A great method most prop designers use when it comes to weathering is to water down some paint, rub it all over the surface, then wipe it off to prevent any larger pools of paint from sticking. Adds a really natural dirty effect. Bonus points for doing it with multiple shades of brown/black.
@@Patchy_AK drybrushing uses a brush and has no water, usually nothing gets wiped off. It’s used more as either a substitute for an airbrush or on corners of objects. This technique is called a wash, more specifically a blackwash or brownwash. It fills small spaces and in tight corners. Excess paint is removed and the hard to reach areas can’t be touched with a paper towel.
It's the best $300 you could ever spend if you're a DIY'er or artist. Making storm trooper armor used to require vacuum forming which was really expensive and hard to find a place that could do it in most cities.
Just use sandpaper to scrape off the top layer of paint a bit. In the future, hot glue would work well and using toothpicks you can get some nice realistic wear marks
I was just thinking of saying something to this effect, surprisingly enough, some of the best weathering and damaging comes from the work you do after the initial, clean look
I like it the fresher unweathered look makes it seem like maybe this troopers a newbie and hasn’t gone through what everyone else has so theres a sort of character behind it
I’d recommend using a dark wash instead adding extra steps for the weathered look a wash is just watered down paint and brush on where you want. Wipe off with a we rag or a q tip
You can use chipping medium between layers/coats of paint; great for weathering bits. The medium works by causing the coat above it to dry at a different rate so just a wipe and it flakes after top coat is “set”. Great for creating rust effects as well.
a weathering technique to use is mix black acrylic paint with lots of water brush it on the helmet and wipe it off with a kitchen towel and the more you do it the more weathered itll be, its super easy and gives great effects, helmet looks great btw :)
Trick I learned from doing weathering on scale models. Instead of toothpaste. Damp the area you want to weather and pour a salt packet on it. Let it dry, then spray. Once dry, the salt should simply fall off when you rub it to reveal the undercoat
One thing that might lend good 'weathering' is something called 'chipping medium'. It is used for miniatures, under a paint job and then rubbed off with a wet brush. I don't know how well that would work scaled up - or even if it would be economical - but it does lend a really nice effect to minis, and you get more fine control of it.
I might be getting a 3d printer I’m a few months and can’t wait to get started of a helmet but nothing will be the excitement of printing off the templates to an EVA foam Delmer and getting it out and gluing it together Just seeing it assembled in your hands by your own hands from just fist sheets of flooring is amazing
I very much recommend liquid latex for the reverse-paint-chipping effect. It comes off very easily and allows for multiple layers of paint to wear off if you apply in layers.
If you want paint to flake realistically, use hairspray on the base layers areas you want to weather. Once you put on new layers, you can use a wet toothbrush to "dry brush" off the paint and it flakes off nicely. From there, you seal the paint with a finishing spray of choice (matte, gloss, semi gloss). It's like a half layer you wait to dry and it prevents paint from sticking to the top, and protects the bottom area from rubbing away. Something I learned from sketch art, believe it or not.
Petroleum jelly is best to use and can be applied with a small paint brush if you warm the jelly by placing the container in some warm water for a little while. After painting just wipe it off. You can also buy alternative spray nozzles for your cans, they have nozzles for every application.
One trick I learned with cans of spray paint ... most stock nozzles are crap for anything but large flat things (like walls). If you want any kind of control, you need to hit up a graffiti supplier - they have a bunch of nozzle spray shapes to choose from.
Just apply silver highlights to the edges where the weathering is. This will increase it's depth. Also you can use black shoe polish to add a bit of smudge but applying it on then wiping it off, making it look like the storm trooper tried to clean the helmet but smudged it.
Tip from weathering minifigures and project kit cars, use hair spray before you add the color you want to peel away and look weathered, just use a cloth to remove and then use a clear coat to set and keep everything in place
A few methods to achieve weathering effects. The first is create the base layer whatever color you want to show through underneath. Once dry apply the top color and wait until it's close to dry but still tacky. Depending on how much you want showing through start with like 220 grit sandpapper and by hand start careful sanding the tacky later off in the spots you want. You want to use a fairly fine sandpapper as to not damage the base coat and it should gunk up the sandpapper a bit if you did it at the correct time. If you wanted something like rust to have built up ontop of the color you can essentially use a mixture of colors to get the shade of rust you want and using something like a foam brush or newspaper you can dab it into places you want rusted. You want it to be faily thick smudges and this time once its tacky use a lowner grit sandpaper like 80-120 to sand it away it should leave a fairly rough splotchy rusted finish, you can use finer sandpaper on the edges to help blend it. Another way works best if it's printed out of the same base color you want to show through but you could use a Dremel/rotory tool to carefully add knicks and gouges into the helmet. You can also use a soldering iron to create less rough looking gouges. If it's not made of the color you want you can then use a brush for something like miniature painting to fill those gouges in with the desired color. For adding a bit of weathering to the top coat so it doesn't look as clean and new there are two similar methods that both achieve the same effect. Depending on what type of wear you want depends on the color mixture, 90% brown 10% black creates a good dirt effect. You want to heavily dilute these with water if you're using a regular acrylic water based paint to where it's very slightly thicker than water but still extremely low viscosity. Use something like a foam brush to dab the mix you made to the areas you want to add a bit of weathering to. It will dry leaving the topcoat in tact but will leave a dirty haze over it. You can do it multiple times to achieve a darker and more worn look. You can also do this but with just black or the color of the topcoat to essentially create a wash that helps to bring out details in pieces without disturbing the original color.
Super cool, love how you did your wearing and color choice. This was the first"big" project I ever did when I got my first 3D printer. And I referred up not scaling it right. I loved the Helmet so much though that I finished it anyways.
My God your dad must be so proud to have a daughter like you, I hope mine is in the sci-fi stuff when she grows up. I love her either way but would be cool
Looks really nice! Tip: You can use a soldering iron to melt some of that plastic and colour in the damage with a metal colour, making it look like combat damage. You can also weather the helmet some more by adding clue and throwing on sand and used ground coffee. some dark colour can also be applied using sponges. I like to visualise where the damage and wear comes from, can make it more relateable and more natural looking.
Going over the crevices with a watered down dark brown then wiping away the excess would help with weathering. It's a tip I learned from painting Warhammer 40k models, I'd highly recommend checking out some of the painting guides for model painting since it's possible to translate those skills
Vary in a lot of different colors with dry brushing, maybe red and brown for tinges of rust. Don’t forget to think about areas where a troopers hands would wear from putting it on; or even fine scratches. Also one of the best weathering is fine sifted natural clays and strong coffee. Nothing quite gets this old look like doing some washing in coffee. Finally if you play with gloss you can make parts look old by having wear marks more matte and other parts of panels appear shiny and buffed.
I would suggest maybe dry brushing on some of the weathered areas. And maybe the other method where you get watered down paint to paint on it, then dap it with a paper towel. Of course you would be using acrylic if you used that method, and I’m not sure if you’d want to use that kinda paint. Those are just some ideas to make it more weathered. Also this looks sooooo cool!!
If you want it to look more sandy, put some spray paint on a tooth brush and use your finger to fling it on the helmet. Also if you add some paint around the edge of the front glass it would look more dirty
