Hawkman Helmet.

For the last month, I’ve been working on a personal project, a life sized replica of Hawkman’s helmet from D.C. Comics.

It’s one of my first attempts at making something like movie costumes, so hopefully this will be of interest to others.

He’s been displayed in a live action series on the show ‘Smallville’, but I didn’t quite like that version. It seemed too cartoony, despite the irony of that. So, since I’m a sculptor, I though, ‘What the heck, I’ll just make my own!’, which is exactly what I did.

The actual sculpting to molding phase didn’t take that much time, as I made the design very simple. Since the character is supposed to be someone who’s been reincarnated over many generations, and his weapons and armor are supposed to be antique, and equally as old, I wanted to do a mix of comic design, and reference Greek and Roman designs as well. I feel I made a decent attempt at such a mix, but regardless, I’m very happy with the result.

Here’s some photos of the finished sculpt:

     

  

The wings were sculpted separately on sheets of chipboard that were sealed. They only have one side of detail, the other is cast flat, then I etched some very minor feather detail into it.

  

I then made a rather weak silicone mold (it started to fall apart and I’ve since made a second, hopefully strong mold for multiple pulls), and started casting a few. I’ve sanded smooth the areas I didn’t get to the right polish in the clay stages, filled in bubbles and dents with bondo, and started the second mold.

  

Here’s a few shots of one pull where I removed the cheek panels to just see the look of it, and with wings attached as well.

     

I was getting asked by many on how I would go about painting it, so I did a quick paint test with a simple Gold spray paint, and used some coloring/weathering techniques I picked up in college with oil paints and a citrus thinner, and it worked quite well. I may eventually just start to use acrylics for weather as that seems to be the general standard for prop building, though the methods are still quite similar.

  

  

I really am very proud of this piece, and hope to do many, MANY more prop pieces like this, as well as continuing my figurative sculpting techniques as well.