Rebel Fae’s Cosplay Adventures: The Celty Cosplay ~ Phase 2: Celty’s Helmet – Pt. 1: The Build

Alright guys, if I ever in the future or the not-so-distant future say that a project I’m working on is harder than anything I’ve done…remind me of this helmet. Cause holy cannoli, when I first printed out the pattern and cut out the different pieces so I could trace it on the EVA foam, I did not see how difficult this build was actually going to be. Sure, I had my worries, what if I didn’t measure the pieces right so then it won’t fit my head, or what if I can’t do this project in general but that didn’t stop me.

Now, I say it was difficult because of all the odd things I had to do to make the pieces fit so it would look like Celty’s helmet. Because you see, the initial helmet plans are for someone who wants to build Nova’s helmet—she’s from StarCraft for those who don’t know the character, so since the design is for her helmet you can see how the shape is, well, not the correct shape for Celty.

So, adjustments most definitely had to be made. When I cut out all of the pieces and started putting them together, I had to leave out a few of the back-end pieces and bend the two major parts in the back closer together so instead of creating a shape that looks very much like Zenyatta’s head—Overwatch my friends, I created a shape that actually looked like a motorcycle helmet. When it was all said and done it looked like it was an easy job, but hah looks are deceiving guys.

Yours truly had to go through a crap ton of contact cement—which by the way I actually learned that you could apply contact cement pretty well with just a q-tip if you’re using the jars of contact cement. I learned this after my fingers were effectively glued together from holding the first half of the pieces of the helmet together. My life was made a lot easier for the second half eheh. Not only was that a little fun venture but I had to make sure that the two long pieces on the bottom were longer than required so it would give that motorcycle helmet look. After gluing all of that together and pressing the pieces together for an ungodly amount of time and scrubbing my hands so thoroughly that they couldn’t stick to silly putty I had my helmet. And I’m pleased to say, it does indeed fit.

Now for the fun part.

The operative word is fun folks.

Because it initially was Nova’s helmet it didn’t have a face shield hole as motorcycle helmets do. So, I got to carve one out! In hindsight, this would have been easier if I just built the pieces in a way that there would be a hole but…yea I didn’t think that far. It was my first helmet build after all heh. So, the carving! I’m so glad I got a box cutter out of pure impulse one day because my Exacto knife would not pierce those seams at all. Not even if it was attached to a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot poll—points to whoever gets that head nod quote.

But thankfully because I had my box cutter I was able to cut all around the area I drew out for the face shield with relative ease. Sort of. When it got to some of the rather stubborn contact cement globs I thought my box cutter was going to get stuck but after a few yanks, it cut through!

Then to make it nicer in the long hall I just took my sanding block and 150 grit sandpaper and made that once jagged empty cavern look pretty dang good.

Now we have the last part of building the helmet, the ears! And I must say this was actually probably the easiest part in making this helmet. It was just a simple thing of measuring out two triangles of cardboard and putting them together on the top of the helmet approximately where Celty has her ears on her helmet. I even learned a pretty good trick to glue it down. Contact cement! Who knew it would work on cardboard eh? And to make it more stable and because I wanted to see if I could actually make it work, I covered the ears with Worbla. After making my Leafeon armor I swore off of Worbla, but out of pure curiosity, I decided to try it again. I certainly wasn’t disappointed. It made it (the ears) stronger, and it actually made it easier to prime and paint.