Building the Rebel Persona: 5.1 – Helmet

As I said in the previous Hard Kit overview, I opted to give ‘Citizen Olis’ a little armor in the form of a Rebel ‘swoop’ helmet.
“Rebel soldiers wear very little protective armor, typically a helmet at most, though some soldiers wear chest and abdomen plates. Alliance tacticians believe that complete freedom of movement is more useful than the dubious protection provided by armor—which rarely stops a blaster bolt anyway.” West End Games: Rebel Alliance Sourcebook p.99)

As my first serious foray into the world of Pepakura (cardstock + resin), while it’s not perfect, I am extremely pleased with how it turned out! (While researching construction techniques, I came across one fan’s attempt at making the helmet using the same files as I did…I was determined to have the final product come out better than his—a rather low bar—but I am still quite surprised how nice mine looks in the end).

The road from computer file to three-dimensional helmet, however, was long and winding.The final helmet is actually a chimera of elements from several different helmet files, all made by user ‘Fierfek’ (the Hutt word for ‘poison’, IIRC—nice touch).

After finding Fierfek’s library of pepakura projects at the RPF, I downloaded the Rebel helmet file, and—over-eager to start the project—somehow managed to print, cut out, assemble, AND resin-coat the helmet before I looked at a single reference image (instead, relying on my mental image of what I thought a Rebel Fleet Trooper looked like).
Imagine my surprise when, playing a round of Battlefront 2 (2005) I realized that the Rebel helmet onscreen seemed to be shaped quite differently from the one sitting on my workbench!

Panicking slightly, I went back to the RPF, where I uncovered a second version of the RFT helmet! And then a third!:
Naturally, the third (far more accurate) version was no longer hosted, and though I searched high and low, I was unable to find it online anywhere.

Since the v2 helmet had a ridiculously-reduced polygon count compared to the v1 helmet I had already spent an evening gluing together, I didn’t want to go back to square one and build that one; plus, after scrutinizing reference images, I could tell the helmet proper of the v2 was nothing close to the WWII ‘Navy Talker’ helmet the RFT was built on…in that regard, the v1 file was far superior. Eventually, I resolved to split the difference and make my helmet from elements of the two files I could get my hands on: I retained the larger, higher-polygon v1 shell—adding extra material at the lower edge to better approximate the ‘Talker’—and then used the comm box, rear swoop, and visor (not pictured) of the v2 file:

Thus commenced several months of piecemeal weekly Bondo’ing and lots and lots of sandpaper’ing. Along the way (since, again, the v3 was unavailable), I wound up having to scratchbuild a chin cup, and installed a bicycle helmet-liner to fit inside; I was surprised to learn that very few mainstream costumers do this, instead only using pieces of foam for padding…which might feel good but can’t look very realistic.

At long last, after ~4.5 months, it was finally time to paint and assemble. Note that I have used the correct, screen-accurate light gray color, and not bright white as commonly (and incorrectly) depicted:

As I said earlier, I have considered painting my helmet something like a subtle light brown, though I am aware that this might deviate a bit too much from what we’re used to seeing. The other option would be to get to work on a ‘Rebel Donut’ helmet…hrmmm…decisions, decisions. 😉

Just for kicks, final estimated cost for the project:
-Paper: 22 sheets ($13/250=5.2 cents/sheet*22 =$1.14)
-4/5ths of a can of fiberglass resin ($9.60)
-3/5ths of a can of Bondo ($11?)
-$5 worth of sandpaper
-several months of time
Compare to a plastic vacuum-formed kit, which runs anywhere from $100 (parts only) to $175 (assembled)!

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