Medieval Fantasy Helmet Crafted From Paper

Hey there! I’m Arush, a B.Tech. mechanical engineering student, and I’ve always been fascinated by the medieval era. I love playing medieval fantasy games like the Elder Scrolls series, A Plague Tale, the Dark Souls series, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, just to name a few. I also enjoy watching shows about medieval history and movies set in that period, and I especially love videos about forging armor and weapons—Forged in Fire being a favorite.

It’s safe to say I’m hooked on anything with a medieval style. That’s why I decided to make my own medieval fantasy armor set, starting with the real centerpiece—the helmet.

So, join me on my journey as I build a medieval fantasy helmet from nothing more than paper, resin, and a bit of determination.

Before we get started, here’s the gear I gathered for this build.

1. 300 GSM Matte Paper - Thick enough to hold its shape but still easy to fold.
2. Metallic Spray Paint - For the base coat to give it a forged-metal look.
3. Black Acrylic Paint - For details, weathering, and a worn-in finish.
4. Resin - To harden the paper and make it long-lasting.
5. Glue - Any strong paper glue will work; I used Fevicol.
6. X-Acto Knife - For clean, precise cuts, especially on tricky curves.
7. Scissors - For quicker cuts on simpler parts.
8. Metal Scale/Ruler - To keep folds and cuts perfectly straight.
9. Cutting Mat - Protects your table and keeps your blades sharp.
10. Safety Gloves - Because even small crafting battles can leave scars.

Before touching paper or opening any software, I started by gathering reference images to guide the design. Since I wanted a medieval fantasy look, I searched for armor styles from both historical sources and fictional works.

I used Pinterest to collect ideas and came across a Sauron helmet design by Arif Sethi. I’ve never seen The Lord of the Rings, but I really liked the base shape and structure. I also found a character illustration by HaDong Song, whose unique eye design stood out to me, so I decided to work that feature into my own helmet.

To make sure the proportions felt right, I took front and side photos of myself. I printed these out and sketched directly over them, combining the elements I liked into one cohesive design. The goal here wasn’t to copy a single helmet exactly, but to blend different inspirations into something original.

Once I had a rough sketch of my final design, it was time to bring it into 3D and start modeling.

Now that I have the design of the helmet, it’s time to make the 3D model. I chose Blender because it’s easy to use and perfect for making low-poly models.

First, I imported my reference images, then resized them. I added a cube, applied a subdivision surface modifier to turn it into a sphere, deleted the left side, and applied a mirror modifier. After that, I began extruding faces—using proportional editing and other tools—to sculpt the helmet’s shape. I also simplified some of the smaller details and scales so that they would be easier to recreate with paper later.

It’s important to take your time in the modeling step, because bad topology, extra faces, or very small parts could become a nightmare when converting it into a printable template. After completing the model, I modeled a ring about the circumference of the helmet. Using this, I could check the fitting of the final helmet.

Before importing the model into Pepakura, I divided it into smaller parts, making it easier for me to view every detail while editing the template. This also made it simpler to organize the parts. I exported this version of the model as an STL file, and that’s it for the modeling section.

Now it’s time for the second most time-consuming part of this project, so it’s time to grab a cup of coffee, put on a Spotify playlist, and get to editing. First, I imported the helmet model, set the orientation, entered the dimensions, and pressed “unfold.” Pepakura generated a template of the helmet, but the template it creates by default isn’t organized some parts are too big and complex, while others are too small to handle. So, I had to individually split or combine the pieces to make them easier to cut and glue later.

After organizing every part into sections, I ended up with 12 pages and 144 pieces. Finally, I exported the template as a PDF.

If you take a look at this section of the helmet in Pepakura’s 3D view, you’ll notice that half of it is gray and half is white. The white section is facing out, while the gray section is facing in.

This happens because Blender incorrectly calculated the normals. If you don’t know what that means—it’s basically the orientation of a surface (whether it’s facing outward or inward).

It’s not really Blender’s fault—this was on me. I was supposed to check the face orientations, but I didn’t know that at the time. Because of this, some pieces ended up with the wrong fold lines.

To fix it, I reversed the fold types for valley folds and mountain folds. I then exported two PDFs and replaced the parts with incorrect fold lines using www.photopea.com. Now the problem is fixed.

This whole problem could have been avoided if I had checked the orientation of the faces from the start. But now I know. And like someone once said:

"You learn from your mistakes."

— Someone —

I began by printing only the ring piece at 100% scale to check the fit. It turned out that 104% scale worked perfectly, so I printed the rest of the pages at 105% scale for a bit of wiggle room.

After printing, I moved on to marking and labeling the pieces. I assigned each piece a part number and grouped them according to their section of the model. This organization made it much easier to locate pieces during assembly.

Since I had divided the helmet into separate sections earlier, some edges were missing flaps. So, I marked the edges that would need flaps added later.

It's time for the single most time-consuming part of the whole project was cutting all 144 pieces and then scoring every fold line. Yep, all of them. I stuck with scissors for almost everything since they gave me way more control for precise cuts. After cutting, I grouped the pieces by page and clipped them together so I wouldn’t end up with mixed pieces.

Now, the paper I used is pretty heavy—300 gsm—which looks great in the end but makes clean folds nearly impossible. To fix that, I had to score every fold line using an X-Acto knife. The trick is to press just enough so the blade doesn’t cut all the way through but still lets the paper bend crisply.

One more problem with thick paper, glued seams stick out like sore thumbs. To counteract this, I removed a thin layer of the paper from the flaps to make them thinner this makes the seams hard to notice . Now all the pieces are ready to be glued together.

Before I started gluing, I opened Pepakura’s 3D view and the template PDF on my PC so I could quickly check exactly where it was supposed to go.

Now, the tricky part with this step is that while I have hours of footage of me gluing, there’s honestly not a lot to say about it. Gluing is pretty repetitive — you just figure out which piece connects to which, add glue, and repeat over and over until the shape starts coming together.

So that’s exactly what I did: glue, match, repeat. Slowly but surely, the helmet started taking form.

The base structure of the helmet is ready. Now we have to make it stronger. To do that, I used 2-part epoxy resin, but before applying resin, I had to support some sections of the helmet so they retain their shape. To do that, I used super glue. Just make sure to use super glue in a well-ventilated area, or it its fumes can harm your eyes or lungs.

I mixed the resin and hardener in a ratio of 2:1 and then applied it on the helmet using a foam brush. It is important to keep the coat consistent to maintain the shape of the helmet. I let the first coat dry and applied a second coat of resin.

Then I sanded the helmet to give it an even surface and prep it for painting.

This is the part that makes or breaks this project. My plan was to make the helmet look like it is made of old steel, like it was found in a dungeon. To achieve this look, I had to apply multiple layers of paint, starting with a base coat of metallic oil paint. This layer works as a simple base color and also will make the above layers look shiny. After letting it dry, I applied a second coat to cover up any spots left.

To achieve the old look, I used a unique painting method. First, I coated a section with watered-down black acrylic color. After it had partially dried, I used a dry sponge to remove the wet paint and repeated this process again and again. This gave the helmet a weathered look, but now the silver is barely visible, and the helmet just looks black. To fix that, I took a piece of dry cloth and rubbed it on the edges of the helmet. This removes some of the black paint, revealing the silver color underneath. This can also be observed in some ancient helmets since if a helmet has sharp edges like mine, it tends to get damaged and scratched on the edges easily.

And my Medieval Fantasy Helmet is now complete.

Even though making this helmet was a long journey, I think it was all worth it. The helmet turned out looking so cool. I learned some new painting, modeling, and designing techniques, but as I said in the beginning, this is only the beginning, and I can't wait to make my complete armor set.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read through my project. I really appreciate it

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