G.I. Joe Hydro Viper Helmet: a Sidetrack Project

A few weeks ago I was scrolling through posts in one of my toy collectors' groups and was reminded of this guy:

This was the "Hydro-Viper" one of the last G.I. Joe action figures I bought as a kid before I'd finally lost interest in that particular toy line.  Here's what the package and the action figure looked like:


At this point, the G.I. Joe line had started veering hard toward goofy science fiction concepts and bright colors.  That was just some of what helped me outgrow those particular toys.*  This character was definitely a goofy science fiction concept in bright colors, but for some reason this guy struck a chord with me.  I was fascinated with all things military and scuba diving as a kid and this covered both.

The action figure wasn't particularly well sculpted and the colors seemed wrong, but I absolutely loved the artwork on the package.  Even their lore was cool:


It's also fascinating to me that he came with a manta ray.  While a lot of the named, one-off characters had their animal sidekicks (i.e. Snake Eyes had a wolf named "Timber" and Shipwreck had a parrot named "Polly") this was not a unique, individual character.  Instead, he was one of presumably many rank and file troops that were given a series of surgical alterations for deep diving and then issued a specially trained manta ray to assist in their duties as part of an evil terrorist organization determined to rule the world.

Neat.

But I digress.

Stricken by an overwhelming wave of nostalgia, I decided I needed to bring this very distinctive dive helmet to life.  So I dug up all of the reference images I could and put Jeff to work on the digital sculpt.  In no time at all, he delivered this thing of beauty:


With the huge ears and dorsal fin, it was going to be easy for this helmet to get comically large.  So I told Jeff to keep the rest of the helmet as close fitting as possible.  He nailed it:


So I split it into separate parts to speed up the FDM** printing process and overnight my fleet of printers grew the whole set.  Here's the initial helmet roughed together:


I didn't do the prettiest job on the seams, but a bit of sanding and Bondo made quick work of them:


And even at this stage, the helmet looked pretty spiffy:


After a couple of rounds of sanding and filling, the whole thing was given a two coats of red primer:


And I couldn't resist the urge to take dusty mirror selfies:


For the almost burgundy red color, I applied a basecoat of Dupl-Color Bordeaux Red Metallic:


This was a nice, deep red which did a great job of adding depth to the details:


And with a clearcoat, the metallic effect was downright gorgeous:


I masked off the dorsal fin and the forehead arrow and painted them with Rustoleum satin "Canyon Black" and gloss "Marigold" respectively:


The masking tape lifted a bit of the clearcoat, so apparently I didn't tack cloth the helmet enough before I sprayed the clear.  I'd have to go back and re-apply that later.

In the meantime, I used the scroll saw to cut some 1/8" smoke tinted acrylic sheet to make lenses to fit in the eye holes:


These pieces were heated in a toaster oven until they were soft and floppy*** then pressed into the eye hole from inside with a soft rag.  Then the soft acrylic was held in place, bulging out of the eye hole until it cooled and became rigid again.  This makes a perfectly bubbled, custom fit lens for the eye hole:


The lenses were glued in place with cyanoacrylate adhesive, then I made up a pair of LED throwies to make the eyes more interesting:


An LED throwie is literally just an LED taped onto a button cell battery.  It's about the simplest bit of electronics you can make and it did just what I needed to give me an idea of how the final effect would look:


Here you can just about make out the masking tape holding the LED throwie inside the eye from the test lighting:


Clearly I'd need a more elegant solution.

But the effect was just sinister enough and visibility was largely unimpaired:


Success!

The LED throwies have enough juice to stay lit for several days, but I didn't want to have to re-make them every time I wanted to light up the helmet.  Instead, I wired up a pair of LEDs to a AA battery pack:


Then I shrink-wrapped the leads with a piece of aluminum armature wire, leaving just a tiny bit of the LED's tip showing on the end:


This gave me a nice, stiff, posable stalk with the glowy bit on the end:

The battery pack was mounted up in the dorsal fin with a patch of velcro and the leads and armature wire were gaff taped into place.  The wire was bent to hold the LEDs in exactly the right spot in the center of the eye lens:


The result was an appropriately menacing final touch to the character's glare:


Unfriendly face is unfriendly:

And with a new application of clearcoat, it's done:

Here's a nifty little turnaround:

I did go ahead and add a couple lengths of wiring loom to approximate the weirdly narrow air lines feeding into the snoot:

I need an ever-so-slightly bigger size though.  They don't look quite right.

In the meantime, I just need to talk myself out of making the rest of the costume and doing an underwater cosplay photoshoot.  

It sounds like fun though, so I'll probably end up doing it anyway.  In fact, I should start training a manta ray now.

Stay tuned...

*Girls.  The other main thing was girls.

**FDM Stands for "Filament Deposition Modeling," the more common type of 3D printing for at-home users.  It tends to take a lot of time for larger parts, so I cut them into smaller parts so they can all be printed simultaneously to speed things up.

***Made you look.

Genestealer Update 24: Just a Little Bit of Hand Sculpting

Well once again it's been longer than I'd like since my last update on this project.  Mostly that's just because I've been completely buried under a bunch of other projects that have actual deadlines.

The good news is that, while I've been drowning in projects, Jeff has still been able to come in to the shop a couple of times to tinker with sculpting out the new hands.  He's started on the upper, three-fingered pair:

The other day it was his berfday too, so we had to stop for cake:


My very talented friend Walter Welsh of Welsh Creations also came along for a day of sculpting and giving Jeff some pointers on how to dial in the look of the hands.  Sadly, I neglected to snap any photos of him with his hands in the clay.  So I'll have to get him back up here again sooner than later.

So yeah.  It's been several weeks since we cast the elbows.  In that several weeks I've mostly been unable to make progress, but Jeff's gotten the upper claw hands to look like so:

The upper right hand being much further along than the left:


And Walter has done a bang-up job on the lower hands:


Especially once you look at the backside:


Seriously.  These guys are going to be gorgeous:


Things are slowing down a tiny bit, so we should see more progress on these guys in the coming month.

Stay tuned...

Genestealer Update 23: Molding and Casting the Knees and Elbows

 When we last updated this project, we had finished texturing the sculptures for the knees, elbow, and tail:

Since then, we made molds for all of them and started casting rubber parts:

To see how it was done, read on

Building a Morita Carbine from Starship Troopers

 A few years back we made a handful of Starship Troopers Morita assault rifle replicas.  They were pretty nifty:

But there were a few other weapons available in the Mobile Infantry's arsenals.  Since I'm apparently on track to fit out an entire platoon of troopers, I'm going to need more different armaments.

So we cast another copy of the Morita assault rifle and hacked off the front end and the shotgun mag tube. I also trimmed off the shotgun barrel and the magazine nut from the muzzle piece and shortened the longitudinal trim pieces that slot into either side:

After a bit of cleanup, the main body got my customary coat of glossy lightish red paint:


The next day I couldn't resist the urge to test the fit:


After that, this shiny pink prototype sat in the shop, hanging from a hook in the corner and largely forgotten for months.  Then Andrew the Intern asked about how to make molds and we had a just right thing for him to learn on.  

We started him out with a flat surface to mount it to, in this case a piece of MDF, then built up a layer of foam sheet.  That built up the split to about the midline of the prototype.  That's where we set up a scrap of ABS sheet trimmed to fit close around the prototype.  Then he built up a layer of clay about 3/8" thick over the whole thing.  Then I went ahead and added the needed ridges and registration keys before we have it all a generous coating of PVA release agent:  


A couple days later we went ahead and layered over the whole thing with fiberglass:


Once that had cured, the whole thing was flipped over and the process was repeated on the other side.  Then Andrew the Intern got to separate the two halves of the fiberglass mothermold.  They prototype was left in one side's clay bed:


Andrew picked out the clay, smoothed the bottom half of the clay bed, and added registration keys:


Then the first half of the mothermold was bolted back in place and filled with silicone:


Once that cured, we flipped the mold over, removed the mothermold, and cleaned out the clay that was inside:


After spraying on a healthy coat of release agent, the mothermold was bolted back in place and filled with silicone:


The last then was to remove the lump of clay that was in the magazine well, cut a hole in the mothermold, spray in more release agent, and then fill the hole with silicone to create a plug:


The silicone was poured through a hole cut in the mothermold.  You can see the plug here after we'd poured the first casting:

It's up and to the right of where I'm pointing.  I don't know what I was pointing at there or why.

The little detail bits were mostly the same as the full-sized Morita assault rifle.  We had to trim the side details and make new molds for those.  We also made a new muzzle assembly without the shotgun barrel and magazine tube cap:


Here's two sets of parts dry fitted together:

Note the magazines are already painted and weathered because they were left over from an excess we'd made back when we made the full-sized assault rifle version.

After a bit of trimming and cleanup, the casts were primed:

Then the body was painted with a dark green drab color from the Krylon camouflage line and the action and muzzle were painted with some dark metallic shade from Dupli-Color.  Once the paint dried, everything was assembled, weathered, and ready for us to install a sling:

The slings were a different kind of pain to replicate.  Mostly because the few reference images I was working with didn't really show them clearly laid out.  It took some doing to wrap my head around how exactly they worked, but in the end, I'm happy that we'd done a good job of duplicating the screen-used slings:


With these two done, I put one in the box with the rest of my Mobile Infantry costume.  The other one gets to hang on the wall in my office until further notice:

Now it's time to get back to work on my prosthetic hand:

And there's always the M-55 Tactical Nuke Launcher:


The plan is to get a squad together in time for Wondercon in Anaheim at the end of this month.  

Would you like to know more?