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[Sculpting] Simple Knight-Style Helmet Conversion

Marshal Barbarossa

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Marshal Barbarossa Battle-Brother

Marshal Barbarossa

Posted
Posted

Hello everyone! Here's a quick Greenstuff(GS) tutorial on converting Marine helmets to the more knightly looking ones.

 

Why do this when you can get the knightly looking helms from most kits, you ask? Well, you might want an entire army of them without buying Grey Knights. Maybe you just want to customize a few helmets. Or if you're like me, you just love playing with Greenstuff. :D

 

Now, Greenstuff isn't for everyone. I know this, you know this. If this isn't your thing, it's ok with me. Though I hope I've made this easy enough that you would want to try. If you're a beginner, don't be shy. This shouldn't be too hard. All you need is patience, and with some prectice, you'll have tool control too. Also, this should go without saying, but please read the whole article a few times before trying this out. I try to keep this in a step-by-step format, but the sculpting process rarely is.

 

I'll be using terms like "pushing", " blending", and "stroking". Let me try to define some of these terms.

 

+ Pushing is moving the GS as if you're spreading butter on a piece of toast. You don't want to press too hard though, as you want a nice even layer.

+ Blending is when you have a bit of GS over a layer of GS and you want to smoothen the two together, so you press down slightly and rub it in with the same motion as an artist would shade a drawing with a pencil, albeit with very little pressure and probably not as fast until the line or border of the top GS is gone.

+ Stroking or strokes, are as if you're a painter and you just lightly caress the GS in a direction to move the GS without changing the shape too much.

 

As always, this is just the way I would do them and there may be other ways to produce the same results. Hopefully I can impart some knowledge and once you're comfortable enough with your techniques, you should be able to do different versions easily. Using the same techniques, you should be able to make Mk.2's, Mk.3's, the company champion helm, and even the T-visor style on those old bezerkers. All you need is your imagination!

 

Let's get started, shall we?

 

What you need:

- sculpting tools

- Greenstuff (GS)

- lubricant (I use petroleum jelly, but spit, water, olive oil, lip balm or whatever you use is fine)

- hobby knife/exacto

- files (optional)

- pin vise/hobby drill

- pinning material (I use a bit of copper wire)

- Marine helmet to be converted

 

1: So first things first: Prep work. clean up any mold lines you have on the helm. No one likes mold lines. After that, drill a hole in the base of the neck, and glue a bit of pinning material in there. Once that's good, you can use your pin vise as a handle.

 

2: Now we trim the tubing on the cheek and the grill using your knife. Make sure you leave the rim of the eyes intact, so be careful when you trim the grill. For the tubing, you can go all the way to the ear piece or just up to the rim around the face mask area. I went up to the rim.

 

3: it should look like this now. Next you need to round off the face mask a bit by either carving it with your knife, or filing it. I carved it with a knife. Also you can thin down the face mask a bit by dragging your knife like you would when you're removing mold lines. This is so that you can have GS all the way up to the helmet rim without being too thick and obscuring the rim itself. If you're going to have a rimless look, then you don't need to do this.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/Marshal_Barbarossa/KHTutorial1_1.jpg

 

4: You should have something like this now. Mix up a small amount of GS (I use a 1:1 ratio of blue and yellow, but its up to you if you want a different ratio). You don't need much, just about a BB size ball of it.

 

5: Place it in the center of the face as shown. Using your thumb and forefinger, pinch the GS vertically to start the shape, and slightly push the GS towards the sides.

 

6: using your sculpting tool, start pushing the GS towards the rim on the sides. Start filling the whole face mask area with GS this way, but be careful not to push it into the eyes. If that happens, just drag the edge of your tool along the rim of the eye to pull out any GS that went astray. This might produce an ugly protrusion of GS, so just fold it over and blend it down using down strokes (By down strokes, I mean towards the chin). Now, when you're pushing the GS towards the sides, it will have a tendency to bunch up below the chin. When this happens, just smooth it by stroking from the neck towards the chin (I'll call this the "chin stroke" from now on). This should help flatten the chin area. Keep pushing the GS around until you have a decently even layer over the face mask.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/Marshal_Barbarossa/KHTutorial2.jpg

 

7-9: Now you're going to want to sharpen up the center line. What you want to do is stroke the GS towards the center. Then you want to use up and down strokes at an angle to form the edge. This will also have a tendency to bunch up the GS at the chin, so you'll have to make chin strokes too. Make sure to go back and forth between both sides to keep it even, and with chin strokes to keep the shape. No one likes a lopsided helmet. The "bridge of the nose" point is formed with up strokes, and the sharp chin is formed using down and chin strokes. To make that "bridge" shape, follow the contour of the eye rims and extended it towards the center. You may want to separate it a bit from the brow too, by gently pulling it away from the helmet, as I did. Just keep at it until you get the shape you want.

 

10-12: Basically done. You can leave it at that, or add extra details to your liking.

 

If you want to add slits using your knife, you can do so before letting the GS cure. You'll have to smooth it out if you want sharp corners as cutting into wet GS will deform it slightly. If you want holes, I suggest letting it cure first and then just drill into the GS. This will provide sharper edges around each hole. You can also add cabling after its dry using small GS sausages, or guitar strings. It's all up to you.

 

That's pretty much it. If you made mistakes, don't get too fussed about it. You can always fix them. If the mask was too thin, just let it cure and add some more GS afterwards. If it came out lopsided, you can always file/trim it and try again. With enough practice, you can bust out each helmet in 20 mins.

 

Although I used a Mk. 7 helm here, this should be easily done on a Mk. 6 too.

 

Hope this helps some of you out. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability.

 

Happy sculpting! :D

Marshal Barbarossa

  • 2 weeks later...
JeffTibbetts Venerable Brother

JeffTibbetts

Posted
Posted

I feel like this could easily be adapted to make beakies as well, if you're doing a classic Sons of Orar chapter or similar. Some of the oldest metal beakies actually look a lot like this design (less protruding), without the sharp edge in the middle. 

Marshal Barbarossa Battle-Brother

Marshal Barbarossa

Posted
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Posted

I feel like this could easily be adapted to make beakies as well, if you're doing a classic Sons of Orar chapter or similar. Some of the oldest metal beakies actually look a lot like this design (less protruding), without the sharp edge in the middle.

 

I'm sure it can, but I haven't tried personally. This is just the very basic conversion and I'm sure someone out there will be able to sculpt all sorts of different marks. This was also the first type of helmet conversion I tried and in the future I'll probably try to recreate all the other marks.

 

Marshal barbarossa

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