Phantom, from Megaman Zero, was the very first costume I made that required a helmet. The original helmet wasn't too bad... just lopsided. In the last two years I've stared at the helmet numerous times and said "I want to remake that." It was put on the back-burner until a very last minute decision from the old Team Spartacus group came out that we were going to go to Otakon 2010.
I started the rebuild the same way the first helmet was put together: by wrapping my head in plastic and reinforcing it with two rolls of masking tape. There was also a cheap plastic mask to make sure everything was centered properly, and I filled it up with foam to make a wig head that was the same size and shape as my own. The original helmet actually used the plastic-and-tape head with a thin layer of model magic as the base support. Over top of that I used spray-on expanding insulation foam to get the general shape and size, and then carved it with a steak knife. While it seemed like a good idea at the time, it really wasn't. The tape and plastic eventually tore and I had to rip it out, while the model magic shrank while drying. And carving anything but steak with a steak knife is just dumb.
This time I decided to try something new. I'd seen a lot of Halo costumes done with pepakura patterns as the base, so I poked around a bit until I found something I felt I could use: the CQB helmet from Halo 3. I got the pattern from the 405th.com website, before all of their patterns disappeared. (You can still find them here )
It took approximately seven hours to print, tape-to-bristol board, cut, and tape the helmet to this point. And yes, I know that when doing pepakura the triangles are supposed go on the inside. Because I planned in layering it in craft foam, the only part of this that anyone would ultimately see was actually the inside-- so the triangles were put on the outside so that the inside looked neat and tidy. kinda.
The next step was to reshape it into the shape of Phantom's helmet. Not to mention make the helmet a bit smaller. It was absolutely massive on my head!
Obviously, there was a lot of tape involved. The ridge down the center of the helmet was reinforced with even more bristol board, and I set about layering it with craft foam. I don't have any pictures from that part because holy hell did it look ugly. I stripped off most of the craft foam, and spent a couple weeks considering what to do next, while working on my other costume for Otakon: Judith, Tales of Vesperia.
I finally gave up and just pulled out the paper mache pulp.
The 'gem' in the middle of the helmet is made out of a styrofoam egg. Once again I was cutting with a steak knife as I managed to short out my styrofoam knife again. Good job, Sammi. When I bought the pulp for the paper mache, I made sure I was buying something that said you could sand it. Even better, the bag said that it was easy to sand.
Tell that to my father's belt sander. When I couldn't get it to sand with my tools, I decided to borrow his. That didn't do much to help, and I was left with a very rough looking helmet. Out came the plaster in order to try and fill it in. Sanding that made my life a lot easier, but it also added two days and several pounds to the helmet. It also had a much nastier tendency to crack and flake off, with how thin I tried to make the layer. There are points along the center ridge where I used epoxy to fill in the cracks and then sanded that.
Of course, one of those weak spots was also along the 'chin strap' area. Or rather... two of them. When I tried the helmet on after sanding everything down, the plaster-and-paper-mache pieces fell right off. I still had the base bristol board, and I wound up hot gluing a couple layers of craft foam into place. This gave the helmet a bit more give, and it was much easier to get it on and off, so I guess it was for the best.
The whole helmet was primed with gesso, which I was leery of doing-- and with good reason. The gesso did not take to the plaster or the styrofoam very well; there were bubbles all over the helmet. By this point, though, I was running on my last few dollars and couldn't afford actual primer. Yes, even the five dollars stuff was too expensive at the time.
Especially not to the "gemstone". I used the same technique that produced the gemstones for my "X gloves" (Tsunayoshi, Reborn!), but the gesso primer did not react to the paint the same way the acrylic primer had, and the gemstone came out looking a bit flat.
At this point, the weight of the helmet was starting to worry me, but I had a grand total of three days before my flight left, and I certainly could not start over. Hell, I didn't even have the time to make a new mask for the helmet. I wound up resizing the old helmet's mask to fit this one, which left it pretty weak and flimsy. It also didn't have the same look to it-- the mask had been made by sandwiching expanding insulation foam between two pieces of bristol board, and then wrapping the whole thing in fabric.
I took the fabric off so that I could reshape it to the new helmet, and then decided not to put it back on. That left me with wrapping it in tape and priming it with gesso. Then everything got three coats of high gloss spray-on top coat.
The mask was actually put on first, with an elastic band to keep it in place while I put the helmet on. Of course, with the same luck as the rest of this build, the elastic band snapped right as we got to the OtaRockman photoshoot. We hot glued the mask directly to the helmet while I was wearing it, reinforced it with a ton of masking tape, and I then spent a great deal of time worrying about taking the helmet off and wreaking it. Surprisingly, it was actually easier to get on when the mask was glued in place, go figure.
The biggest reason I feared wreaking the helmet once I got the mask on was because it had already been damaged in transit from Calgary to Baltimore. In fact, all three of our helmets had been damaged despite fragile stickers and requests at the baggage drop-off to make sure the cases were handled carefully. Thankfully, we'd prepared for that and actually arrived two days before the convention started. It gave us enough time to repair the helmets... and for me to make two entire props in the hotel room.
I have no desire to ever do that again, but I have to admit that the costume wouldn't have had the same impact without the weapons. They were made entirely out of foam core and hot glue, and together took about seven hours. This is the only picture I have of the hotel work, and that's just because it was a giant batarang.
I've mentioned the weight of the helmet a couple of times. I originally had my hair braided and twisted into a bun to act as a cushion and support. It worked well enough, and the weight wasn't so bad for the first few hours that I wore it, but by hour five my neck was starting to ache. I wound up changing my hair style to double buns and wrapped my head in a bandanna, which did a much better job of supporting the weight for the next six hours of wearing the costume.
