TKModder421

Thank you thank you! I’m a little obsessed lol.

Thank you sir!

Alright, got it mocked up, using a TIE pilot bust as a stand, and I gotta say I'm loving it so far. The printed brow trim actually looks pretty damn good. Once I get the white parts all smoothed and shined up I'm going to add the black paint to the tear and trap recesses and adhere everything together, just gotta make the time to do that next!

Oh man! I'm sorry, crazy that time flies so fast and I can barely keep up lol! I've had my slow progress staring me in the face for many months. It wasn't mad... it was just disappointed lol So I had gotten it up to 1000 grit months ago, I just needed to paint. Problem was I just didn't make any time to prep for paint. Taping, washing, and rigging is just so time consuming. I finally kicked myself in the butt and started the process. I decided that I wanted to paint the inside of the helmet first, mostly because the weird off-day-glo-green resin it was printed from just looked so damn ugly. So I taped it up and painted the inside of the helmet, and of course managed not to take any pics. Doh! Anyway, after painting the inside and again taping up what I needed to, I finally got around to laying down the outer paint... That was the first coat. Using the Behr #52 White Gloss rattle can This is after the 3rd coat on my makeshift rigging system I fashioned some heavy duty picture hanging wire into rigs and held them in place on the helmet parts with painters tape and drilled holes into a big wooden block to hold the rigged pieces between coats and to dry/cure After a few days of letting it cure, I put the main pieces together just to see it! I didn't take pics but I painted the tears, traps, teeth and ear greebs with Testors admiral gray with a clear matte coat, and the vocoder and the printed brow trim with Rustoleum 2X black ultra matte. Oh and I painted the tube stripe backing with Model Master's French Blue that I lightened up a bit by mixing a bit of white in with it. My plan is to now lightly wet sand the white parts of the helmet with 1000 then 2000 to remove any egg shell/orange peel texture from the rattle can and then buff it up to a shine with automotive swirl and scratch remover. I'll probably mock everything up and take some pics first though... so more WIP pics to come

Yeah, that's the info I had also heard several years ago. In my opinion the color seems a bit lighter than French blue or painter's tape though. I was just wondering if there had been any additional insight on a matching color. I have recently heard from a reliable source that at least on the Kenobi production helmets, the backing was a blue molded plastic, similar to a tupperware type material. This may be what we're seeing in these shots as well, I'm not sure, but the other details of the interior here match what I've seen from the source.

Curious if anyone has any updates on the blue for the tube stripe backing? Or is everyone still sticking with the French Blue?

The comps are great! Thanks for doing that, really gives some good insight. They all look pretty good. Seems that they all are slightly shorter than the on screen pics on the rib cage area

Those are the only files currently worth mentioning, imo Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You can use Mr Paul's shoulders as well. As far as the shins go, Ryder Kinion recently used the shins and Mr Paul is now selling the TK cover strips to use with them, so he bought them and is waiting for them to get through customs. I'm excited to see how they all come together

Excited to see this armor come together! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Looking good! Excited to see these come together

Hey Mike, this is Greg. Yeah I’m happy to share my mods with anyone that has purchased Nico’s original files. Feel free to DM me with some sort of proof of purchase and I can get you the files Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hey, haven’t seen a DM

Sorry I missed this before! Yeah it really looks awesome. Thanks so much for for your help with that Matt!!

Thank you sir! And thank you everyone for all the kind words, it means a lot to me that the community appreciates my efforts. I only did it for the love of this costume (maybe it's more of an obsession lol), I wish I had the skills to make the helmet I truly want. But I have faith someone will release one that gets closer than what I've been able to do. But in the meantime I'm happy to give the community a slightly more refined option for now

Honestly I think I’ve taken it about as far as I can go with it. I think if I was able, I would make the forehead slope a bit more and take some square-ness out of the dome. I’d fix the teeth and make the area where the vocoder sits a bit more upside down U shaped. And give a slight curve to the vocoder tubes. I’d also fix the trap recess above the temples and make them a bit less round. There’s lots of things I would do if I could. But I think if the community wants a more accurate helmet we need to get someone who is great at 3D sculpting that also has a passion for this helmet. Or someone to get a 3D scan of a production helmet [emoji16]

Here are a few test print pics of the new ears

Sorry about the delay, life gets in the way of my Star Wars obsession sometimes lol. Ok, so yes, I've got an update on the ear mod. With the help of Matthew Wall, we now have ears that have the full circle ear cap and a slope up to the ear greeblie without such a large plateau and more rounded corners. Big thanks to Matthew Wall for his help on the ear mods!! Also there's an exciting possibility coming down the line. I'll update as things come together

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, I'm sharing my mods with troopers that have purchased Nico's files. DM me if you're interested. I used Blender to modify the files, add the alignment keys etc.

Oh haha! Gotcha No need to apologize, I appreciate the discussion and the nod. I'm often the one playing devil's advocate in these situations, so I can fully appreciate where you're coming from. But I still do feel that DN produces several helmets that fall into the same bucket of, difficulty to produce and having a small audience. I don't have false hope and I don't want to give anyone false hope, but it certainly can't hurt if we all speak up. If we organize and make our voice heard, even if it's just like maybe 15 of us, the worst they can do is nothing and then we're in no different situation than we are now, you know? I'll leave it at that for now lol

Yeah I can’t argue with that. Mark who? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah, i completely agree with the what you said about the manufacturing considerations. I would assume they would go the fiberglass route as well. I don’t see them attempting the armor though. But what I was getting at, is I feel that they need to be made aware that the demand is there in the first place in order to then consider the financial viability Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Keep in mind, Denuo Novo will only consider it if there are enough people that show interest. They need to make an investment decision, and if the demand is there, then I think they might move forward. So I encourage everyone interested in a more accurate ROTK style helmet to please speak up and let DN know that there is a significant demand for it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ok, so I've been meaning to post about a couple additional mods I've made. I just have struggled with time management lol... which is also a reason my build progress has been so slow. Alignment keys on the Tears and Traps: So the first mod was adding additional alignment keys to the tears and traps. I did this to make it easier to align the parts in the center of the recess, as well as add some additional surface area for adhesion. Also I'd heard from a source that they were used on production helmets and have seen an image of key holes where a back trap was missing. I printed up these test pieces to make sure the mods work. I painted the recesses black so they appear to have a deeper recess. ________________________________________________________________ Teeth: The second mod is on the teeth. I made several attempts at correcting the teeth, specifically trying to get the teeth to intersect into the edges of the chin whereas now they currently just touch. Unfortunately I wasn't able to successfully make it look right. I may continue to fiddle around with it... we'll see. BUT... I did still feel that I could improve the teeth a bit without having to also modify the chin. Therefore it'll work with my current build. So similar to what David Os did to his remixed teeth, I angled the center tooth to lean back a bit further and angled out the flanking teeth slightly. Here is with the original mod on the left and the new mod on the right: And I made some comparison gifs because the difference is pretty subtle.

I have many concerns with the teeth. But unfortunately my biggest concerns are not something that I think I'm going to be able to remedy. Please keep in mind that as much as I would love to be able to modify this helmet to perfection, I just don't have the professional skill nor time to do so. I made the mods I've done in the effort to remedy a few items that I wanted fixed, but the majority of the rest will have to be tackled by someone else... honestly I encourage you all to reach out to Denuo Novo and ask that they consider pursuing the release of the ROTK/Mimban helmet that Anovos prototyped several years back. I've mentioned it in an inquiry email with them and the customer agent said he would pass along my interest. Maybe if enough of us speak up, they will consider doing so. But with all that said, I actually had recently made additional mods to the teeth as well as added alignment keys to the tears and traps, and as I mentioned before I am going to attempt to modify the ear caps, but I'm not sure it that will turn out. I'll add a post about the additional mods here soon.