P1 Jungle Hunter Bio

Jparr3085 · July 17

Alright, fellow Hunters... here we go again...

I'm going to do a quick breakdown of how I painted and finished a Hez P1 bio helmet not too long ago. Now, this raw bio helmet I had sitting around for nearly 15 years, and for some reason or another, I kept putting it off. When I started assembling my Predator display wall, I finally decided enough was enough, and it had to be painted.

I first rigged up a quick tri laser from one of the molds I made. I bought some cheap 5mm LED light bulb holder sockets to fit into the tri laser and a bunch of pre-wired LEDs off Amazon in bulk. I already had toggle switches, heat shrink tubing, and 9V battery connectors. This is the basic setup of how I wire most of my lasers for bio helmets, occasionally varying it slightly if I need to run wiring differently for whatever reason.

Now that I had taken care of my tri laser, I knocked out the lenses. I'd post pictures but realized I don't have any photos of the process I go through. Basically, I use window privacy tint rolls and laminate clear plastic sheets to give me a flexible see film that is see-through in one direction (I can see out, but they can't see in) and attach it to the thin metal grating. I then cut it out into whatever shape I need it, for helmet visors, helmet lenses, whatever. So, the next step is to use a dremel and cut into the fiberglass of the bio to remove the eye areas. After that, there's plenty of prep work to smooth the whole thing down.

For this specific bio, the next step was to apply a black primer and a metallic silver base coat. Once those were dry, I sealed both with a sealer for the next part of the process. (Both the primer and silver can be seen in the photo.)

The following steps aren't as photo-documented (I'll have to get better at that for these tutorials), but now it was time to paint. When I paint, I use a lot of different colors to bring my work to life. I've included photos of various lighting to see how different lights pick up the multiple colors in the paint job. For this bio, there are various silvers, gold, burnt orange, various browns, black, and green around the helmet. Most of the work was done with an airbrush, but not all, and most of these colors could also be applied with sponges or brushes if you don't have an airbrush. Now, the reason I sealed the original base coat of silver is because I utilized a technique documented in one of the Stan Winston School of Character Arts videos on adding damage with an empty board to chip down layers in your paint to simulate real damage. I highly recommend checking out the video if you haven't seen it before, as it's full of neat tips and tricks if you've never painted a helmet. There are also some superficial scratches and damage just painted on with a brush. Once it was painted I added the final sealer and installed the lenses and tri laser.