First P1 (ish) Predator suit project from total beginner

[Blue Scorpion]

Hopefully this is the right place to show off my awsome costume building skills 🤣😆

I got a 3D printer for Christmas last year and have always thought the Predator suit was absolutly awsome piece of kit so I thought I'd have a go.  After a few months of playing with the printer, it's an Elegoo Neptune 2D2  with dual extruders and 220mm x 220mm print bed it was time to start, lets build a Preddy mask!   This is what I came up with, (STL files stolen off the net) ...... 

After spending some time researching various painting techniques and spending £125 on a half decent air compressor and air brush (which to be honest I didnt really need at the moment)  I bought a can of matt black acryllic paint and a tube of silver acryllic paint and bingo,  we get something looking after the sorts!

 

                                

So.

The horns were just dabbed with mixed up shades of acryllic paint till they looked ok, the whole helm was covered with a thin layer of ordinary wood filler from a tub, it dries quickly, goes rock hard, sands down beautifully and is dead cheap, Notice the cracks in the top - these are actually natural - I did this in the height of the heatwave last summer and I just happened to put an extra wet mix of filler on top and left it on the garden bench in full sun on a 35*c day to dry and voila! instant random and realistic cracks with no modelling skills at all lol - well chuffed am I!

Moving on.

The eyes are covered with an Aluminium mesh sheet (sprayed matt black) - the sort used for repairing large holes in car bodywork, roughly cut to cover the eyes with enough spare round the edges to allow you to push it evenly into the eye hole from the inside out giving it a slightly concave effect and giving the (faint) impression of eyeballs.  Once the shape is achieved it needs trimming around the edges and then hot gluing into position. The only thing I might do different here next time is use gloss black paint as the matt tends to rub off easilly. Would that look as good?

Next is the Lasers...

What a *%$"!&^ pain in the ass they were!   After a few attempts I figured out this is the best way to get them right. 1/ get the first laser in the hole and pointing where it needs to be, bear in mind although it is a laser and should fire a straight beam of light, the further away it gets from the source the larger the red dot gets.  2/ get the second laser in the hole and set it up in the correct position but check the distance at which you set it up at, if you set it up at two feet away then when you shine them on a target say 12 - 15 feet away the dots will be 8 inches apart which will look rediculous, they need to be a couple of cm apart at around 12 feet away to look realistic.  3/ Time to fit the last one in, same way as the other two but be aware of something that caught me out, you may have all 3 lasers in the right order at the right distance but make sure they are not crossed!!!  This happened to me and I didn't realise it till it was too late and everything was glued in place.  If they are crossed, when you walk towards the target instaed of the dots staying in a triangle they go all outta wack and two start to merge together till their focal point is reached then they start to go back to normal, this was really really annoying when I noticed it afterwards so mage sure you check while youre installing them they do not cross each other!

 

Eyes!

You gotta have the glowing eyes! I went for the green ones, they come as a rectangular flexible piece of clear plastic with a thin white grid sandwiched through the centre and a single LED at one end, these are really simple to fit, just cut to size and hot glue in place.

Helm Electrics and Electronics...

OMG what's all this! Well after giving the helm the proper lasers and glow in the dark eyes we gotta give them some leccy to get them working.  Extra stuff (like wiring) will probably never look nice/tidy or pretty within a helm as everything needs hot gluing and thats messy but try to keep things as neat, tidy and organised as possible to give your head a nicer wearing experience!  My helm has 5 electrical components.... 1.cables  2, RJ45 connector socket  3. Illuminated eyes,  4, Lasers  5, Gyroscopic sensor.  The RJ45 connector is to allow the helm to be disconnected electrically from the rest of the suit via a CAT5 cable.  The Gyroscopic sensor fits in the centre of the top of the helm and is what will control the Plasma Cannon to match the attitude of the helm, eg you look left the cannon looks left, you look up - the cannon looks up - all clever stuff here lol.   See pic below.

 

 

Dreaded Dreads!

Ok so the next project is the Dreads, the best ones you can get are the Silicone or Latex molded ones - if you have a either a couple of hundred quid spare or the kit to build them yourself, failing this its Backer rod - this is a type of expanded foam building material that comes in long lengths and various diameters is usually grey and circular in cross section and is used to fill gaps around windows and in walls.  How to attach the Dreads? Well I've seen plenty of helms advertised on the net - especially Etsey and to be honest some of them are asking $350 for an item that doesnt even cover the head properly, only has a dozen Dreads hanging from the bottom edge of the helm and no electrics etc and the dreads are ------ dreadful! - sorry bout that.  To make the dreads - cut to length, heat the end gently then roll with your palm on a flat surface (I used kitchen worktop) into a long shallow point then paint black - theres only one paint that will work with any sucsess and that is PLASTIDIP - comes in spray or paint on, not cheap but its the only thing that will stick to backer rod - I know - I tried everything else, boot polish, ink, different paints nothing worked properly.  For decoration of dreads I used 15mm and 22mm copper pipe connectors as they fitted perfectly and I have a plumber mate who got them cheap for me..  I Put these on before I plastidip painting the dreads so they didnt tear up the paint fitting them afterwards. Dreads were fitted in using good old hot glue.

This helm will have a head - well half a head actually, I cant afford one of those lovely full blown latex head masks to stick dreads on so gotta come up with something alternative that looks good.  Once again I turn to Mr MoeSizzlac for the answer, he has a rear of a head piece with all the holes for the dreads which means we can get a full set of dreads - about 30 - 36 I think, to cover the exposed areas like the neck and bottom of the head AND we get a pretty cool piece of head showing out the back of the helm.  Now this is where I got to try out my new airbrush setup! - painting the preddy head, well it didn't turn out too bad, maybe a little dark as you tend to think is that enough and end up putting too much on but hey its my first go i'm allowed to make mistakes!

So........... there you go - one Preddy biohelm with a bit of a head, lots of dreads and some flashy lectrics thrown in.  I had it up n running for Halloween 2022 and answered the door when the bell went, The bummer was - the kids were not phased in the slightest - even the little ones, the upside was some of the parents s**t themselves when the door opened lol so I got there in the end.

BODYSUIT..

I did make a start on a muscle suit - did the clingfilm / duct tape wrap thing and filled it with foam (pieces) and started to make the muscles to stick on it and everything was coming along nicely

....... AND THEN THIS!!! .......

      

Heart attack and tripple heart bypass on the 13th December! 2022

Only just started feeling human again this week and have started working on the Plasma cannon as its light work and 'not too stressful' lol

Right then, so before I go any further I need to give credit to the person who's plans have inspired me to build this suit - meet Moe Sizzlac! (http://www.moesizzlac.com/projects-predator.php) Moe has taken  pepakura files and converted them into 3D printable files then added some extras of his own, a very talented guy indeed so thank you Moe for all your hard work and for posting the files for us all to play with.

The Plasma cannon........ 

Is now printed and is in 5 seperate pieces, they will need to be detailed, painted, glued and screwed together but not before the 'plasma' light and the first servo motor are installed. 

 

Sooo....  The two halves that make each side were weldedtogether with a soldering iron.  I splashed out £1.99 on a little LED torch that when stripped out the light module with its 9 LED's fitted perfectly within the front end of the cannon about an inch in from the front, this was glued on one side only using hot glue, as was the servo motor, on the same side.

A CAT 5 lead was used to wire 3 cables to the servo and two to power the cannon light pulse. Bolts were cut to length and the whole thing was tightened up, all the gaps were filled with brown  wood filler then sanded and finished off with steel wool. 

Painting next... one coat of spray acrylic grey primer, one coat spray aluminium paint then a pretty heavy mid brown wash and a heavy black wash all over - TA-DAAAAA!  

I have to say that having looked at the photos the cannon looks wayyyy better in real life than the photos portray

                       

                       

 

Next is the backpack.... Made up from 8 seperate pieces

         

 

All welded together.....

                               

 

Then a base coat of grey matt acrylic paint followed by steel wheels acrylic paint....

 

Then a spot of weathering - Et Voila! ......

The weathering was achieved by painting over the lovely silver topcoat with black acrylic paint from a tube using a smallish artists brush IN SMALL AREAS AT A TIME concentrating on leaving more paint in the corners and crevaces, DO NOT LET THIS PAINT DRY!!! Using an old bit of clean rag, - I tore up an old white T shirt, gently wipe and dab off most of the paint to get a weathered and dirty effect. Do not put too much black paint on, it's best to be patient and build up in layers if necessary to get the desired effect, use water to thin the paint down if you want, this is called a wash.

                       

 

Cannon electronics....

This is turning out to be a nightmare, I know nothing about these electronics and I'm relying heavily on others who have the necessary knowlege to get me through this minefield.

 

Edited March 6, 2023 by Blue Scorpion
UPDATE.

[MeanGene]

First off, Wow! A great build and a great write up. This is exactly the place for this type of post - well done.

 

The helmet. Great choice of helmet, Wolf is a badass character. The print looks great. 

The underside is neat and tidy. If you need help getting it to sit proper on your head you can add a hard hat inner liner to the area that meets the top of your head.

I wonder if that cat5 wire and connector will poke you in the cheek?

Questions.

The wood filler? Is that meant to fill the print lines ?

great trick getting it to crack in the sun. Very smart.

The lenses? Where did your source them from? Do you have a link.

THanks for posting!

PS. Lasers are a bitch! Same shit happened to me. 👍

[Blue Scorpion]

Thanks for the compliment!

The Helm is held on by a strap I took off the front of my rucksack which is supposed to hold the two main straps together across the front of the chest, wont be using that much now so they were the ideal thing to use especially with the easy release catch and it fitted perfectly across the jowles of the mask.

The cat 5 is still a work in progress, theoretically it will go upwards, flip over and follow the dreads down the back to the backpack where it will integrate with all the other electrics, at the moment the eyes and lasers are just roughly wired at the end of the cat 5 with the battery box / switch assy they respectively came with, the final operational system is yet to be determined.

The wood filler fills everything including the print lines, I tried the two part mix 'Bondo' equiv - P45 body filler- it's such a bitch to sand! as for the longevity of wood filler versus body filler - we'll see!

The cracking was a lucky accident I would never of thought of it otherwise and I doubt I'll ever get it to do the same again lol.

The lenses I'm assuming you mean the eye lights ?...... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/153974072612?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28&var=454065561516