lining up my masking tape to hit those individual measurements this

worked out really well and I think I got the measurements right on the money when

all that's done I can repeat the process of adding in the painters tape layer by

layer and adding paper where I need to to cover larger sections of the helmet

and the whole helm is covered and all that's left is the blue area that needs

to be painted we can start using the liquid latex to apply the battle-damaged

a lot of this will masking will be pretty random just adding dings and

chips where I feel it's necessary but there's one specific piece of damage

that I really want to get right if you look at the reference for commander bow

from the purge comic series you can see that there's a pretty prominent X on the

forehead area it appears in a couple different panels so it's definitely not

a glare or just like a little artist rendition it's definitely something

that's supposed to be there and since this is really the only reference we

have for commander bow I think it should be included my first goal is getting

this on the helmet the liquid latex is super easy to work with it smells a

little bit like old balloons and it dries really really fast but for an

application like this it's perfect I lay it down on the helmet paint on top of it

and when everything's dry the paint and the latex you can just kind of peel it

right off and it leaves these really nice crisp lines with the X in place I

can just move randomly around the helmet and start adding different dings and

dents where I need them to be to apply it I'm just using a little kids

paintbrush this is all you really need whatever brush you ruin will pretty much

be destroyed so I wouldn't use anything you're too fond of when this is all dry

we're ready for paint and I start with the layer of white like we have in the

past to fill in the gaps in the tape then it's on to the blue for this I am

using krylon global blue this is the paint used in the costume reference

library and you'll notice in this video it's one of those colors that looks live

different in every single lighting scenario it's really cool and is really

perfect for matching the 500 first clones from The Revenge of the Sith

movie I apply a few light coats in the morning and let it sit for about a half

an hour now it's time to remove the tape if I was nervous removing the tape for

the gray section you can imagine how nervous I'm feeling right now I don't

generally consider myself to be a great painter but I gotta say this blue

section came out pretty good there are a couple iffy spots but nothing that can't

be fixed and my lines are looking really crisp

now comes the coolest part of the painting section I take my little pic

here and I start removing the latex all around the helmet I start with the X of

course because I was so excited to see this as soon as it starts coming off I

get really excited I know this is gonna look really cool and I continue to go

around the helmet getting all the latex off and you can start seeing the

finished helmet really coming out with everything cleaned up commander Bao

is really looking like a five-o first trooper

before I move on with the helmet with the black sections I decided to keep the

ball rolling on the blue and get the macro binoculars painted I kept one of

the greatly separate for this step so I start by masking that off there is an

equally awesome list of measurements for the macro binoculars in the costume

reference library and compared to the size of the helmet this goes really

quickly and real easily I add the liquid latex just like I did for the helmet add

a couple coats of paint and peel everything off and it looks just as good

as the helmet does I'm super excited with how the Blues came out I glue the

gravely back on to the main set of the macro binoculars and we are ready to

move on to the black part of the helmet the black takes up the least amount of

real estate on the helmet it's really just the chin gravely at the bottom and

the brim of the main lid I decided to tackle the chin grouping by hand using

some liquitex basic black acrylic paint I have some decent artists brushes that

give me the control I needed to get into those tight little spots this one pretty

well so I decided to continue right on painting by hand with the main brim this

however did not go quite as well as the rest of the paint has I think doing it

by hand made the masking of the single strip of masking tape less effective

with all my poking and brushing and the line was really choppy all around I

spent an extra hour so just Reem asking little sections and touching things up

and in the end it looks really great but if you're watching this video for advice

on how to paint your helmet I'd say my advice would be to use spray paint for

the black beret and take the time to tape up the rest of the helmet and do it

with the spray paint continuing right along with the black I also finished off

the ear gray please this had already been sprayed with the grey rust-oleum

primer while I was sanding and finishing them so all that's left to do is tape

off the little base plate and paint it black after these are dry I can go right

into their little magnetic homes at this point the finish line is in sight and

there's only one task left to perform painting on the cheek stripes you can

purchase some nice stencils from the builders forums and stick them right

onto the helmet and these will mask out the stripes for you it's a little

difficult to stick a flat sticker on to a round surface without some crimping

but for the most part they lay pretty nice since I learned nothing from past

mistakes I decided to hand paint this using some navy blue acrylic paint I had

on and I painted several coats and made

sure the color was full and of course disaster as I peeled off the stencil the

paint had dried to a nice rubbery shell and the stencil took a lot of the paint

with it after a few minutes of ranting and raving and cursing and shouting I

decided to see if I could make something happen with this the stencils did leave

enough of an indication of the stripes for me to go in and manually tape them

off and repaint them this combined with some needling in some exacto blade eing

led to a really nice result I couldn't be more happy with I like the color and

it has like a really nice weather look that goes well with the top of the

helmet and when the whole thing is whether this is just gonna look awesome

I'm really really happy with how this came out despite the initial disaster so

next we just attach the macro binoculars we screw them into each side and add

their appropriate grebe leaves and we're good to go

I set up a DIY photo shoot here in the workspace just to kind of document the

progress so far the photos came out really good you could check them out on

my new Instagram accounts yes I finally got an Instagram account I've really

been enjoying it and posting pretty regularly so if you want to see some

stuff that happens in between the videos definitely check out my Instagram

account I think that's going to do it for this video

we got the helmet fully painted today which is a huge step next up will be

weathering where we're gonna make this thing look nice and dirty really excited

for that as always we're gonna finish with a progress shot so thanks for

tuning in and I'll see you next time