This is my very first scratch built prop. It took me months of on and off work but i am very pleased with how it came out considering i have never built anything like this before. I know there are a lot of dragon priest masks being posted right now, but please take a look, i hope you enjoy seeing the process as much as i have had making it.
The mask started out as an excellent pep file by jtm found here: http://www.therpf.com/f24/jtms-dragon-priest-mask-pepakura-file-138889/
I have a bunch of pics of the pep build up but i fugure if you have seen one you have pretty much seen them all so i wont go through the relatively simple task of gluing together 8 pages of teeny tiny pieces. As a quick note i used the standard 110lb cardstock and CA glue, my fingers were a crusty mess for a week after the initial buildup.
What differs slightly in my process is that i used smooth-on smooth cast 300 for hardening the pepped mask. I decided to try this for a couple of reasons; first i didnt want to use fiberglass resin, the stuff is just way to messy and toxic, and second i have had experience with fiberglass resin before an i know it is very difficult to sand and work with. So i mixed up some smoothon 300 and basically slushed it inside the mask while using an old brush to get the liquid into the corners. if you use this method you have to work fast! once the stuff starts to kick it just turns into a lump of hard plastic so time is of the essence. once i felt comfortable with the pace with which i had to work i mixed up a new batch and painted the front of the mask, you only have like 2 minutes after mixing so go fast. One thing i should mention is that the mask had a tendancy to flare out and look really fat so while i hardedned the mask with smoothon 300 i braced it from the inside with styrene tubes to pull the edges together to form a slimmer profile. when i was done i was pretty dissapointed, there were tons of lumps and thin spots, it just did not cover evenly at all. at this point i almost threw the mask away and gave up but i decided just to see it through. The only thing i dont like about smoothcast 300 is that the cured plastic is glossy, this made it more difficult for me to start the initial sanding, i had to use 80 grit to really rough up the whole thing. the small creases were the most difficult to sand down the accumulated smoothon (SO from here on out). I had to use my dremel with a sanding drum to get in there and clean up the edges, it was a tedious process for sure. Once i was done with the rough sanding i started with the "bondo".
one piece of advice, NEVER EVER use bondo brand filler. The stuff is absolute garbage and extremely difficult to work. Instead i used Evercoat Rage, which is the second lowest grade of evercoat filler but is an absolute DREAM to sand. Dont go for the rage gold or extream grades, they are way more expensive and not that much better for our needs. Evercoat rage spreads like butter and sands like you are brushing away sand yet is extremely hard, also the stuff does not clog sandpaper at all, its a miracle.
You can see that i actually sanded off the forehead ornament, will get to that later, and started to reshape the dome with filler. its pretty lopsided still here but eventually it was worked down nice and even.
After The initial filler and reshaping stage i sanded the whole thing down with 150 grit and started applying bondo SPOT filler to localized areas. as much as i despise regular bondo filler, the spot filler is very nice and does a good job of filling small scratches and imperfections. After the spot filler i sanded the whole thing down with 220 grit and sprayed a first coat of high build filler primer. you can see that it is still pretty rough after the primer.
There were still a lot of areas that had major problems, especially around the eyes so to smooth it out i used plenty of spot filler.
at this point the mask was getting pretty smooth after many coats of filler primer and sanding. i dont remember how high i got but i dont think i went higher than 320 grit. The only part of the pep file i wasnt pleased with was the ornament on the forehead. The pep version was just too round so i printed out the pep ornament as a pattern and freehanded a revised shape that was closer to the in game ornament. The next problem was that i could not think of a way to make the ornament piece so that it would lay nicely onto the contoured forhead. I saw in another DP thread that someone used craft foam which i thought was a genious solution so I got some 1/8" craft foam from michales and traced the new pattern onto the foam. I used 3m indutrial grade double stick tape to adhear the foam to the mask. After spreading some rage onto the foam it was as hard as a rock. the hardest part about this process were the edges of the foam. It was very difficult to cover all the edges in rage and sand to smooth, i kept taking off to much filler then the foam would kind of ball up. In the end it worked out then the mask was sprayed one more time with filler primer.
I though long and hard about how i was going to paint this thing; should i make it gold, or stone, or bronze, the possibilities were endless. I had used a paint product before in school called sophisticated finishes, it comes in many metal varieties but i had previously used the iron paint with the rusting solution with great success. sophisticated finishes is basically acrylic paint with metal particals suspended in the matrix. after being painted a variety of patina solutions could be applied to give the object a real patina. I decided that attempting a bronze finish would really fit this mask perfectly. After some research i found a thread where a guy used sophisticated finishes to paint his highlander sword and it looked amazing, so i decided to give his technique a go, it called for a blacked bronze base coat and a dry brushing of blond bronze to bring out the highlights . I used blackened bronze as the first base layer, the paint goes on really thick and covers beautifully, it actually looked delicious!
At this point i wasnt too impressed, i dont know maybe i was expecting immediate results. But then i sprayed on two bronze patina solutions, the green and the blue (there is actually a tutorial on the michaels website) and the results were..well incredible. After a couple of minutes the whole mask had developed a tremendous patina, it was actually too much though. I didnt take many weathering pics because i was moving so quickly. After the first patina pass i imediately drybrushed on some more blackened bronze to cut the patina back a little and then drybrushed the blond bronze along the edges. I repeated the patina solution and drybrushing a couple more times in much lesser degrees than the first time with he whole painting and weathering process taking about two hours, this is how it came out.
I did the inside too...
The only negative about the patina created with the sophisticated finishes product is that it is very delicate, just touching the mask would remove the patina. This was a real problem. I wanted to be able to handle the mask and maybe even wear it ocationally so i had to find a way to seal it. I read about many different products and the one that seamed like it would work the best was sculpt nouveau's clear guard. Sculpt nouveau make products similar to sofisticated finishes but i think of a higher, more professional quality. If i would have known about them before i started painting i probably would have used scult nouveau instead. I was super afraid to spray down my mask with the clear guard but i didnt really have any choice, i bit the bullet and put on a nice even coat. I almost had a heart attack because once the lacquer hit the patina it just all turned dark brown and all the variation was lost. Luckily after the lacquer dried the patina came back but unfortunately it is not quite as vibrant as before. Im dissapointed but at the same time it needed to be done in order to handle the mask. all in all i think it still looks pretty good.
To finish off the mask i decided to make a head strap so that at some point i could wear the mask or display it on a maniquin. My dad works with leather a lot so i asked him where i could pick up some supplys, luckily for me there is a tandy's leather 20 minutes from my house. I picked up some junk strips of leather that were basically free, brass rivits, a couple of d-rings and an o-ring. I wanted the leather to look very worn so i just destroyed it by baking, microwaving, soaking, sunning, twisting, sanding, and many other ing's. I painted the o and d rings with the same blackened bronze paint then patinaed them and clear coated with lacquer. Then i made some patterns for the leather strips in order to get the right fit and to mark where i should place the rivits.
I cut the leather to length and drilled the holes for the rivits on my new drill press
, probably overboard but better than shelling out a ton of money on a hole punch and rivit setter. lacking the proper equipment i set the leather on the concrete floor of my garage and beat the rivits into place with a hammer.
After that the mask was finally done. I really enjoyed the process and getting my first prop under my belt. I thought this would make a fun beginner project and would allow me to practice a lot of techniques that i have read about here on the rpf. Thanks to all the extreamly telented individulas here that share their process of making, i am inspired everyday when i log onto the forums and see such amazing work.
and final shots:
The mask started out as an excellent pep file by jtm found here: http://www.therpf.com/f24/jtms-dragon-priest-mask-pepakura-file-138889/
I have a bunch of pics of the pep build up but i fugure if you have seen one you have pretty much seen them all so i wont go through the relatively simple task of gluing together 8 pages of teeny tiny pieces. As a quick note i used the standard 110lb cardstock and CA glue, my fingers were a crusty mess for a week after the initial buildup.
What differs slightly in my process is that i used smooth-on smooth cast 300 for hardening the pepped mask. I decided to try this for a couple of reasons; first i didnt want to use fiberglass resin, the stuff is just way to messy and toxic, and second i have had experience with fiberglass resin before an i know it is very difficult to sand and work with. So i mixed up some smoothon 300 and basically slushed it inside the mask while using an old brush to get the liquid into the corners. if you use this method you have to work fast! once the stuff starts to kick it just turns into a lump of hard plastic so time is of the essence. once i felt comfortable with the pace with which i had to work i mixed up a new batch and painted the front of the mask, you only have like 2 minutes after mixing so go fast. One thing i should mention is that the mask had a tendancy to flare out and look really fat so while i hardedned the mask with smoothon 300 i braced it from the inside with styrene tubes to pull the edges together to form a slimmer profile. when i was done i was pretty dissapointed, there were tons of lumps and thin spots, it just did not cover evenly at all. at this point i almost threw the mask away and gave up but i decided just to see it through. The only thing i dont like about smoothcast 300 is that the cured plastic is glossy, this made it more difficult for me to start the initial sanding, i had to use 80 grit to really rough up the whole thing. the small creases were the most difficult to sand down the accumulated smoothon (SO from here on out). I had to use my dremel with a sanding drum to get in there and clean up the edges, it was a tedious process for sure. Once i was done with the rough sanding i started with the "bondo".
one piece of advice, NEVER EVER use bondo brand filler. The stuff is absolute garbage and extremely difficult to work. Instead i used Evercoat Rage, which is the second lowest grade of evercoat filler but is an absolute DREAM to sand. Dont go for the rage gold or extream grades, they are way more expensive and not that much better for our needs. Evercoat rage spreads like butter and sands like you are brushing away sand yet is extremely hard, also the stuff does not clog sandpaper at all, its a miracle.
You can see that i actually sanded off the forehead ornament, will get to that later, and started to reshape the dome with filler. its pretty lopsided still here but eventually it was worked down nice and even.
After The initial filler and reshaping stage i sanded the whole thing down with 150 grit and started applying bondo SPOT filler to localized areas. as much as i despise regular bondo filler, the spot filler is very nice and does a good job of filling small scratches and imperfections. After the spot filler i sanded the whole thing down with 220 grit and sprayed a first coat of high build filler primer. you can see that it is still pretty rough after the primer.
There were still a lot of areas that had major problems, especially around the eyes so to smooth it out i used plenty of spot filler.
at this point the mask was getting pretty smooth after many coats of filler primer and sanding. i dont remember how high i got but i dont think i went higher than 320 grit. The only part of the pep file i wasnt pleased with was the ornament on the forehead. The pep version was just too round so i printed out the pep ornament as a pattern and freehanded a revised shape that was closer to the in game ornament. The next problem was that i could not think of a way to make the ornament piece so that it would lay nicely onto the contoured forhead. I saw in another DP thread that someone used craft foam which i thought was a genious solution so I got some 1/8" craft foam from michales and traced the new pattern onto the foam. I used 3m indutrial grade double stick tape to adhear the foam to the mask. After spreading some rage onto the foam it was as hard as a rock. the hardest part about this process were the edges of the foam. It was very difficult to cover all the edges in rage and sand to smooth, i kept taking off to much filler then the foam would kind of ball up. In the end it worked out then the mask was sprayed one more time with filler primer.
I though long and hard about how i was going to paint this thing; should i make it gold, or stone, or bronze, the possibilities were endless. I had used a paint product before in school called sophisticated finishes, it comes in many metal varieties but i had previously used the iron paint with the rusting solution with great success. sophisticated finishes is basically acrylic paint with metal particals suspended in the matrix. after being painted a variety of patina solutions could be applied to give the object a real patina. I decided that attempting a bronze finish would really fit this mask perfectly. After some research i found a thread where a guy used sophisticated finishes to paint his highlander sword and it looked amazing, so i decided to give his technique a go, it called for a blacked bronze base coat and a dry brushing of blond bronze to bring out the highlights . I used blackened bronze as the first base layer, the paint goes on really thick and covers beautifully, it actually looked delicious!
At this point i wasnt too impressed, i dont know maybe i was expecting immediate results. But then i sprayed on two bronze patina solutions, the green and the blue (there is actually a tutorial on the michaels website) and the results were..well incredible. After a couple of minutes the whole mask had developed a tremendous patina, it was actually too much though. I didnt take many weathering pics because i was moving so quickly. After the first patina pass i imediately drybrushed on some more blackened bronze to cut the patina back a little and then drybrushed the blond bronze along the edges. I repeated the patina solution and drybrushing a couple more times in much lesser degrees than the first time with he whole painting and weathering process taking about two hours, this is how it came out.
I did the inside too...
The only negative about the patina created with the sophisticated finishes product is that it is very delicate, just touching the mask would remove the patina. This was a real problem. I wanted to be able to handle the mask and maybe even wear it ocationally so i had to find a way to seal it. I read about many different products and the one that seamed like it would work the best was sculpt nouveau's clear guard. Sculpt nouveau make products similar to sofisticated finishes but i think of a higher, more professional quality. If i would have known about them before i started painting i probably would have used scult nouveau instead. I was super afraid to spray down my mask with the clear guard but i didnt really have any choice, i bit the bullet and put on a nice even coat. I almost had a heart attack because once the lacquer hit the patina it just all turned dark brown and all the variation was lost. Luckily after the lacquer dried the patina came back but unfortunately it is not quite as vibrant as before. Im dissapointed but at the same time it needed to be done in order to handle the mask. all in all i think it still looks pretty good.
To finish off the mask i decided to make a head strap so that at some point i could wear the mask or display it on a maniquin. My dad works with leather a lot so i asked him where i could pick up some supplys, luckily for me there is a tandy's leather 20 minutes from my house. I picked up some junk strips of leather that were basically free, brass rivits, a couple of d-rings and an o-ring. I wanted the leather to look very worn so i just destroyed it by baking, microwaving, soaking, sunning, twisting, sanding, and many other ing's. I painted the o and d rings with the same blackened bronze paint then patinaed them and clear coated with lacquer. Then i made some patterns for the leather strips in order to get the right fit and to mark where i should place the rivits.
I cut the leather to length and drilled the holes for the rivits on my new drill press
, probably overboard but better than shelling out a ton of money on a hole punch and rivit setter. lacking the proper equipment i set the leather on the concrete floor of my garage and beat the rivits into place with a hammer.After that the mask was finally done. I really enjoyed the process and getting my first prop under my belt. I thought this would make a fun beginner project and would allow me to practice a lot of techniques that i have read about here on the rpf. Thanks to all the extreamly telented individulas here that share their process of making, i am inspired everyday when i log onto the forums and see such amazing work.
and final shots:
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