Here's the facts surrounding the weathering job.
I've handled all the helmets in the archives, as well as the one now owned by propstore (previously owned by S.Sansweet).
I can tell you that the weathering on all the originals still around have a LOT of variance to them.
Some had more intense weathering, some had less, but they were all done in the same manner.
When I weathered the prototype legend, I modeled it directly off the original we used from the archives (which had about a medium level of weathering compared to the others). Some were lighter, some were heavier. The one we modeled the prototype after was about in the middle.
If you don't prefer the styling of the weathering of the prototype, then what that really means is that you don't really prefer the look of the weathering on the original helmets, not that we did a poor job replicating it. It actually is a very close match.

If you closely examine the weathering on the original helmets, they appear to be a bit on the random sloppy side. But that's how they were done for the film.
Paint overspray. But performed in a deliberate random way if that makes sense.
On film they look great and the weathering doesn't really stand out with the rest of the costume and environment. Holding the helmet in your hands the weathering just sort of becomes more 'noticeable'. It's like you are for the first time, truly noticing the details and styling of the original helmets.

But rather than perform an idealized weathering job, we chose to match the weathering as it was done for the originals.
And since we had fantastic in-hand reference of an original helmet, that was the one I used to match the weathering to.

For the efx prototypes, we used the original production molds for everything except for the faceplate, chin cup, and eye lens.
For those pieces, we took molds from the interior of a screen-used helmet.
All these molds were vac-formed and assembled into a 1st gen helmet of the production molds, and then molded from the outside to produce fiberglass pieces.


Here's a shot of a guy wearing the weathered Legend at NYCC this past Oct.
For me seeing it on a person just drives home how important using original molds is regarding the correct look.
Just awesome. Looks straight out of the movie. And in a shot like this, the weathering just looks totally as it should and you don't really notice it standing out.

Now if you just have a preference for 'as first built - clean' props, then that's an entirely different thing.

Like I said, there were helmets weathered more severely and some more lightly, we went with one right down the middle. This is really more about your personal preference for lighter weathering vs how they were done for the film.
Because I can assure you, some of the originals had a a LOT more severe weathering than our prototype.


Actually, we've stated what we used to create our prototypes from the very first announcement. Go to the first post of the announcement thread on RPF or Rebelscum which is where you'll usually find the most info (simply because that's where a large portion of our customers are).
In fact, I've reiterated it on the forums on multiple occasions as well.

To repeat once again:
We used original molds for both back/cap halves, and both halves of the visor. We molded a screen-used helmet from the archives from the inside of the parts for the faceplate, lens, and chin cup. And we also molded the resin snout detail piece.

Nice looking helmet but too expensive for something which isn't excatly like an original (I mean not vacuum formed).

But the final helmet looks great!!