The Art of Building a Helmet from Scratch

I took the concept and pattern I bought this pan to create the design, but I realized it was too sharp with these curves on the land. So, I took the pattern with straight lines with it so that I could compensate for the drop off of the helmet. There was a peak on the helmet mm-hmm.

I realized the only way to get that peak instead of cutting 90 degrees, I cut it at a 45 degree. When you touch the two pieces of 45 foam together, it makes a peak. The inside of the material has a thickness that allows you to booty bumps and forces a peak. These are tricks you'll learn as you keep pulling it and the way I learned is just by doing it, just by playing with it and experimenting.

The rim on the bottom of the helmet now has a nice flare, kind of fun bowl trick. The matter of fact when he got this all done, it had a nice kick off on it, and I realized the helmet was already done so I took a knife and cut a bevel piece of foam if you look, it's just a bevel piece of foam.

I just glued it on and stuck it on it, glued it on to it, and then kind of sanded it. Then came in from the backside with a knife and cut it at an angle to give her the thickness of the foam to give the illusion that kind of bends out but that's actually a separate piece of foam.

The visor face plate is another thing I took his I mean, a piece of paper and it kind of like had an actual really cool illustration they give us designs so I was matching the design. I laid a piece of paper pattern on laid it up and traced it kind of figure out my curves made it traced it on the foam and did the same thing to 45 cut glue together.

What happened was I made it too narrow, so I had to take the pattern make it bigger and do it again. So, when you make something if it messes up don't kill yourself, it's all part of learning that's great material isn't all that expensive exactly and then how about this guy here because you have some, it's a really big piece of foam.

You didn't make this out of that mattress foam that you yes I did. Did yeah what I did was they end up we were I we usually would order thicker foam but we're kind of on a deadline. I just took this foam and sated the rough side on stacked it so I stacked a bunch of foam together, glued it all together.

Then I took it through the bandsaw cut the shape and then took a belt sander you know so I sanded them, and I did them both symmetrical and then went back in with a knife and cut this off of me like jagged and broken. The cool thing with this is I had the pattern I altered did the same thing to the curve.

I also learned that foam allows different thicknesses and craft foam you can get any craft store that's why I end up doing here this is all thin pieces of craft foam that I cut out and add a little detail and the snake, the snake head you see the dragon yeah that's a thin piece of craft foam.

For the lines, I took a little woodburner just burn the lines into it. That's simple did all separate and glued it all together did some wood burning details sealed it and gives you your Battle Damage right then explored slashe into it right then once again the most saving grace coolest thing is Hale to the painters nothing pulls something together like a good paint job if you saw at first you'd be like yeah it looks okay but once you get paint on it Wow I mean look at this, this was once just gray foam. It looks just like this painted sealed coated Wow paint awesome.

The helmet is done, this is the one you had beforehand mhm, this is the one we just built right you put it on let's do it, let's do it all right see we're superheroes rip take your glasses off before we put our helmets on well this is so cool thank you so much to have people gonna find more of your work on your YouTube channel your website has some of these patterns some free patterns and patterns for people can they can buy it as well yeah exactly yeah thank you so much hey, thanks you guys, thanks you and dude tested keep it up it's awesome hey guys we're watching them as well we'll be back in Frank shop with more on this project learn more about that painting and weathering process so look forward to that video but until then Ted Norm, Frank's a little working we'll see you next time yeah you.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody's Norm from Tested and Frankcontestant and we are back in your shopto learn about the process of buildingarmor yeah I had a really great crew onthis ubisoft build and so you need tohighlight some of the things that we didall right you guys made three pieces ofarmor for their game for honor and beshown at e3 but we're actually in theprocess of finishing up right now youhave your crew here which they eachspecialize in different things yeah Igot evil Ted Smith that built all thehelmets I got Doug Stewart over therethat's like one of the best Asia anddyers around for they can clothes lookworn up and lived in and browned up sowe thought that you guys might enjoylowering from these guys how they goabout their process so I'm going to talkto Ted today they'll get a demo and seehow they get made yeahso this is evil Ted Smith Ted great tosee yathank you oh we've seen you working aFrank shop a lot and of course your workyou have a popular YouTube channel whereyou do a lot of fabrication tutorials orgreat to have you on our channel as wellso you work with Frank to do thesehelmets yes this game yeah I'm in factFrank called me up and said Ted I needhelmets and I'd love to do amount offoam and you're the man I said fantasticso I saw the pictures I won't lie I wasa little intimidated at first like wowand then I thought you know what I coulddo is you just I have a generic I have abasis of a planner I did so patterningright that's something we talked aboutbefore last year when Frank did his rankor project he sculpted the maquette andthen been put pattern you think of it asmaking like clothes long same featureexactly that same principle applies tohelmets yes I did it matter of fact Ihave a head for more life cast I coveredit in foil and duct tape made my cutlines and me the registration marks cutit later all flat just like a fabriclike you're reducing with a jacket or ashirt lay it all out made my patternsand then I just kind of cut it translatethat in the foamyou cut the foam and then piece it backtogether you're prototyping in threedimensions yes then laying it out in twodimensions and then putting them backtogether in three dimensions yeahbecause as a kid always thought likeeverything starts off flat how does thatflat thing become something curvedyear-round you have to make darts youhave to make cut lines and so that wasthe secret to it so is that how you wentabout designing one of these helmets didyou sculpt something a prototyper or didyou with your experience freeformdrawing or that pattern a little bitwhat I do is I knew the helmet I justwanted to start with a basic so I startwith a basic pattern I have my helmetpattern I sell on the evil ped websiteyou put that channel I have a patternand what I do is I took the basicpattern and you guys can download it ohvery cool it looks very much like thisand what you do is you piece the patterstogether oh it's a blueprint that's ablueprint for the helmet so what this isbasis this is the top of the head andthis is the side head and being a helmetsymmetrical you only need one so youjust trace one side for the right sideflip it for the left so that's all wehave to do it's and you people aresaying is it that simple and the answeris yes what I'm gonna do is take thispattern and this like you said this iswhat I made from the aluminum foil andduct tape pattern either I transferredit laid it out in unto paper and tracedit and then I just made it onto a paperpattern Ilike to convert my patterns intosomething like hard stock or post yourstock like a pattern like anything elseyou just use it over and over againright right if you're just making thisone helmet we have a print right now onstandard in half and 11 sheets of paperright the pattern is actually biggerthan that so you're just taping thepieces together as long as they're allto scale right exactly cool but if youagain transfer to posts or stock cardstock manila envelope right Dave thatput in a drawer and you can make pleasemultiple times exactly so you have yourpattern see if you don't you have tokeep making it all over again so now I'mgonna do is I'm gonna go in just tracethis right string onto my foam piece hmmnow the thing it's secret the big secrettip when you're tracing stuff and you'renot gonna get the shape of your patternbut you see these little notches I madeon the side yes these are registrationmarks and the reason I put those in isbecause when you go to bend the foam andheat up foam moves and travels so youwant to make sure it goes right back tothe same spot it was an original patternso when I made my pattern I made thesemarksso therefore when I heat it and glue itback together they're gonna line rightback up so they're just ways to identifywhere the pieces touched together it'snot actually you're not cutting theseparts no no and it's not because it'sfoam it's already malleable it's notgonna stick out right god I'm justmaking these so I know that when I go toglue this side the other side I have amark to where it has to line up therewere years when I was young starting offas a fabricator I would make things outof foam and put them together and itwould always be a little twerked orlittle tweak and I was always scratchingmy head and I worked on a commercialwith some professional fabricators andthey made these marks and like alightning bolt went off on my head andwent a course registration registrationmarks and of course they do that in thefabric world as well to know if you aretaking your prototype and before you cutit your pattern lines where are the bestplaces to make those registration markthat's very good I liked it it dependson how the sizes but you look I alwaysdo like about an inch and a half spacingit's something smaller you know you cando like small but yeah you're right justa doodle dis I think it is about a inchand a half to two inches when doing yourspacing because you realize the foam isgoing to bend to the degree so and thecool thing about this too is thatwhat's it doing patterns the cool thingis that you're you have symmetry becausepeople sculpt costumes and sculpthelmets and I'm always impressed withsculptors because those guys can justlook at stuff and organically do thesymmetry with sculpting with but theyall do it by hand high in the hand cheatI just make one side and flip it to makeit all natural yeah so the way if you'redoing with helmet and armorwhatever you do something like a armorpiece or some Iron Man costume whenyou're making it home once you make oneside all you have to do is flip yourpattern boom instant support don't maketwo of the exact same they need to bechiral you need to flip it over and youhaven't reversed that's right it savesyou the headache of like makingsomething because of this buffy abouttheir scope in which I said I admirethem they're phenomenal and I havefriends at sculpt I always like how theydo that because with me I just do oneside and flip it now you're outliningyou're tracing it with a sharpie andyou're cutting along the sharp you cuton the inside of the outside like howclose do you have to be it's thatpattern with the helmet I'll tell youwhat being foam you have a lot offorgiveness if you're doing somethingwith plastics and centraand I'd like even like worbla you can bea little have a little bit of precisionto it but this stuff we're all right forme personally I just like to draw righton the line right on the line right onthe line okay a little more generouswith the cutting cuz you always can cutout and dry and I'm later and the coolthing is once again to when we'recutting our foam I always tell peoplewhen you kind of make sure when you doyour blade the blade stays upright youdon't want to do this or that because itaffects the contact of your foam so whenyou glue two pieces together you won'tget that perfect curve oh you've got tomake sure it's a 90 degree cut I makesure my blade stays straight up I'mlooking at maybe that's a good placetalk about this foam itself this lookslike you're using like a mat like yogamat an exercise mat yes it's actually afloor mat and you can find is it anyretail store these are just inexpensivefloor mats so this is what people put onthe floor for comfortmostly gym mats and what I like aboutthese guys is they're inexpensive youcan get a pack of these guys for like$9.99 and you get like four pieces offoam that's plenty to make a costumedoesn't matter how thick it is thisone's let's say half-inch mm-hmm thehalf-inch is always a good thickness thereason I like half-inch because it holdsits shape once you heat it and shape itit's thick enough it kind of holdstogether okayand as you see once again this is greatI'm just cuttingright on the line all right Ted yes sirpatterns are all pieces all cut outinstead we got we got our top our helmetgot our sides once again asymmetrypurply symmetrical it's only threepieces that's it that's all I need andit's gonna end up looking like this Imean like show right that this isexactly how the centerpiece does thatcenterpiece I should've been togetherand it's just the right side right andthe left side perfectly symmetrical nowthe next thing is most foam used to workwith in the days the l200 was soft andyou just glue together and hold itsshapethis stuff's a little bit denser so whatI like to do is I kind of preheat a curlinto it so I like to warm it up and puta slight curl to it and it kind of pullsit all together because right now whenyou glue it it's just gonna fight itselfso we'll take a thick take some littlefight out put on high heat let me dosome this doesn't have to be a lot justa slight bend to it now are you heatingspecific places the evening distributionof I just try to do an even distributionI'm just gonna do a slight curl of thisguy so I just want to take these takethe edge to it and see how it's nice andsquare flat I wouldn't make that curveI'm gonna make this whole thing kind ofa Domus curvature doesn't matter whichside you're playing more heat to you sobends in this my ride so I'm gonna dothem and heat this whole guy up get themall nice and warm I try to do both sidespeople always ask me what temper do youlike your heat gun at Ted I like it hothow does you can get it the faster itgets and also to the cool thing is toyour ceiling your foam to hit all thepores that are very porous but when youheat seal it it skins up and it alsomakes it easier to paintah so you're doing - you're killing twobirds with one stone now there's atexture on the other side of this foamyou're prefer working with one side asthe exterior side one it's always anoption a lot of people love to do themass effect games yeah people do themass effect armor they love the textureside right I thought it was really kindof cool is that they were able to likeget this really cool detail in armoredsuits without killing themself so youjust bought the floor mat foam lookslike carbon fiber yeah and they wouldjust paint it black and a little drybrush on it and bang look at that andI've done helmets with it the same wayif you just put the carbon fiber butthat's a cool texture you're bending itnow and you have heat in there so as itcools down you can see and now see thisHolly ball that's all you need our nextstep isglue when glowing I always like to dothe sinner top first the top of thehelmet because you know what the becausethe sick and the sides on the lighteasiermythical thing you have scrap pieces offoam I take my glue I want to do is youwant to get down these little nooks andcrannies and the only way to do that isto just chase it with a piece of scrapfoam what's your preferred glue methodand they can glue of material oh Iactually like there's there's drop isgood but I also like barge cement okaynow barge cement it's a kind of kiseopfor leathers and soles of shoes the shoemakers use it to put the soles of shoesand hold on leather and it's an industrystandard way of working the moviebusiness that's why I got turn on thebarge and the cool thing about bargeSmith too is that when it dries and ithears it has a bit of a flexible qualityto it and some of the kind of adhesivelike well wood which is still good it'sa little stiff over time but the bargecement always stays nice and pliablefuses like no other it becomes one pieceright and a matter of fact once youglued the pieces together you're fullmore rep before your glue will once youget this contact and that's the thingabout contact too is that it's in thetitle its contact you apply to surfacesreally thin let them dry semi dry andyou'll push them together and they makewhen they make contact that's when theyadhere which gives you a little moreworking time exactly to get both topfront and back done at the same timeright and you work as fastq so we dothis and then also to a cool thing butthis is a Frank is nice to have me stepwith a squeeze bottle you can do bargeinto the squeeze button these are findthese any like story give the ketchupholders or Michael holders it's the samestuff you can put them in there andholds the contact adhesive easy to workwith you neither use a glue plot or asqueeze bottle they're known for brushesknow who's using excess foam that'sright killing two birds with one stonenow let that dry a little bit now thisis the fun part you see the registrationworks this is where they come in handyyou line them up because see if theyweren't here it's kind of you're likeweren't you know I wouldn't mind I saywhy the glue stuff that kind of gets alittle trickyhow much you're holding and pushing theother no need clamps obviously no you'redoing because if once you make contactyou're good all right line up and as yousee wise I'm doing see how it'shappening it's kind of pulling ittogether it's making the curves andthat's that that's that's the cool thingabout the darson this is how you doyou're basically reproducing what youmade out of your pattern earlier on thefoam tape or little pad I made off theup the head cast I got I've just basicwant to reproduce what I have see thereit is see it's sticking there that'smissing now we got that we let that drycome right hereline up in marks and the people usuallyask me well how do you make clean seamsTed I said the trick thing making cleanseam is that when you put your twopieces together make sure they're flushthat sometimes in your building they geta little off make a little bit of a lipyou can always go back and say in it butyou want to prevent that so I alwayskind of run my thumb on the top is tomake sure I'm flush while I'm doing thisand that's the key it's easy to do itright you know and stick it down you candefinitely say in foam but just makes iteasier to kind of line them at the sametimewhat really matters a lot top part thepart that's exposed haven't run youflush now here's a little trick to Ilike to do well the blue still drying Ijust kick it out and pull it back theother way and what that does that putstension on the seam that is glued sothat's gonna make them nice and tight soin effect while that's doing that let'sgo ahead and start a blind glue to ouredges of the helmet same thing again Iwant to do the that I want to do thedart first and I guess to push them twotogether like this kind of move themaround take my scrap pieceall right its head yeah I got my glueand all the edges here this is the funpart is we really see it come togetheragainI got I liked it I said I'd like to dothe darts first you got this done firstso you start with the front line up yourseam right in the edge you start withyour front also for the centerpiece isthat just because that's gonna be theone that you want perfect right and ifanything this matches then the back isbetter than adding in the front that iscorrectso but the cool thing about that iswe're not gonna have that problembecause registration that is correctgot a registration mark because I againam I you could do it I'm always like ahmy half-inch off what happenedthat's because I did not know aboutthese marks it goes to show you nomatter how long you've been doingsomething you never stop learning andthat's the thing I like to tell peoplelike I I love I got fans and people thatwrite me letters they go hey Ted did youknow I'm like no I did not know thankyou for sharing it's like there's somegreat tips and people I just love thecommunity of sharing and that's what Ilove about this whole thing with youguys I'm tested it's just great you getthis we have to seize great stuff andbehind the scenes of all this one orthings you guys do because know you're apart of it I know and I'm so thrilledbecause I'd like to share and I just Ithink part of the movie magic is the kidgrowing up is when you start to see howthings were made I was like I was hookedlike I have to be a part of this itdoesn't take away the magic no itdoesn't and a matter of fact I think itadds to it because when you find out howthey did something a trick that was sosimple and when you realize wait aminute that's all they did that's agenius then you can eat yourself exactlythat you don't have to be intimidatedwhen people see a cool suit of armorlike I can't do that like yes you cansee look at that there you go now that'sher first out there's tap like it'sgonna pull a little bit because the gluestill little fresh no worries that willdry now now you designed this to bethree pieces for your rider exactly whatpoint do you say a she needs a fourthpiece we should cut that up into sixpieces like what informs that decisionusually could depends on how elaboratethe pieces everybody always says I wantto makes like they'll send me a pictureof a really cool like video gamecharacter and I'll have this kind oflike kinda lit with a beak you know Iknow some spires coming off the helmetyou realize well that's a beak so youhave toI pieces you have a top of the horn butthen you have the helmet there so that'sin there that's other two more piecesand the more elaborate the pieces themore of the more elaborate the helmet ofshape is you have to add more parts tomake because film like your school thingwith foam as it bends fully so far sothat's the thing about doingregistration marks and making lines onyour helmet when you make your patternyou know that the film's the foam isgonna Bend so far but it's only gonnaBend so far just like fabric andclothing when you make a pattern you itcan't you know Bend all the way so youhave to make a you have to make adifferent part so you're deconstructingit in your head right to to D part andwith your experience like you said it'snot just about how many accessorieswhether it's advisor or horns it's alsoabout how much the foam the materialbends your knees exactly the thing isdull so I tell people out there too islike don't be intimidated building stuffbecause it's all all overwhelm in thebeginning but over time you'll get morecomfortable working with it that's why Ikind of I like making these patterns andI have these patterns they sell onlineand the reason they some people get themis that they can understand now this wasonce a flat piece of paper a flat pieceof foam and now it made a round helmetand it's all about darting and patternmaking and it goes to show you thatthere is a way of doing it and once youget this pattern you can realize I couldhey I want to make this longer you justadd paper to that or I want to make aface shield you just add a piece ofpaper cut it transfer it like thatsounds like this I mean we start offtalking about this this is a helmet youmade for that costume and even though ithas the face shield like the essentialpart of it is very similar brought thishelmet so I took the concept this pan Ibought this pattern but I realized it'sthis pattern this cuts in sharp so withthis curves in the land I just took thepattern with straight with it so I couldcompensate for the drop off of thehelmet there was a peak on the helmetmm-hmm I realized the only way to getthat peak instead of cutting 90 degreesI cut it at a 45 degree so when youtouch the two pieces of 45 foam it makesa peak the inside of the materialthickness of it allows you to then bootybumps it made it it forces a peak andthose are tricks you'll learn as youkeep pulling it and the way you and theway I learned is just by doing it justby playing with it and doing itexperiment this rim on the bottom herenow it's kind of fun bowl trickmatter of fact when he got this all doneit had a nice flare on it and it's got akick off on it and I realized the helmetwas already done so I took a knife and acut of a bevel piece of foam if you lookit's just a bevel piece of foam I justglued on and stuck on it glued on to itand then kind of sanded it and then camein from the backside with a knife andcut it at an angle to give her thethickness of the foam to give theillusion that kind of bends out butthat's actually a separate piece of foamand then the visor a face plate samething I took he I mean a piece of paperand it kind of like had an actual reallycool illustration they give us designsso I was matching the design I laid apiece of paper pattern on laid it up andtraced it kind of figure out my curvemade it traced it on the foam and didthe same thing to 45 cut glue togetherand what happened was I made it was toonarrow so I had to take the pattern makeit bigger and do it again so again whenyou make something if it messes up don'tkill yourself it's all part of learningthat's great material isn't all thatexpensive exactly and then how aboutthis guy here because you have some it'sa really big piece of foam you didn'tmake this out of that mattress foam thatyou yes I did did yeah what I did wasthey end up we were I we usually wouldorder thicker foam but we're kind of ona deadline I just took this foam andsated the rough side on stacked it so Istacked a bunch of foam together I gluedit all together and then took it throughthe bandsaw cut the shape and then tooka belt sanderyou know so I sanded them and I did themboth symmetrical and then went back inwith a knife and cut this off of me likejagged and broken and then the coolthing with this is I had the pattern Ialtered did the same thing to the curveand the cool thing with foam is you getdifferent thicknesses of foam and craftfoam you can get any any craft storethat's why I end up doing here this isall thin pieces of craft foam that I cutout and add a little detail and thesnake the snake head you see the dragonyeah that's a thin piece of craft foamand for the lines I took a little woodburner just burn the lines into it andthat's supple did all separate and gluedit all together did some wood burningdetails sealed it and gives you yourBattle Damage right and then exploredslashed into it right and then onceagain the most saving grace' coolestthing as Hales to the painters nothingpulls something together like a goodpaint job if you saw at first you'd belike yeah it looks okay but once you getpaint on itWow I mean look at this this was oncejust gray foam it look just like thispainted sealed coated Wow paint awesomeyeah well the helmet is done this is theone you had beforehand mhmthis is the one we just built right youput it on let's do it let's do italright see we're superheroes rip takeyour glasses off before we put ourhelmets on well this is so cool thankyou so much to have people gonna findmore of your work on your youtubechannel your website has some of thesepatterns some free patterns and patternsfor people can they can buy it as wellyeah exactly yeah thank you so much heythank you guys thank you and dude testedkeep it up it's awesome hey guys we'rewatching them as well we'll be back inFrank shop with more on this projectlearn more about that painting andweathering process so look forward tothat video but until then Tednorm Frank's a little working we'll seeyou next time yeahyou\n"