How to Build a Cardboard Robot Helmet

Now this is the best part about using cardboard.

I always have plenty to work with.

[upbeat music]

Hi, my name is Warren King.

I'm a former engineer turned artist.

And I've been making cardboard sculptures

for the last seven years.

Before I designed hospitals and parking structures

and stadiums for several years,

but today I make figurative sculptures.

My work has been shown in museums

and galleries around the world.

I made these sculptures with only cardboard,

glue, and a knife.

Today I'm gonna show you how to make a robot helmet

with tools that you likely already have at home.

First, we're going to make the ring, then the comb,

the side combs, the top of the skull,

the sides of the skull, the front of the helmet,

the jawbone, and then the antenna.

Here's the tools that you'll be using, a hot glue gun,

scissors, a snap off blade, a pencil,

a circular object about four or five inches in diameter,

toilet paper roll and a cutting board.

And of course, you'll need cardboard.

I use a standard shipping box,

which is about two feet by six feet.

As far as working tabletops,

I have a piece of plywood to protect my tabletop

or you can use a regular kitchen cutting board.

Now we're going to start by breaking down our box.

Grab your snap off blade, I use a smaller snap off blade,

you can use the larger wider ones as well.

I would prefer the smaller ones because it allows me

to get a little bit more detailed circular cuts.

So we're gonna break down our box and basically what we want

is three pieces that are larger size so that we can have

the larger parts of the helmet, the tops and the sides

just cut along the creases.

That way you can have large pieces that don't have folds

in the middle of the piece.

So just carefully cut, doesn't have to be very precise.

And that's just a little bit easier to work with.

We're gonna break this down into smaller pieces.

So when we break this down, we wanna make sure that we cut

along the natural seams of the creases of the cardboard.

Just cut it down into smaller pieces.

And we're ready to go.

The cardboard actually has three layers,

a layer of paper, a layer of corrugation,

which is the waving material in the middle,

and then another layer of paper.

So if you look at the cardboard,

there actually is a front and a back.

The front usually has the printing and you'll notice that

the paper is a little higher quality from the back.

And the second thing that we need to be aware of

is the lines of the corrugation.

So if you look carefully at the back, then you can see that

the corrugation peeks through and you can see the lines.

When we bend the cardboard,

we want to bend it according to the lines.

First we're going to make a ring

that goes around the forehead.

And this is a piece that goes on the inside of the helmet

so it won't be seen,

but it helps to hold everything together.

So it just needs to be about an inch and a half

or two inches thick and goes around

the outside of your head like a crown.

The exact dimensions are not important at this point.

So just take the longest piece that we have

and cut a strip.

When you cut a strip, we're going to be bending it

into a curve like so, that was the first tip

about bending cardboard.

Whenever you wanna make a curve,

you wanna make sure

that the lines go in a certain direction,

because to bend it,

basically we fold it along those creases.

So I cut a strip out.

I've curved it a little bit to go around the head,

and I know that it's a little bit too short still.

They still need about six inches or seven inches.

So we'll just cut another strip,

be aware of the lines as usual.

And we'll cut one the same width and it's we're curves

and we'll just splice it to this piece

to give it the correct length.

So with hot glue, what you want to make sure of is that you

only use the amount of glue that you really need.

So for a piece like this, you really only need to have

very tiny bit of glue, just enough to cover a surface,

hold it in place and you have a piece

that's going to be long enough.

Now you can have a friend help you

or you can just do it yourself,

but you want just sort of measure so that the ring fits

around your head, not too tight, you should be able to still

slip a finger between your head and the ring.

Use your scissors and snip off a little bit of extra.

Again you leave a little bit of overlap so you can glue

to remember where that line needs to be just mark it off.

Now I know where to apply the glue.

The glue gun that I'm using here,

it's a professional level glue gun, and what that means is

that it's a higher wattage and the glue that comes out is at

a significantly higher temperature.

This is good because the hotter the glue,

the stronger the bond.

But if you don't have a professional glue gun

and you just use the regular craft type

which is a low wattage cooler glue that's fine too,

it'll work.

Now that we have the basic ring, one thing you'll notice

is that the ring is a little bit floppy.

It doesn't quite hold the shape that we want.

The shape that we want is not a circle,

it's not elongated, but it's sort of like an oval egg shaped

the shape of your head.

So we're gonna use a technique to keep the shape

we'll composite laminator.

They are simply two layers of material

that are bonded together.

It's the same idea that you have

when you have a piece of plywood.

A plywood, as you can see is multiple layers of wood,

but since it's bonded together with a layer of glue,

that it holds a shape.

It's very firm and it has a lot of structural integrity.

We're gonna put a continuous layer of glue across the

one face and glue it to the outside of our ring.

Firmly attach it, make sure all the glue is spread out.

And before the glue cools down and dries,

hold that shape, hold it into place.

Wait the 10 or 15 seconds so it takes to cool down.

And now when you let go,

you find that the shape holds itself.

The next part is we're gonna start building

the top of the helmet.

Starting with this top piece, which we'll call the comb,

grab one of the larger pieces of cardboard and get a piece

that's about

six inches wide by about 14 inches long.

You should notice that the lines of the corrugation

run this direction.

With this piece is gonna look like,

this is going to have a bit of a taper.

It's gonna be about five and a half inches

at the widest part,

tapering down to about three and a half inches at one end.

So we have a piece that's tapered,

it's about 14 inches long,

and it's gonna go across the top of the helmet

like so, but we're not gonna use the flat piece.

It's going to be curved like the top of the head.

So we use our carving techniques again.

So that's all you need at this point.

Don't worry about the exact shape.

Taking our ring,

we're going to glue this piece on, like so.

This is going to be the front of the helmet.

This is the back and the back of the helmet.

I just want to leave maybe an inch, inch and a half

of overhang there, on the front, we wanna make sure that

there's a little bit more overhang because there's

a little bit of like a visor piece that goes to the helmet.

I'm going to eyeball it, make sure that it's centered.

Then I'm gonna glue the back.

Once the back is glued, then I can adjust the curve

and then just figure out how to glue front.

Just hold them in place roughly.

Just make sure it's lined up and centered,

and we wait 10 or 15 seconds.

So we wanna make sure that this curve is angled enough

to allow your head to sit comfortably in there,

figure out how curved you want that piece to be.

So once you have an idea, so we've made a little mark,

we applied a little bit of glue there, just a drop.

Now we glue the front.

Once the glue is cool down, we're just gonna trim this

down a little bit more of a size that we need.

Now, that looks much more even.

Now the next step is to make the sides of this piece that

we're calling the comb.

We cut off a piece of cardboard flat piece that's

about 11 by four .

Now, I wanted to extend down a little bit further

so that I can cover up this area as well.

What I'm gonna do is cut out a little notch here

so that it slips down.

And I'll just make it about an inch and cut it across there.

Just make sure it's relatively tight fit.

And right now looks pretty good.

So that's where I'm gonna glue it.

Now, I'm just covering up that space but you notice all

these extra pieces still sticking out.

Don't worry about that yet, use very little glue.

This is much less glue than you would expect to make

just a few drops every half inch

or so is enough to hold that piece on.

Once it's held on, and the position is correct

and once its strong enough then we trim it away.

Grab your larger scissors and trim away the big chunks.

This is where it's very handy to have two different size

scissors, can I have a longer scissors with a longer blade

and do long very precise straight cuts.

Now when I wanna trim a longer curves where requires

a little bit more precision, that's where I use my other

pair of scissors that has a much shorter blade length.

And then we'll do the same for the other side.

Now the next piece is going to be these horizontal pieces

that we're calling the top of the skull.

You notice that these pieces aren't quite parallel

with the top of the comb right here.

They're slightly angled downward.

So keep that in mind, we're gonna have to adjust for that.

The piece of cardboard that we'll need to make about

four inches by 12 inches and let's curve it up.

Crease in between the lines of the corrugation.

We start to get that nice curve shape.

Notice that if I angle this down the way I want it,

there's a gap at the top.

So in order to close up that gap, that means I need to sort

of trim away these corners, you can see it's a little bit

of a curve, I'm gonna hold it up to my helmet.

So I can see I got pretty lucky with that first cut.

So I'm gonna glue this on and leave about an inch of space

between that top layer and this layer.

And there we have it.

We're gonna hold off on trimming this off

until the other side is done.

Done.

The next part is to do the sides of the skull.

One thing you don't want to notice about this

is the orientation on the sides.

Notice that they're fairly parallel

and they're sticking pretty close to straight down.

So keep that in mind as we build this part.

I'm going to cut off pieces that are going to be

on each side, we've cut off pieces about six by eight.

This is the front and have that facing you at this point.

Put it right in front of you.

Draw lines that go down

that are roughly parallel.

We're going to trim away some of that.

So let's do the other side.

We just wanna make sure that line is fairly parallel

and it's close enough to the sides and it's ready for glue.

Hold it.

So, now we take our larger scissors

if you're using two scissors and trim away the big chunks.

Do the same thing for this side.

I switch to my more precise scissors.

Now we're going to move on to the front of the helmet.

The first step to do that is to trim away

some of this top part of the skull,

we can start to use our pencil

just mark off where we want to cut.

So this visor piece is gonna basically come

to the top part of your brow

at the bridge of the nose.

So you can see where your bridges in the nose

is gonna be based on that ring that you had.

So I wanna bring this visor back

and then sort of have a flare back.

And then where it hits this edge, then this part

is going to curve back a little bit.

Same thing with this side.

And then you grab your scissors and you start

to trim away these extra pieces of cardboard.

Starting to look like a helmet front.

Make sure it's still fitting okay,

and now we're ready to attach the faceplate.

The faceplate is going to be a long piece

18 or 20 inches long

and for this one, the corrugations have to run in this

direction, because we're going to be curving it like this.

We crease all the way down.

So now things are curved.

One thing we wanna do here is you notice

these faceplate here is curved,

but at the middle, there's a very hard sharp angle.

So pick one of the rules

that is right in the middle and just bend it.

And put a sharp angle there.

Excuse me down a little bit.

Now comes a question of how to attach it to the helmet.

So get it all position with both hands,

and then we'll glue one side, once that sides glued,

then we'll worry about the other side.

And let's mark off where that needs to be.

So take a line here, I put a line around the edge,

I put another line like this.

So now I know when I glue it, I line up that x there

and that's exactly where I need it to be.

So once I have that glued in,

then I can worry about the other side.

So all this extra cardboard back here,

I don't really need so I'm going to trim that off.

We add some glue and then I go back, use my guidelines here.

Slide it up just like I had before.

Bottom edge against this line,

this other line for the other orientation and glue it on

I glued one side, I do the same thing with the other side.

We're good.

Now we're going to beef up this visor a little bit.

One thing that I don't like about it quite yet

is that you can see the thickness of the cardboard.

So what I always like to do and I do this in my own work,

is I put a little return on these pieces here to give the

illusion that this has mass that it has thickness.

So find the strip of cardboard, what we need is a little bit

of strip two inches wide and seven inches long.

Something that will be long enough

to cover a little bit of that inside piece there.

So let's curve this up a little bit.

We're gonna take our pencil and just mark off

where that's gonna be and trim that away.

Some glue.

Glue that on.

Now we do the same thing for the other side.

Excellent there.

That gives it that thickness.

And that's basically it.

Now the next step is to make the antennae.

First we're going to build the antennae,

and then the next step,

we're going to attach it to the actual helmet.

Now the first part of the antennae is this circular plate

that goes to the side and then we're gonna

build these things up, stick onto that plate.

For that circular piece, find something that's

roughly the size five inches in diameter.

Take a piece of cardboard and we're gonna use that

to trace out the right shapes.

Make two of them, one for each side.

And we can go ahead and cut that out and cut off the big

chunks, and then use the scissors for the precision stuff.

So this circle is gonna go right on the side here.

And later on we'll make it swivel.

But for now this is just gonna be a base

onto which we attach the antennae.

So for this piece, the antennae,

it's got two wings attached.

And each of these wings is basically a long strip

of cardboard folded onto itself.

I just cut this right down the middle.

One thing I should point out is the corrugations.

Since I'm making a bend in the cardboard the long way,

I want to have the corrugations run this way.

Not this way.

I just make that crease down

that groove of the corrugation.

Fold it down and I have a nice clean joint.

So let's go ahead and two of these.

Put the circle in front of you,

and you can start to eyeball how this is gonna be.

So just line this up as best you can and then use your

pencil and just indicate where you're gonna trim that away.

These pieces I don't want them to overlap like this,

I want them to fit together nicely.

And just cut down that line.

Cut all the pieces together that's the easiest way.

A couple of strokes.

That looks pretty good.

And now let's cut this curve,

and I'm just gonna cut through both pieces of cardboard

at the same time.

We're gonna attach this piece

and that's looking pretty good.

Now let's design the top.

The top I want to have a taper a little bit.

This is the thickest piece and I wanted to taper down

so that it becomes a little bit point here at the end.

So let's just cut it right through.

Let's glue these together.

It's gonna be sandwich like this.

So I'm just gonna glue the shot

with a little bit glue on each side.

Glue it here, put a bit of glue there

and this is how they do this.

Instead of having the antennae be straight back

and forth in a parallel way, I kind of want them

to flare out like this.

When I glue this onto that plate,

I don't wanna glue them flat.

I'm gonna glue them lifted up a little bit,

just a little bit.

To do that, grab a little piece of scrap,

just add a little layer here, maybe two,

so that when you glue this on, it points up a little bit.

So now it's time to glue this on.

I'm gonna do one side at a time.

Put some glue here.

Let's go ahead and glue that.

There's a little bit of glue

and now I'm gonna do the same thing for the other side.

Now that we've made the ears,

now we're gonna attach them to the sides of the hat.

We wanna make it so that it can swivel.

But first you wanna find out approximately

where that is gonna sit and you go back

to your original round template and then just draw a circle

basically where that's gonna sit.

And the way this is gonna work, is it's going to stick onto

the side of the helmet, but it's going to have an axle.

The axle is going to go through a hole,

outside of the hole will have a piece

of cardboard to prevent it from slipping back out.

The toilet paper roll is just the right diameter

for that axle, but it's a little flimsier than I would like.

So we're just gonna beef this up a little bit

before we use it.

Cut a strip that's just maybe an inch in width

and we're just going to use it to line

the inside of that toilet paper roll.

And once its in there and it's glued in

and it gives us a little bit of extra thickness.

For now we can just puncture it and just cut off.

We're gonna be further trimming this

so don't worry about a clean cut there.

Let's go ahead and cut the hole that we need for this,

put it right in the middle of that larger ring

that you drew and draw a ring around the outside

and cut out that hole.

Let's make sure that it fits.

Basically it's gonna stay like that.

So what we're gonna do is on the backside of this.

We're gonna glue a slightly wider piece of cardboard

a circle piece so it doesn't slip back out.

Like to round it off just a little bit just so it doesn't

snag on anything as it spins.

But we're just gonna glue this on as an axle

and glue that down.

So let's test it out.

Going from the back.

We push this through and it sits.

So use your pencil and just mark off the very lowest edge

of that circle.

Take your precise scissors

and just trim down as closest to that line as possible.

So just a little bit of that ring is left.

We put some glue on not too much and make sure

that glue doesn't flow to the outside of that circle.

If the glue flows the outside of that circle,

then it's gonna be glued on to the side of the helmet

and you won't be able to spin it.

Center that up.

You wanna make sure you hold it on there

long enough for it to fully cool down.

You don't want it to pull apart too early

cause this actually needs to be a fairly strong bond.

Looks like it's strong enough.

So now you have that spinning action, posable ears.

Now we do the same thing for the other side.

Good.

We have learned how to curve the cardboard,

how to attach different pieces of cardboard together

swiveling joints,

and we've learned how to give the illusion

of mass with the figures that you've built.

The cardboard that I use is this pale blue material

that is actually archival.

Since I want my artwork

to last for years and years, that's the material that I use.

Some of the details that I added, we have a mohawk here,

which is just a bent piece of cardboard stuck to the top.

I added some more interesting details to the antennae,

and these are just flat strips of cardboard

with a few things that are sticking up.

And I added the chin guard,

that gives it a little bit of a change in shape.

And I just filled in some of these holes here

with additional strips of cardboard.

But all that stuff is simple stuff using the skills

that we went over today and you can decide what to do

with those on your own.

I'm Warren King.

Thanks for joining me and good luck

making your own cardboard creations.