So I wanted to make a quick note before beginning this write up. This is a very simple build, nothing terribly advanced or different from our usual molding and casting work, so I’m just going to do a very basic overview of the build. Also, I’m writing this entry without the photos available to me on this computer, so I apologize in advance if I’m unable to match up certain photos to the text appropriately.
So Dredd ended up being one of my favorite movies on 2012. It was so straightforward, to-the-point, and it hit all the high notes. Before Dredd, I was never really much of a Judge Dredd fan. I mean, I knew the character, and got some enjoyment out of the previous movies, but I have never called myself a fan by any means. I didn’t dislike the franchise; I just didn’t actively align to it. But I really, really, really like this movie. Within eight or nine hours of seeing the movie, I had located enough reference materials that I could design a 3D model of the helmet. It wasn’t the final 3D model I based this sculpt on, but it was enough to get a good head start on it.
After I made my 3D model, I brought it into Pepakura to unfold it. It was such a simple shape that I could get away with this style build really quickly. Standard procedure here: print, cut, glue, then fiberglass and cover with Bondo for sculpting the surface details. The first step, though, was making sure I had the surface curvature nice and smooth. I wanted it to be one, smooth, continuous surface so I didn’t have to worry about sculpting it all at one time. At this point in the project, I had a few other major builds I needed to complete, so this sat on the back burner for a few months looking like this.
After picking the project back up, I smoothed the initial Bondo work out with some glazing putty, then started working out the raised surface trim. I started by masking out one side in tape, then I made a mirrored copy with some masking tape and clear plastic film I had laying around. The clear plastic film allowed me to draw over my existing tape mask on the one side, then simply flip it over and match it up to the other side. With all my trim masked off, I added a thin layer of Bondo, then sanded that smooth, addressing any minor issues along the edges either with more Bondo or some glazing putty.
Continuing with that same process, I did the raised crest trim, which sits alongside the forehead crest, running down the back of the helmet, and finally blends into the rest of the trim at the bottom. I also cut out the area where the badge sits, because during that time I found reference materials showing that the badge piece is a separate piece from the rest of the helmet. Specifically, the Prop Store of London was auctioning off film-used props from Dredd, and some broken/unused raw castings were up for grabs, and those castings showed a recessed badge socket.
Next, I backed the badge socket with some sintra and sculpted a nice beveled edge all the way around with some Apoxy Sculpt. After smoothing everything out with some glazing putty and hitting it with some primer, the base helmet was basically done, but I still needed to make the badge. It was really just a matter of layering some sintra with a curved outer layer matching the curvature of the former badge area.
After that, everything was ready for molding. I used my typical rubber choice, Rebound 25 by Smooth On, and made a really simple block mold of the badge, and a simple slip mold for the base helmet. I tried something for the mother mold that I had seen done, but never tried before myself, and that was to use pieces of MDF for the seam between the mother mold halves. It worked really well and greatly sped up the mother mold process since I didn’t have to worry about sculpting a clay dam. It’s not really that big of a learning step, but it was fun to try and it was rather easily accomplished.
Anyways, initial castings were produced out of fiberglass resin and layers of fiberglass cloth. I’m really starting to dislike using fiberglass for anything since it’s so smelly and because casting a helmet ends up being an entire afternoon of labor. However, I was worried about the possibility of the helmet flexing too much at the points of the visor, so I wanted that reassurance that fiberglass offers. As it turns out, however, Smooth Cast 300 works perfectly well and flexes just about the same as the fiberglass did (flexing is something you generally want to avoid, but every open, holly item like this is going to have some natural flex to it; the idea is to minimize that flex to prevent cracking). I was actually so pleased with the Smooth Cast 300 casting that I stopped casting helmets and just started the finishing work on that helmet right then and there.
The visor is something I lucked out on. My reference material is, well, contradictory among itself. Certain images make the visor look like it’s a semi-spherical curve (like a motorcycle helmet visor), while other references make the visor look like it’s a flat sheet of plastic flexed into place. I decided for myself that it looked like a semi-spherical curve (mainly because I think it looks better) and purchased a full-face helmet visor from a local motorcycle shop. It ended up being the right choice, at lease for this particular sculpt. After cutting it out to the shape of my template, it fits perfectly into place. What’s neat is that you really can’t tell too easily that it has a semi-spherical curve to it. It looks like a flat sheet of plastic. So I suspect the real ones are like this as well.
Anyways, the finishing work was done with Rust-o-leum spray paints and some bottled acrylic paints. There is actually enough room inside for a hard hat liner to be installed, which is proving to be sort of troublesome. It’s a great concept, since it should technically fit any head. However, positioning it inside the helmet proves difficult since it doesn’t want to work out well on every head. So future helmets (of which I have to build 4 more) will possibly employ other head gear. The trim padding was accomplished by using that foam floor mat that you see all the Halo people using for their armor. It’s split down the center of its depth to narrow it down, and then wrapped in black spandex. Future helmets may also explore other methods for this as well, so I may end up providing an update later on it. However, this one is done and wearable and crazy fun to make funny faces with!
Some of you may remember that our Dalek was wearing a 16 foot long Tom Baker scarf during the masquerade at Dragon*Con 2012. This was specially made by a friend of mine. A few weeks ago she mentioned she was planning to cosplay as Marceline from Adventure Time at an upcoming con and was asking for advice on how to make the axe bass. I figured it would be a fun little project, plus it would let me try a new method of paper mache, so I volunteered to make it for her.
The build started off with a ¼” piece of MDF cut to the profile of the body. Using spray adhesive, ½” insulation foam was glued on to both sides, and then sanded to match the wood. The edges were sanded into a taper using the mouse sander.
The damage on the bass varies between scenes in the show, but there appear to be two distinct notches on the top left corner. These were cut out with the scroll saw and hand sanded.
In the past I have used newspaper with a half-and-half mixture of water and white glue to coat foam. For this project I tried something new and used tissue paper and Mog Pog. The Mog Pog is much less runny then white glue and dries smooth and clearly. The tissue also takes corners much better than the paper. After two coats of tissue (one white, one black so I could see where I overlapped, which is another advantage to this method) I had a nice strong shell on the foam. I will definitely be using this method again and will put up a How2 video for it in the near future.
After the foam was sealed the body was smoothed with several layers of bondo.
The neck and head of the bass were made of three layers of MDF glued together. The neck was sanded down with a curve on the back to mimic a real guitar.
In order to attach the neck to the body, I cut away some of the foam to expose the wood core of the body, then the neck was epoxied to the wood. Similarly, a wood base was epoxied to the bottom of the body where the bottom spike/ strap peg would attach.
The head was then attached to the neck using two wooden dowels and wood glue.
The body was then painted Banner Red, then the edges Maroon with mist of black and silver. The handle in the show appears to be the same color as the edges, but it didn’t look right to me on the prop so I went with a chocolate brown instead.
For the strings I used elastic cord as real strings would look too thin and not match the cartoon aesthetic of the prop. A base was made from MDF for the bottom that each string is knotted and glued to. The other end is then wound in real tuner hardware on the head of the bass. The pickups where cut from thin hardwood, and the circles were made using a hole punch and black vinyl.
Finally, 1” knobs from radio shack were attached using ¼” rods imbedded in the MDF core, and pin stripe was used for the fret markers. The spike on the bottom was made by a co-worker out of 6061 aluminum and serves as a strap mounting point.
Start to finish, this project took 12 nights to complete. I say nights because I was out of town every weekend during this project so the only time I could work on it was after work. I am very pleased with how it came out, especially with the deadline I had, and I am very tempted to make Marshal Lee’s guitar in the near future. I will also note we have several other Adventure Time projects in the works right now, so keep an eye out for those in the near future.
So lots of you have been asking about the Cheese Head: What are the dimensions? How did you make the ears hard? How did you do the mouth? It’s been a long time coming, but here is how it was made!
Wayne’s made several Mau5 heads in the past, but this was my first one. I wanted to try something different in terms of what others out there on the internet have done. I can’t speak for certain, of course, in case there is some Deadmau5 builder out there not posting his photos online, but this seems to be one of the first fan attempts at the Cheese Head, or any of the “hard heads” for that matter. As such, I really had to approach this thing from the ground up. After having built it, I understand where I may do things entirely different on a future attempt to reduce weight or make the process faster, etc., but this blog post will go over how I made this one in particular.
So the first thing I had to do was decide on all my centerlines and cut the mouth out. I poured over my source material, which was mostly sourced from the Deadmau5 facebook page and my own screen captures of the Meowington Hax show in Toronto, which is offered as a feature-length film on iTunes. Some years back, Joel Zimmerman (Deadmau5) uploaded a series of images to his facebook page showing all the measurements and angles of a basic Deadmau5 head. However, that was during his “cloth head” era, and the measurements and angles have all changed since then. It was definitely a good place to start, however, as it gave me a good starting point to start repositioning those elements according to my references of the newer style head. Unfortunately, for those of you seeking exacting measurements and angles, I can only offer a few basic ones to help you along (you’re going to have to do some of the work on your own!). They will be posted at the end of this write up. Anyways, with those new measurements and angles in-hand, I cut out the mouth.
It’s worth noting here that the mouth on the Cheese Head (and all subsequent “hard heads”) does not actually meet at polar opposites like the cloth heads. The corners of the mouth are brought forward about 3/4” to accommodate for the hinged visor mechanism. It’s unclear if the Cheese Head has a hinged visor, but it still follows the same formula as the other hard heads.
I saw a method used by a member of The Replica Prop Forum that really resonated with me, and it involved custom-cut MDF lips instead of the typical foam lips. I liked this idea because this would be a hard-head, and the foam lips would present a problem when working the mouth area with bondo. So I made a template of the inside curvature of the globe with some cardboard (the globe is a 14” diameter light fixture globe, so just do a 14” diameter semi-circle, and shave it down from there until it fits perfectly), and used that to cut out two semi-circles in 3/4” MDF and glued those in with some JB Weld. Then I smoothed out the joints with bondo. I kept the mouth cutout and taped it back in place during most of the construction to help retain some of the globe’s structure, since it gets really floppy when you cut the mouth and neck holes out, and the potential for cracking becomes a huge issue.
Realizing how floppy the globe was, I decided to fiberglass the inside of it to rebuild its strength. The real Deadmau5 heads are likely injection molded plastic or solid fiberglass pieces anyways, and I knew I would be dealing with some surface sculpting later on, so a more rigid globe structure was necessary. I don’t have any photos of that stage, though, but scroll through our previous builds for info on fiberglassing. The only thing to note here is that if you decide to fiberglass the inside of your globes, sand then heck out of the interior with some 60 grit sandpaper. I mean really tear it up inside. The acrylic is so smooth that there is a chance the fiberglass would delaminate from the globe without that texture to help it grip and bond.
Next came the pits in the surface of the globe. There was really no special process involved in placing them other than the good ol’ eyeball method. It was pretty meticulous, though, and this is where good references come in hand. Going back to my screenshots of the Meowington Hax movie, I ended up taking screenshot after screenshot, frame by frame, so I could get good points of reference in relation to the ear lines, the mouth, the eyes, the switch placements, everything I could think of so that I could correctly place these pits. In the end, they may still be “wrong” if placed next to the actual Cheese Head, but it’s really the best way to do it without some kind of advanced 3D reverse engineering system, and…
Next, I cut out the pits entirely, and then filled the holes with huge lumps of clay. On the inside, I shaped the clay to the basic pit shape, and then fiberglassed over the clay (on the inside), creating a solid surface so I could sculpt the pit on the outside with bondo.
Most of the pits were just surface treatments, so I did that all over the globe. However, there is one “pass-through” pit that required a different approach. Stay with me here, as this one gets wiggy. First, I glued a few sheets of foam together. Then I cut it out in the shape of the “negative space” created by that pass-through pit, essentially the open space inside the “tube.” I made sure that it matched the surface curvature of the globe as well so that the walls of the pass-through would meet up with the surface of the globe. I also cut out the corresponding hole on the globe at this point.
Then I coated that piece in some smooth cast resin (which doesn’t eat the foam) and then fiberglassed over that piece. After the fiberglass cured, I trimmed up both openings of the pass-through and then removed the foam with a dremel leaving an oddly-shaped fiberglass tube.
After test fitting it in place, I sealed up the gap with some masking tape, which also held it in place, and then I fiberglassed the tube in place. Back on the outside, I smoothed out the joint with some bondo, and voila!
At this point, the main leg work on the globe was essentially done, so I could turn my attention elsewhere. I began with the ears, which presented a challenge in that they needed to be hardened. I’m still not happy with them, but for the purposes of this build and the convention the head needed to attend, the end result isn’t too bad. Going back to my reference material, I mapped out the correct shape of the ears as well as the locations of all the pits and holes in the ears. The template for these are linked at the bottom of this post.
Most people use insulation foam sheet, so I decided to stick with that. I cut out the shape of the ears and installed threaded rods into them, like most other Deadmau5 builders would do. I’m not happy with this method but for the time I had left to finish the head, it works fine. Nothing special up to this point. After the glue was dry, I took to the ears with a dremel and some sandpaper in order to cut the holes out. By the end, I stopped using the dremel completely and just used sandpaper.
In order to harden the ears, I needed to coat them in something I could sand smooth for a glossy painted finish, so I coated the ears in a layer of undiluted wood glue. A lot of times when working with foam and wood glue, you would dilute it to create a light, protective skin. However, wood glue gets rock hard when it’s cured, so leaving it undiluted allows for a tougher skin. After the wood glue, I coated the ears in several layers Smooth Cast 300 resin, and then sanded them smooth, finishing them up with a teensy bit of spot putty.
I’ll pause here to express my discontent with these ears. As I mentioned earlier, they’re “fine,” but they are pretty heavy. For the cloth heads, the foam isn’t that heavy, but for the hard heads, if you use this method, the wood glue and the resin add a lot of weight. Outside of non-weight related problems, it was actually not too bad wearing it at a convention. But with this style ear, you’re not going to be thrashing around at a rave or head banging behind the decks in this thing. So just fair warning on these ears. If we ever get around to building our larger vacuum forming machine, I’ll be making hollow, vacuum-formed ears that would be SUPER lightweight and likely more accurate to what the real Deadmau5 hard heads like like.
Next came the eyes. Originally I felt like the 110mm ornament globes that everyone uses were too big for this head, so I bought some 100mm ornament globes. They ended up being too small, and when the ears were put in place, the 110mm globes worked out well. So no change there. I noticed in my references that the eyes are held in place with two tiny screws or clips, and they are held to some kind of base plate. In order to accomplish this, I cut out a wood circle and vacuum formed two small plates that were the exact inner dimensions of the 100mm ornament globe. These plates serve as the mounting plate of the ornament globe to the main globe, but they also serve as a platform for the electronics in the eyes (which are essentially just a bunch of LEDs).
The eyes are tricky. I kept saying that after Dragon*Con 2012 I would rework the eyes by making custom vacuum-formed eyes, but that hasn’t happened yet, so I’ll just tell you about what I did. It’s certainly not the best way to do it, since I know for a fact that the globes I used are “wrong” in relation to the source material, but it works fine for convention purposes. I enlisted Wayne’s help here, as electronics are above my head. In basic terms, we wired up a bunch of LEDs so that only one pair of wires was going into the head. The board on which all the LEDs are wired ended up getting secured in place via the screw that holds they eye’s base plate in place.
Making the globes white was the tricky part, and this is the part I’m not terribly happy with. Starting from a clear globe, I ended up just misting white primer over it in as even of a layer as I could get. I think I ended up spraying on two or three layers, being careful not to make the layers too thick. The problem with this is that the real eyes are glossy, and this method makes for a very matte finish. I also believe the eyes on the real one are custom vacuum-formed white ABS, which would generate a warm, even glow, while the paint method generates a dull, uneven glow. Don’t get me wrong, though! These eyes look fantastic in photos! But in person, they are very underwhelming.
(Pictured below is a previous attempt, but it shows the attachment method.)
Next I needed to make the mouth. On a lot of the real hard heads, the mouth is perforated aluminum sheet. Sourcing the right sheet took a little time, but that really wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was getting it into the right shape. To curve flat metal sheet into complex curves, you need a tool called an English Wheel. Through a cinched roller mechanism, the English Wheel basically slowly stretches the metal and smooths it out at the same time, resulting in complex curves. Here’s the problem: I don’t have an English Wheel, nor do I know how to use one. I searched high and low for someone who could do it for me. Here in Huntsville, there is an arts center that has a resident copper artist. I ended up hooking up with her and had her create the curve in the metal for me. I won’t be giving out her contact information, so please don’t bother asking. If you’re following along and have gotten this far, look around locally for metal artists at craft fairs, arts centers, schools/universities, or look for metal working shops or custom automotive body shops. They are definitely out there, but it will take some searching. After this experience, though, an English Wheel is definitely on my to-buy list.
Next came the interior. After reading this paragraph, you’ll likely ask yourself, “Why didn’t he just use a hard hat?” I’m not sure on the actual construction of the real cloth heads, but fan builds generally have a hard hat installed inside. This provides a custom fit with the necessary lift the head requires. You would attach it with some screws at the crown of the head and the screws would be covered up with the cloth. No biggie. But that can’t be the case with the hard heads. I suppose you could glue in or otherwise secure a threaded desk foot or something on the inside, but I personally wouldn’t trust the glue to endure the stresses convention wear or dance wear would put on it, so a different plan had to be made.
I also liked the idea of there being a skull cap. Inside the hard heads, there is a custom-fitted fiberglass skull cap held in by some lightweight metal brackets. Not having the resources to make custom metal brackets, or the time to really delve into more creative methods, I ended up fiberglassing two blocks of wood in that held a trimmed T-ball helmet in place. The trimmed T-ball helmet, with the padding removed was actually a perfect analog for a fiberglass skull cap, and the wood blocks were cut so that they held the skull cap at the right distance from the globe in both Y and Z dimensions. The wood blocks definitely add to the weight, but it’s a fairly easy way of going about it without needing to hide bolts from the outside or worry about making life casts for custom fiberglass skull caps.
After the skull cap was in place (and, in fact, after the head was painted), I needed to install the LEDs. They are simply hooked up to a battery case that is secured to one of the wooden blocks inside with some Velcro. Wire management was accomplished by using little adhesive clips from Home Depot.
After painting it, final assembly was just a matter of gluing in the mouth with some hot glue, attaching the LEDs/baseplates to the globe with a nut and bolt, screwing on the eyes, installing the ears, and then installing the skullcap. Final fitting on the skull cap had to be done with the head fully assembled because I need to feel the weight of the head in relation to the foam inserts I would add.
So here’s a fun little fact. Some months after having completed the Cheese Head, Lance Thackerey (the guy who won the Talenthouse completion to design the next Deadmau5 head for that year, designer of the Cheese Head) found me on DeviantArt. He contacted me to express how impressed he was with my build.
And just because you’ve read to the bottom, here are some free measurements for you! These were made months after building the head (while writing this blog post!), and only taken off the finished piece. None of these were made during construction. I can’t provide any more than this as a lot of the angles and such were made on-the-fly.
