[Archive] Helmet/Mask construction

craigisnutter:

hi guys,

I’ve watched the various Dwarf conversion videos. Very useful and very well explained in great detail.

I’ve just been taking a look at the bitz catalogue and im liking the look of the ‘tactical squad shoulder pads number 2’, basically, they have the arrow pointing up design and im wondering how easy you guys think it would be, to convert a standard BFSP dwarf, to use these shoulder pads as helmets and wether i should mask them up aswell??

would they work with just a beard conversion and this helmet conversion im thinking of??

Sorry if this sounds very untechnical…but i am a noob lol

Khan!:

Well, I think space marine shoulder pads will be far too big on their own to be helmets. You could try trimming them down around the tactical arrow, but it seems like too much work to me. What about cutting out arrow shaped bits of green stuff, letting them dry around a slightly curved surface, and using these cured gs arrows as the basis of your helmets? You could probably make them size-appropriate, and its not too hard to make rectangle/triangle shapes if you aren’t sculpting ON to the miniature itself.

craigisnutter:

cool, thx for the advice.

What about open faces?? would they work with a full beard resculpt? or would it be far too difficult/awkward to convert a standard dwarf face to CD?

GRNDL:

What about open faces?? would they work with a full beard resculpt? or would it be far too difficult/awkward to convert a standard dwarf face to CD?

craigisnutter
I think dwarf models are easy to convert to CD's, especially if they are plastic. You just need to cut off, shave off, grind off any decorations that look too dwarven and plop something more appropriately CDish in its place. The beard is a good place to start, as with relatively little and easy work, you can get a very distinctive CD beard in its place and leave the regular dwarf stuff there. If you are intent on masks, then I would just obliterate what head there is and start over.

Xander has a whole whack of video tutorials on the matter, which you should definitely check out.

craigisnutter:

ye, seen those videos. Veeeery useful.

I’d like to aim for the majority without masks, so i’ll just try beard conversions and go from there i spose.

AGPO:

I’d recomend masks as they are just easier. You can afford to be far more rough when preparing your dwarf models this way and you don’t have to sculpt tusks etc - just cast some masks