Paul Lukas Anoints a Gumball Helmet King

[chakfu]

I used to paint the facemasks the appropriate color.

And I stuck the Cardinals helmet on a little figurine of Ziggy. I liked those things but only had a few...

[andrewharrington]

I bet ordering a custom punch-cutter of the crescent shape would be worth its weight in gold (roughly 14 oz.) when you consider the time and money that must be spent cutting out the decals with an x-acto knife. Being a perfectionist, I would also end up doing many of them over again due to imperfections in the cutting.

[B-Rich]

Man, seeing this article really hit home. Why? Here is one of the bookshelves in my workplace office:

Here's the shelf right above that one:

That's right, 12 teams each of the old WFL and USFL.

Unlike the gentleman from Austin, I didn't insist on the traditional "crescent" shape for the logos, instead cutting them more closely with an X-acto blade. That way, the helmets looked more like the original (in terms of logo size AND, in the case of the Bulls, Breakers, and Michigan Panthers, wraparound or wrap-up logos). Cutting the logos closer also eliminated the need to match the background helmet color ( which can be a pain). After finding the logos on the net, I also usually wound up re-tracing the logos in a vector-format draw program before printing on decals and applying. Finally, I didn't get to the level of painting the shells or facemasks. Thus, for the Michigan Panthers "champagne" helmet, I wound up using the Buccaneers "pewter" shell which in this case looks more bronze than pewter-- it has a definite gold/brown hue to it.

I noted the collector and I are the same age (43). I also noted in looking at the links to his other sheets, he developed a page with Justice League Helmet concepts. Sweet. Being a comic book/super-hero fan, I can relate to that as well.

What weird geek kinships the internet allows us to find...