Qui-Gonzalez wrote:
Mac, what I notice with the fan helmets is sometimes there is too much of the "cleaning up" going on, which takes away from whatever original hmm...nuances of the helmet existed. I look at what you did to your DPCA and look at my raw DPCA with a frown now. LOL. You took a helmet that was a stretch away from original and did what I would want to do with mine, but ya can't do it with vinyl.
I can't do it with vinyl either. I absolutely hate vinyl. I think in trying to be too accurate with my mods, I ended up relying on epoxy materials to provide structural support for physically modified areas. Unfortunately, either the epoxy materials don't weld, bond or grip the material, and even if they did, the epoxy materials do not have the same flex as vinyl, so any weld will get compromised.
I will at some point post a picture of an original Don Post Classic Action alongside an original Don Post Deluxe. In their day, they were official products, and it would be most interesting to see what their size differences are. I own both helmets but they are in two different geographical locations, but short of being able to unite them for a photo comp, I'm of the belief that the DPCA is smaller. It's face is narrower. It's teeth are straighter than the DLX, if you can believe that.
With cleaning up, there are reasons why that's done. Partly because some fans expect it, and partly because the vendors of fan-mades have no choice but to do so.
The Vader that you see in various exhibits is an LFL-made ROTJ prop, though not screen-used. For many fans, this is the closest they can get to standing in front of an actual LFL prop. Closeup photos of the ROTJ Reveal mask show an amazing attention to detail. This is not to say the masks are completely devoid of imperfections and subtleties of the original ANH, but they are clean, and their lines and surfaces are very well defined. People who make fan-mades are probably inspired by such photos (you can find them in the Gallery section here on the Den) and work their helmets accordingly.
How much sanding is done on a fan-made depends on the the skill of the vendor in making the helmet and the mold. If you create air bubbles in the moldmaking process and later in the resin+FG process, the result can be pimples and little holes. Now, it's possible to avoid these completely with time, patience and experience. Sometimes vendors sand their castings down, fill holes with compound, etc. before shipping them out.
This is where things get interesting. With each consecutive recasting of the original, you're introducing new quality issues, so the shape and features of the masks and helmet can start to evolve. Modern compounds may not necessarily result in noticeable shrinkage if you recast something, but many fans do not strip the paint of their helmets first before molding off of them, so they are in fact molding off of something fully painted, and all that paint obscures detail. The resultant castings are then sanded a bit but then painted over with a few more layers of paint. Then another fan comes, takes that casting, molds off of it, and pretty soon you get an uber-smooth mask and dome with blurry detail.
On a side note, this is where size comparisons can fall apart. If successive castings each had a few layers of paint to where the paint layers make up for any shrinkage, an
nth generation cast may not have much of a size difference from its progenitor. Worse, if a casting was not fully cured when pulled from its mold, its shape could be widened. I've looked at a GH ANH and compared its silhouette against that of AnsonJames' pictures of the VP. The VP, which IMHO is much, much closer to the original ANH than the GH ANH has a much smaller rear opening which means the material of its sides would have wrapped around Prowse's head a lot better. The GH ANH, which is a very respectable mask, appears larger than the VP.
In other words, if you consider how accurate in size and details the VP is (though slightly cleaned up) the GH ANH is somewhat larger than the screen-used in certain aspects.
Also, some vendors like SPFX have been known to tweak their mold masters based on new observations, trend, or just being true to their artistic nature (of having the nagging need to constantly tweak and improve). Who knows if he still has his, say, 2002 version ANH. Is his current ANH a continuous evolution since that year, or did he dislike what it had become last year, so this year he went back a few year and reworked an older casting to his liking? All interesting questions.