Making Captain Enoch's Helmet

 Like many Star Wars fans, while watching Ahsoka on Disney+ I was really taken with this particular character's look:

This is Captain Enoch, leader of Grand Admiral Thrawn's personal guard of "Night Troopers" that also appeared for the first time in the same scene.  Here's a promotional image of him:


I knew right away that I was going to have to make myself this helmet.

Some time earlier I'd made a mold off of a Black Series stormtrooper helmet from Hasbro so I could mod copies to make a variety of stormtrooper variant helmets.  So I pulled a casting out of that mold for a starting point:


Then we 3D scanned it:

We're getting pretty good at the whole digital scanning thing.

Once the scan data was cleaned up a bit, I hit up my friend Jeff Santos for some digital sculpting.  He sculpted out the necessary pieces to convert the cast helmet into Enoch's helmet:

In no time at all, I'd printed the key parts, trimmed off the face of the Stormtrooper helmet casting, and fit the parts together:


Not too shabby:


Happy that the models looked right, I got started on prep work.  Here's the face after the initial 150-grit sanding:


And after the first round of filler primer:


Every time I found myself waiting for paint to dry on the 3D printed face pieces, I would spend a few minutes laying out and carving in the kintsugi* lines on the resin cast helmet part:


Once I was convinced that we'd matched all of the cracks in the screen-used helmet, the cheeks were installed and the whole thing was primed and given a gloss coat of lightish red paint:


Here it is from the side:


And the front:


In order to make molding, casting, prepping, and painting easier, I decided to keep the faceplate separate:


So at this point, the masters were done:


Both pieces were mounted to a base with cardboard and hot glue, the wrapped in plastic food wrap before a 3/8" layer of clay was built up over the whole thing.  The clay matrix was coated with PVA release agent and then I laid up the first half of the fiberglass mothermold:




Once that had cured I went ahead and set up the second half for fiberglass.  Here's the mothermold after the second half was laid up:


The same thing was done with the mold for the faceplate:




Here's both mothermolds curing:


The next day I removed the mothermold and the clay matrix, being careful not to disturb the master inside:


Then I worked some clay around the edges where I was going to need a parting wall later:


The edges were dimpled to make registration keys to help keep the silicone parts aligned during casting.  At this stage I usually like to add some signatures and graffiti to the parts that will be cut off:


With the parting line set up, I bolted the mothermold in place and sealed it all the way around the edges:


Same for the faceplate:


Then I had Rachel go ahead and fill the molds with silicone:


Once that had cured, I flipped over the mold for the main body of the helmet.  Then I removed the wood base and the clay that made up the parting wall.  Then the whole thing was given a generous coat of release agent before I poured silicone for the bottom section of the mold:


The faceplate mold was ready to go:


Before casting, I dusted the mold with a gold metallic powder:


This powder clings to the surface of the mold, but once the casting resin adheres to it, it sticks better than most paint coatings:


This way there will still be gold visible underneath if the surface finish gets scratched or chipped.

So the next step was to rotocast a copy of the faceplate.  This meant pouring just a few ounces of mixed resin into the mold an sloshing it around until the whole surface is evenly coated:

This gets repeated until adequate thickness is built up:


Here's the first casting as soon as it was pulled out of the mold:


I'm very happy with it:


Here it is alongside the master:


Once the bottom section of the silicone had cured, I notched out the four tabs at the bottom of the rubber mold jacket:



Then I applied a heavy release agent and laid up fiberglass to make the bottom section of the mothermold.  Here it is fitted with bolts after it had cured:


After a bit of trimming and cleanup, I used that mold to cast the first helmet body:

Here it is alongside the mold and the masters:


Here's the complete set of parts including a set of custom-formed acrylic lenses and the chin details:


After a bit of trimming, I dry fit the parts together:


Naturally, I couldn't resist the urge to try it on for a while:


I'm pretty happy with it.  This is my happy face:


Of course,  I never make just one of anything.  So I cranked out a few more castings:


To get the finish I wanted for the gold bits, I decided early on that the best option was gold leafing:


For the main body of the helmet, I started with a gloss white basecoat:


Then the helmet was masked off and the grey parts were painted either Gloss Smoke Gray, or Satin Granite from Rustoleum:


It's a bit more obvious after the masking was removed:

Then the gold leafing was applied to the cracks and patches to match the kintsugi look of the screen-used helmet: 

The main thing I learned from gold leafing the faceplate was that I really don't like doing gold leafing.

To make it easier, I asked Rachel to do it:


She pretty much nailed it:


Once the leafing was done, we picked out the brow trim by hand with flat black oil-based paint.  Then we made vinyl stencils to paint on the Imperial cog logos:


Rachel was also happy with the result:


They were definitely coming along, but they were still too clean:


The final step was to blackwash everything to help the details stand out and give the whole thing that signature Star Wars "lived in universe" look:






Jeff got to keep one of the helmets.  Here's the last pic with all four in the same room:


Here's my copy sitting on display in the office:


At some point I'll get a wild hair and decide to make the rest of the armor to go with it:


Plenty of other things to keep me busy in the meantime.

Stay tuned...