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My idea for the helmet would look like the eagle on the Space Marine Commander eagle back pack in helmet form like the Space Wolfes Wolf helmet. My modeling skills suck, so I'm hoping to find someone to work with me on this. Let me know how much you would charge for this, thanks

Have you looked at those?
http://puppetswar.com/product.php?id_product=102
They are not exacly like the eagles but maybe an alternative.
If not then i hope you'll find someone that can help you.

These might work.

This helmet and this one from Anvil Industry aren't truly "eagle" but they might fit the theme at least.

Thanks for the suggestions guys but I would really like a helmet that looks like the eagle backpack.

How do you want the eagle to be positioned? Do you want the entire helmet to be an eagle head? Some other configuration?

I would like the whole helmet to be a eagle, just like the space wolf helmet is pretty much a whole wolf.

I might just mess around and try to sculpt something up. Couple more questions:

- abstract feathers ( think imperial eagle ) or more natural (elf eagles)?
- any tech showing? (Hoses, comms antenna, etc...)
- could the eagle be basically a whole front of head mask? Getting it to look right if it went all the way to the neck in the back would be rough.

I've got casting supplies on the way, so if I can come up with something you like, I can make quite a few if you want.

The feathers, I was thinking imperial eagle. No tech showing. The eagle would basically be 3/4 of the helmet, with the back portion being a standard space marine helmet or something similar in the back.

Cool, that's kind of what I was thinking.

Here's what I came up with.

Basically, he wants his helmet to look like what I've done for my Shrike "counts as" except possibly without the smaller wings.

JWMarines wrote:
Cool, that's kind of what I was thinking.

Here's what I came up with.

yeah just with a little less of an angle to it


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Breotan wrote:
Basically, he wants his helmet to look like what I've done for my Shrike "counts as" except possibly without the smaller wings.

yeah you got it right! when I was first looking to do this I was gonna chop the eagle heads from the back pack and put them side by side......but then knowing me, I would screw it up and waste a perfectly good backpack.

 Breotan wrote:
Basically, he wants his helmet to look like what I've done for my Shrike "counts as" except possibly without the smaller wings.

Breotan....how did you make the helmet? Did you just use the two eagle pieces from the commander back pack?





Automatically Appended Next Post:

JWMarines wrote:
Cool, that's kind of what I was thinking.

Here's what I came up with.

I was thinking if we can make this happen, a commander version would be great too. That one with some tech like an eye scope would be cool. My chapter is called the storm gryphons, so an eagle helmet would be good for the sergeant and commander. Thanks for even trying this out JWMarines

Oh, my pleasure. I'm working on building a company+ of Doom Eagles, so I'm probably going to put it to use myself... Not sure on what though... Gonna have to grimdark it up a bit.

Anyway, I've got the basic helmet put together right now. I've got the beak the way I want it and just finished sculpting in the eye lenses into place and attached the feather components to the sides. The feather will need some more greenstuff blending and touchups before they are ready to go. Then some more detail work and it should be ready to get the first mold made. From there I might do a few variants and sprue them up in a set of 5. I'll get some pics for you once I have the base model cast.

Cool, cant wait to see them!

Whoops! got tied up with a scratch built Whirlwind and forgot to get some pics of my cast helmet.

I did the first mold and it wasn't the greatest. I need to do some better molds, but I ran out of silicone, so I'll have to restock.

Anyway, as you'll see in the pics, the points of the feathers got a bit lost in the casting, but shouldn't be too tough to fix up... regardless I need a better mold.

On the whole, I dig how it turned out and I'm thinking about using them for assault marines.

Now why cant I find people to do this with tau bits!

That looks great, J-dub! I'd even think about buying some of those if they were being sold online! Great stuff!

 Jimsolo wrote:
That looks great, J-dub! I'd even think about buying some of those if they were being sold online! Great stuff!

Thanks J-Ess!

I feel like some of the details could use sharpening (the ventilation slits in the beak for instance). I may just have to play with it and keep tweaking. If I make a mold of 5 variants, I was thinking 1 with the sergeant-y skull on the forhead, but I'm not sure what other variations might be interesting to people. Anyone got any ideas?

You could overlay one of the eyes with targeting optics. Or add a com headset option. While not all the varients you see on normal helmets would work (like rebreathers) some will.

JWMarines wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
That looks great, J-dub! I'd even think about buying some of those if they were being sold online! Great stuff!

Thanks J-Ess!

I feel like some of the details could use sharpening (the ventilation slits in the beak for instance). I may just have to play with it and keep tweaking. If I make a mold of 5 variants, I was thinking 1 with the sergeant-y skull on the forhead, but I'm not sure what other variations might be interesting to people. Anyone got any ideas?

straighter beak (looking more like a corvus helmet), another helmet, similar, but with cuts into the beak sides opened up showing air filter, another maybe with cables leading to the back, another helmet still with a sharper beak (non-predatory, think slamming and cracking seeds open) a different one with the wings/feathers pinned to a disc somewhere between the eye and ear, different wing shapes, a second layer of feathers. Mayhaps a librarian variant? another helm with a generic two-headed eagle on the forehead... possibly different types of eyes, like for a devastator sargeant?

i think i remember seeing some around where custom wolf-heads had a visor that was lifted up, you could try something similar...

If you are doing a psychic hood bird helm for librarians, do a bird skull helm for chaplains...

Wow this is great! Cant wait to see the variants. Do you have pics of the original sculpt?

 Lysenis wrote:
Now why cant I find people to do this with tau bits!

You should do what I did and make a post with a basic idea that you want and go from there.

I just remembered: if you have the DA kits, the vehicle frames has some parts that can be cut up and transfered to the helmet....

Despite the loss in detail due to casting they look really good. While i'm not fan of the beaky heads and their long nose the execution itself looks promising. If i had to choose between the MK VI beaky heads and yours i'd prefer the later.
The only thing that i don't like are the raised eyeballs. The whole face doesn't look birdlike enough to be suited of eyeballs i think. Either increase the bird features like picking out the beak more or go back to more flat lenses.

Nevelon wrote:You could overlay one of the eyes with targeting optics. Or add a com headset option. While not all the varients you see on normal helmets would work (like rebreathers) some will.

I was thinking about doing a com array attached to the back of the helmet, with the arial coming up between the wings, but offset to one side. Also thinking about doing it on one side, but not sure how much of the wing I can cover without losing the bird effect.

poda_t wrote:

JWMarines wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
That looks great, J-dub! I'd even think about buying some of those if they were being sold online! Great stuff!

Thanks J-Ess!

I feel like some of the details could use sharpening (the ventilation slits in the beak for instance). I may just have to play with it and keep tweaking. If I make a mold of 5 variants, I was thinking 1 with the sergeant-y skull on the forhead, but I'm not sure what other variations might be interesting to people. Anyone got any ideas?

straighter beak (looking more like a corvus helmet), another helmet, similar, but with cuts into the beak sides opened up showing air filter, another maybe with cables leading to the back, another helmet still with a sharper beak (non-predatory, think slamming and cracking seeds open) a different one with the wings/feathers pinned to a disc somewhere between the eye and ear, different wing shapes, a second layer of feathers. Mayhaps a librarian variant? another helm with a generic two-headed eagle on the forehead... possibly different types of eyes, like for a devastator sargeant?

i think i remember seeing some around where custom wolf-heads had a visor that was lifted up, you could try something similar...

I like the idea of cutting away part of the beak sides to show some of the filter detail, and the cables. I don't want to get too close to a corvus helmet... But I've also thought that it might be easier to cast if I separate the wings from the helmet and make them modular, so you'd have standard wings, comms wings, more detailed sergeant/captain wings, etc, so that idea of having them on a 'disc' similar to the marine helmet 'ear' parts could be the right move. With all of the ideas, maybe I just need something like 3 sprues: 1 that's 5 basic helmets, one that's got variants like comms and helmet skull/aquilla, and one that's just accessories. That might be where I could do something like make a modular psychic hood that would basically glue on to the back and have the 3 pieces that wrap around the helmet, a bird skull/chaplain variant, comms array, etc.

Nevelon wrote:If you are doing a psychic hood bird helm for librarians, do a bird skull helm for chaplains...

The raven skull on the back of Shrike's jump pack comes to mind as inspiration, I'm going to have to think about how to do that.

Dax415 wrote:Wow this is great! Cant wait to see the variants. Do you have pics of the original sculpt?

I do! I've been swamped at work/life and haven't had as much time as I want to work on stuff, I've gotten 5 base helmets cast/cleaned/filled, but I need to do a bit more tweaking before I'm ready to figure out how to make a mold for them. The tip of the beak and the tip of the wings give me trouble on the mold. One end or the other tends to not get resin into it properly. I'm ordering more silicone soon, Blick has a sale till the 31st of the month, but I have to get my paycheck in the bank first.

Dax415 wrote:

 Lysenis wrote:
Now why cant I find people to do this with tau bits!

You should do what I did and make a post with a basic idea that you want and go from there.

yep, make a thread with your ideas and someone might take the challenge. I don't have any experience with modeling or painting Tau, sadly.

btldoomhammer wrote:Despite the loss in detail due to casting they look really good. While i'm not fan of the beaky heads and their long nose the execution itself looks promising. If i had to choose between the MK VI beaky heads and yours i'd prefer the later.
The only thing that i don't like are the raised eyeballs. The whole face doesn't look birdlike enough to be suited of eyeballs i think. Either increase the bird features like picking out the beak more or go back to more flat lenses.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm a bit stuck trying to make this look bird enough and marine enough at the same time. You definitely might be right about the eyes. I need to modify one to be just slightly curved lenses and post both variants to see what people are liking most.


In general, I really appreciate all the feedback and ideas! One thing I started thinking about in terms of actually painting these helmets is this: the way it's sculpted, the feathers kind of sprout directly from the helmet, but I'm not sure that will work for painting. When I was thinking about how to paint them for my own Doom Eagles force, I'll have a silver (black for sergeants) helmet and will probably do red for the wings. But the transition from silver to red would be very jarring as there's no real break in the sculpt from hat to feather. So, I'm thinking that I might need to rim the feather pieces out as they come down the side of the helmet, like with almost every wing motif you see in 40k or WFB. What do you guys think? Also, any thoughts about the idea of doing the wings modularly so they are separate from the helmet and glue on?

Making the wings modular would be a good call, maybe the eagle helmet would look good without the wings too. This would give a variant in itself. Glad others chimed in with ideas.

I haven't gotten anywhere on all the options yet, but I wanted to post the original GS sculpt and a shot of a helmet with one flattened lens and one rounded.

Here's the original sculpt:


Here's the flattened lens, I'll strip the wash off of it before it goes forward:


Here's a view of both eyes on one head, Rounded on left, Flat on right:



What do you guys think?



Oh and here's what one of the helmets looks like on an assault marine:


There's one problem that becomes evident very quickly... the wings coming off the helmet run into the jump pack a bit... So, in order to get it to work the jump pack has to sit back a bit from the body, rather than flush with the back plate that it should be against.

I'm going to clean up another one of the castings next and try to cut the wings out to work on the modular fitting next.

JWMarines wrote:
I haven't gotten anywhere on all the options yet, but I wanted to post the original GS sculpt and a shot of a helmet with one flattened lens and one rounded.

Here's the original sculpt:


Here's the flattened lens, I'll strip the wash off of it before it goes forward:


Here's a view of both eyes on one head, Rounded on left, Flat on right:



What do you guys think?



Oh and here's what one of the helmets looks like on an assault marine:


There's one problem that becomes evident very quickly... the wings coming off the helmet run into the jump pack a bit... So, in order to get it to work the jump pack has to sit back a bit from the body, rather than flush with the back plate that it should be against.

I'm going to clean up another one of the castings next and try to cut the wings out to work on the modular fitting next.

Looking really good there mate, I'd love to see a whole squad of them, maybe with Sanguiniary Guard wings and Raptor talons (the old ones, not the crappy new ones) ;D That'd make for one hell of a sweet lookin' squad ^_^

Oh... and a bit of explanation.

That assault marine is a recovery from ebay, it's well beat to heck, but I'm trying to recover the whole squad that looks like that.

Also, the jump pack is one of my custom variants of the Shrike pack customized for Doom Eagles, so the top piece that's integral to my jump packs, wouldn't exist on normal jump packs. I just did a test fit with a regular jump pack and it's a lot more manageable without having to adjust the positioning of the pack much. Some helmet positions might get tricky, but it's much easier with normal jump packs.

Thanks BrotherofBone, I plan on loading out a squad of 10 at minimum.