(NOTE: This is not a photo, read below)
"So I started this piece as any typical "Erik Jones" piece. As I started sketching a few girls I quickly got bored and got inspired to create a realist helmet. Something very simple but very powerful visually. The first stage was to simply render out a helmet using Photoshop and taking advantage of the gradient overly. After that I sketched out a pretty detailed skull and overlayed it on top of the helmet. After a few hours of composting both drawing seamlessly I began to texturize the mask. This really give it its form. The textures are a number of textures I've scanned in through out the years and during this time I've gotten a pretty good grasp on understanding how to manipulate these textures to make realistic surfaces (check out my DVD tutorial in ImagineFX issue 71). Another big help was finding 2 really great examples of home-made Rocketeer masks on line. These helped to create realistic weld lines and screw positions and not to mention proper lighting which is key when your creating realistic images." - Erik Jones
