A helmet for Obelix

Obelix needed a helmet and during our cosplay weekend I managed to almost finish it. This was my first time working with foam in a real build way, and that's why it was good doing at the weekend when I could get help and borrow tools, and not the least get encouragement.

The helmet is made in four parts from a pattern from Templatemaker.nl. I got it from one of our group that had used it to make a sphere, and I simply just used half the pattern pieces to make a half sphere. I had to cut out the points of each bit to make it totally flat in the bottom. The helmet is made in 5 mm high density foam, that I heated with a heat gun and then bent slightly. The dark spots above is where I heated it a bit too much. They are glued together with contact cement.

The helmet was still very angular so I borrowed a dremel and filed off the ridges where the pieces were glued together.

I used foam glay as a filler in the seams, and then I sanded them down with a very fine grit sandpaper. The top globe was freehanded in foam clay, and the horn holders were strips of the same foam that I rolled together. Then I decided to go away a bit from being accurate. I added the strip around the bottom of the helmet, and it looked a lot better even if Obelix helmet doesn't have one. I used googly eyes to mimic small bolts. When all the extra piecs were added I used wood glue, thinned with a little bit of water, to seal the foam and prime the helmet. In total I used four layers of glue.

I painted the helmet with spray paint and it is painted with one layer of grey primer, one layer of silvergrey paint, two layers of metallic and a clear top coat. The last thing I did was to add the horns, which are also made from foam clay and glued with contact cement to the helmet.

I want to weather the helmet a bit, not much, but just enough to take away some of the sheen, I also need to come up with a way of actually attaching it to my head, since it falls off when I move my head as it is right now. I'm thinking that I will add some kind of comb to it.