How to Make a Crusader Knight Helmet Out of EVA Foam with Free Templates Great for Cosplay Beginners

welcome to the shop steve here at sks props and today i’m going to show you how to build a simple knight helmet using some basic foam fabrication techniques so here’s the prototype helmet that i had done as a proof of concept now the templates for this were originally all freehand drawn onto bristol board that was then transferred to my hd foam those pieces were then cut out and loosely assembled now luckily for you guys i have made all these templates fully available to download so you guys can print them out and assemble this helmet right along with the video now to fabricate our helmet and keep it light yet somewhat rigid i’m going to recommend a roll of six millimeter hd foam for the main structure and a roll of two millimeter hd foam for all the details after you’ve downloaded and printed out your helmet template you can then transfer that directly to the hd foam one thing to note when cutting the material make sure to keep your knife completely straight press all the way down through the material into the self-healing mat and pull in one continuous straight line next transfer the two templates to the six millimeter foam that say night helmet back and night helmet front top always try to be efficient when using your foam here i’m laying out my templates on some scrap to have the least amount of waste possible now it’s time to switch to your thinner sheets take your template that says face detail and transfer that onto two millimeter hd foam and lastly we need one strip of two millimeter foam that is an inch and a quarter by 28 inches all of our templates have been cut out and we can start to assemble our night helmet now to do this i’m going to be using some basic super glue but you of course could use hot glue or contact cement in its place the first thing you’re going to do is grab the two pieces that say knight helmet front face plate and knight helmet back make sure to have a half inch overhang from the front faceplate onto the piece that says back after just a few seconds those pieces have been joined together repeat for the opposite side the next piece that we’re going to assemble is the one that says knight helmet front top now once again you want to curl this either by hand or using a heat gun and also make note of the half inch overlay that’s going to go all the way around the perimeter except for the very top this again is going to be where you’re going to be applying your adhesive now i’m going to move around to the other side to make sure that it all lines up properly the front piece is still detached at this point i would recommend to go in and start in the middle and work your way around now the foam is extremely flexible so don’t be afraid to manipulate it to make sure that you get the glue where it needs to go the top of the helmet is a little difficult to assemble if you notice the back part of it is almost a perfect half circle where the front goes up at an angle my recommendation would be actually to start on one of the sides and then move your way around the back profile of the helmet now if it doesn’t line up precisely that’s okay you can trim off any of this excess with your rotary tool once the top of the helmet has been lined up on either side and across the back you can then start to manipulate the front now while you’re doing this you want to make sure to be squeezing the foam in and attaching it that way it will keep this shape next up we’ve got our pieces that are going to say face detailed two millimeter now i like to line these up and mark them where they’re going to go before i add any of my adhesive and to keep my helmet from rolling around i’m going to put a little weight on the inside now when i have two pieces that are identical i usually like to mark the back of each of them with an x so i’m not placing adhesive on the wrong side because i want my eye details to be spaced out evenly here i’m going to start my glue on this side and move my way across as you can see on the end i already have the corner for where it’s going to end up and for the piece on the bottom just add adhesive to the very end of it and wrap it around on the inside once that’s good to go just repeat for the other side now once i get to this point i am trying to make sure that my eye details are evenly spaced on the left and right side if you don’t get it perfect on the first try it’s no big deal again we want this thing to look as though it’s handmade next up we have our band that’s going to go around the top and that’s going to hide this seam now if you do have spots that are uneven to the back plate go ahead now with your rotary tool and sand these down to make them flush and always remember when using your rotary tool safety first once the transition from the top to the back is nice and smooth we can start banding once you start the banding process just kind of mark where the middle of the back of the helmet is now when you’re placing down your two millimeter foam make sure that you have about a quarter inch overhang because this is actually going to fold over onto the top of the helmet and make it seamless and when you get to the very end leave a little bit of the overhang but trim off the excess now start gluing down the foam overhang around the perimeter of the helmet and don’t worry this two millimeter hd foam stretches pretty well our last template to add is the one that says face detail six millimeter now this is going to cover up all the additional seams on the front of the helmet the important thing to note is that it just needs to line up perfectly in the middle so i like to mark the top and the bottom of the points before i add adhesive after all of our template pieces have been assembled we have our completed helmet almost we have one more foam fabrication detail we’re gonna do to send it over the top and that is to create our rivets now rivets can be made a couple of different ways if you have a leather punch you could easily punch through some two millimeter foam to create the rivets if you don’t have a leather punch you could get a brass tube and sand it down to create your own custom punch or you could always use googly eyes now because of the curve of the helmet i found the easiest way to measure this out was to use a cloth ruler i would lightly mark where the rivets would need to go with a pencil and then using tweezers i would super glue those into place after using a cordless drill on the lower face plate i then went in with a heat tool and cleaned up all the holes now this process does put off some nasty fumes so make sure that you are wearing your respirator and you’re doing this in a well ventilated area last fabrication step on this helmet go ahead and grab your rotary tool with stone bit and clean up all the edges now this is also going to be the perfect time to go ahead and give this guy some battle damage now if you’re doing battle damage really plan it out where the damage would be and why it would be there you want to tell a story with the fabrication of our helmet complete we can now talk about sealing and painting when it comes to sealing my foam you actually do not have to do a heat treatment on there and if you do a heat treatment i would recommend that it be very light me personally i do a light heat treatment on all my props and costumes and i go back with 400 grit sandpaper and i lightly buff the surface this allows the phone to open up a little bit more so if i’m using plasti- dip or flex bond it has something to bite into on this particular helmet i’m actually going to be using flex bond to do my sealing and i’m going to be mixing in some utrecht mars black so it’s going to tint it and give us a good base i’m using a half inch mop brush to apply the flex bond and paint primer directly to the foam surface now the reason i like mop brushes for this application is they have long bristles on them and so it’s able to get the paint and flex bond into all the little details and nooks and crannies that we’d put into the helmet now in most cases this is going to leave brush strokes which i’m usually not a big fan of you can water the paint surface down a little bit just to alleviate those but in this case i’m not too worried about it because after i’m applying the first layer of paint i’m going back with an upholstery sponge and giving it this really cool hammered metal texture after our flex bond and paint mixture has fully cured it is time to prime our piece now for most of the priming that i do on my props and costumes i usually use the krylon ultra flat black primer now this stuff works really well but the big thing to note is you do not want to put it on thick when you’re using any type of paint or primer on a foam prop you want to put it on in a very thin and continuous stream this will prevent the paint from pooling and running after our primer has dried it is time to move on to our base color paint and for this particular prop i’m using the rust-oleum universal series antique pewter now this is a hammered metal paint but we’re not going to put it on thick enough for it to do that chemical reaction again like our primer we’re going to do this thin this is just a base layer we’re going to be hand painting all of our details on top our helmet has been primed and painted with a base coat and honestly it’s looking pretty good if you wanted to you could actually stop right here i’m going to continue to add a few more details though by doing some hand painting and to do that i’m going to be using some utrecht brand heavy body acrylics to start off i’m going to be doing a wash using mars black with a half inch mop brush now the trick to this is to add enough water to really displace the pigment all over the piece you don’t want it too thick because we’re not trying to cover up the silver paint that we have as a base layer if it does start to build up a little too thick on you in certain spots go in with a slightly damp paper towel and just remove the excess paint and most times i usually use a hair dryer to speed up the dry time on this layer on my second pass of the mars black i’m using less water and more pigment i’m also making sure that my filbert brush is fully loaded so that when i place it into the recesses of the helmet i can then feather it out to give the helmet a little bit of an accent color i’m going to be switching over to the golden brand line of acrylic paints for all the face details here i’m going to be painting those using the iridescent bronze fine now for this application i’m not applying the paint too thick i don’t want to completely cover the surface in fact i want some of the silver and some of the mars black that we’ve already applied to show through so i’m selectively placing the paint in specific areas for the highlights on the main portion of the helmet we’re going to use the liquitex heavy body iridescent rich silver and just like all metallics you want to make sure not to use any water with this product and i’m using a half inch mop brush to apply it so we minimize our brush strokes we’re going to apply the paint in a very sporadic way now that i have my bronze base down i’m going to go around each one of the rivets with a little bit more of the mars black just to darken them up before we add our final highlight using iridescent rich silver from liquitex last step in painting the helmet we’re going to take a detailed brush and a little bit of water down mars black and drop that into all the battle damage that we had done earlier in the helmet so you guys can see what it takes to put together a simple night helmet using some basic patterning and foam fabrication techniques now hopefully you guys like this video and learn something from it if you’re interested in more of my tutorials feel free to head on over to sksprops.com because i have tons of build threads on there including almost every costume and prop i’ve ever made also be sure to head on over to blick art materials to pick up all your cosplay supplies because of course they carry my hd phone but they carry a wide array of all kinds of fine art supplies that’d be great for cosplay until next time thanks for stopping by you .