seagoal Posted December 22, 2021 Share Posted December 22, 2021 (edited) Well the saga of my new Sportmask being painted is not over yet, but it is almost over. I'm happy to say that Jason has it in his shop and my balance is due January 9 so it should be on its way back to me sometime in the first week of the new year. I've been wanting to start this thread for such a long time now but I had to keep waiting, and waiting, and waiting.....I figured now is a good time to lay this all out. Here's the story: -previous experience with Jason Livery (Head Strong Grafx) down in Gulfport, MS was excellent. He painted a Sportmask for me to match my former team called Ice Dragons and working with him was a really great experience. He is communicative, responsive, and interactive during the whole process and was great about sharing teasers once he started. The end result blew me away and I was completely satisfied with the money spent on that paint job. -I eventually left that team when invited to join a new team with a lot of my friends in a higher division in our league where I should be playing. It was a no-brainer to join this team. This team is called Skeletons, colors: red, black, and white. Ended up getting new V9 gear for this team for my birthday as a gift from my awesome partner, so now I am on a red, black, and white team with red, black, and white V9 gear and an icy blue, navy blue helmet. Oops. Not a huge deal and I really didn't care that much, but it was kind of a "one of these things is not like the other" eye sore. -one of my teammates happens to be a commercial graphics guy who is a very skilled airbrush artist and he offered me a paint job on a new helmet if I buy one and of course I took him up on the offer. I came up with a design that I wanted, got him a new Sportmask, and the wait was on. -long story short, this plan did not work out. After timing delays and him being busy and eventually selling his shop, he was no longer able to paint my helmet, even though he had already sanded and primed it. Ugh. -he happens to know a very prominent, talented air brush artist who paints goalie helmets and he agreed to hook me up with him to finish the job. This new plan also did not work out so I was then on my own to get this finished and that's when I decided to contact Jason and hire him to paint my helmet. As always, communicating with Jason was great and he happened to have a slot open in early January, so I hired him, paid my deposit, and sent him my Sportmask. So now the final stage is set. I purchased the helmet and gave it to my teammate in July 2021 and I will finally get it back painted in January 2022. THE DESIGN Furry Red Monster Wears a Mask of Bone, inspired by and a tribute to Pekka Rinne Rinne has been one of my favorite goalies for a large part of my life and his masks by DaveArt have consistently been among my favorites. I'm not the biggest fan of DaveArt masks generally but I think the ones he has done for Rinne over the years are amazing and I've love almost all of them, this one being my #1. If there was ever an actual NHL helmet I wanted to own or a replica rip-off, this was it So with joining this new team and having the opportunity to get a new helmet painted in the same year as Pekka Rinne's retirement, the writing was on the wall that I needed to get a Rinne-tribute on my new helmet. I printed some Sportmask templates and starting sketching out some designs for mask-on-mask concepts to match my new team, Skeletons. The bone theme was a no-brainer so like Rinne's design, the mask on my mask would be made of bone. I looked up some bone masks online and found these which helped me visualize the idea On Rinne's mask you can see the tusks coming out on the chin, which is meant to be a sabre-toothed tiger to match the Predators logo. I didn't want the creature to be a sabre-toothed tiger and I didn't want tusks, so I just sorta imagined the creature to be a wolf-like, furry red muppet. It is a cartoony looking design and I think it fairly comical and silly in how it is illustrated, so having it be a muppet-like creature was perfect. I'm not a very skilled illustrator or artist, but I can sketch well enough to tell a story to a real artist in the spirit of instructions for my vision, so here is what I came up with. There are a lot of little details missing and it is not illustrated very well, but the story and basic concept is clear and I was pretty happy with what I came up with. My number 20 on the chin, my family initials on the back, and the words Stay Present, Stay Calm have been on both of my previous painted helmets so this one will be no different. Once I got this to Jason, he was pretty confident about it and I was reminded that he had done a Rinne-style helmet back in 2017, which was this one The creature on this one is not furry, but if mine gets returned to me and it is even vaguely a close cousin of this one in overall concept and illustration then I am going to be a giddy, happy customer and new helmet owner. I told Jason to take all the liberties he wanted with the little details and illustrations within the design, so there will be a lot of little surprises for me to discover once I see mine come to life. So that's the story of my new helmet, as story which is thankfully almost over. I can not wait to have this in my hands once again with this new paint job. I will update this thread with any teasers and of course with final pics once I have it back. Edited December 22, 2021 by seagoal 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted December 22, 2021 Author Share Posted December 22, 2021 (edited) Jason is all done with my helmet and he absolutely crushed it. It looks so damn good. A couple of my favorite details are the 20 etched into the bone rather than painted and the drool around the pink tongue. Here are pre-assembly pics. The cage is still chrome and the straps I have for it are black and the clips are red. I'll post assemble pics when I get them. Edited January 8, 2022 by seagoal 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted December 22, 2021 Author Share Posted December 22, 2021 (edited) Assembled pics so far. I like it with the cage. I deliberated getting the cage painted red but I'm glad I kept it chrome. It blends with the bone color nicely. Edited January 10, 2022 by seagoal 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coopaloop1234 Posted December 22, 2021 Share Posted December 22, 2021 Eagerly awaiting the rest of this thread. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted December 22, 2021 Author Share Posted December 22, 2021 3 minutes ago, coopaloop1234 said: Eagerly awaiting the rest of this thread. I was almost at the point of telling my teammate to throw my sanded, primed helmet in Puget Sound and don't mention it ever again. I definitely went through an angry phase with this project. But now.....I'm just giddy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chile57 Posted December 22, 2021 Share Posted December 22, 2021 I kind of figured something went amiss here when moons ago it was "I got a new helmet and I'm going to get it painted" and then... crickets. Figuring it was a sore subject - I refrained from asking. Sadly - seems there are lots of attempts to paint gone AWOL stories. Glad its working out for you now. Always nice to have something to look forward to. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted December 22, 2021 Author Share Posted December 22, 2021 (edited) 15 minutes ago, chile57 said: I kind of figured something went amiss here when moons ago it was "I got a new helmet and I'm going to get it painted" and then... crickets. Figuring it was a sore subject - I refrained from asking. Sadly - seems there are lots of attempts to paint gone AWOL stories. Glad its working out for you now. Always nice to have something to look forward to. Thanks , much appreciated. Yeah man it's been a series of frustrations and I had to navigate it all diplomatically because I didn't want to do any damage to my relationship to my teammate. We had food and beers and talked it all out and all is good. He's a good guy who I like and respect and he tried to do a good thing that didn't work out. No harm done, it was just frustrating. I came around full circle back to Jason and it was a huge relief. He's not taking new clients anymore either so I got in as a returning client. He's painting a lot of football helmets these days. I'm probably going to cry when it's all said and done, haha. Thankfully my old Bauer helmet has been a good reliable backup. What I don't like about this Bauer I'm using is the top of the chin foam pad is in front of my mouth, whereas with Sportmask the face opening is longer and my mouth is uncovered. That's what I miss the most. Edited December 22, 2021 by seagoal 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chile57 Posted December 23, 2021 Share Posted December 23, 2021 Remind me why the ice dragons one is out of commission/not a viable backup? Damaged? Things like that usually start off with the best of intentions until... life. Glad it wasn't anything a beer (or two) couldn't solve. 16 hours ago, seagoal said: I was almost at the point of telling my teammate to throw my sanded, primed helmet in Puget Sound and don't mention it ever again. I definitely went through an angry phase with this project. But now.....I'm just giddy. +1 on this FOR SURE. 100% get where you're coming from - tough to disassociate the stink on something like that once it takes hold. I still vividly recall opening up my first custom mask/paint job where my name was misspelled front and center on the chin drop. It was corrected and all but its like the redheaded stepchild of all my lids for sure - pushed to the back and worn infrequently. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted December 23, 2021 Author Share Posted December 23, 2021 7 hours ago, chile57 said: Remind me why the ice dragons one is out of commission/not a viable backup? Damaged? Things like that usually start off with the best of intentions until... life. Glad it wasn't anything a beer (or two) couldn't solve. +1 on this FOR SURE. 100% get where you're coming from - tough to disassociate the stink on something like that once it takes hold. I still vividly recall opening up my first custom mask/paint job where my name was misspelled front and center on the chin drop. It was corrected and all but its like the redheaded stepchild of all my lids for sure - pushed to the back and worn infrequently. Man, yeah. The feeling of opening a box of any custom gear is so damn exciting and I imagine seeing your name spelled wrong is just gut wrenching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted January 7, 2022 Author Share Posted January 7, 2022 Jason started my helmet yesterday. Saw some teaser pics already of the design on the transfer tape...it's looking amazing. Hoping for some paint teasers today. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted January 8, 2022 Author Share Posted January 8, 2022 Pre-assembly pics are live ^ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaveByRichter35 Posted January 9, 2022 Share Posted January 9, 2022 Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southpawtendy48 Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 Wow. Looks absolutely amazing. Can’t wait to see it assembled. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 15 minutes ago, southpawtendy48 said: Wow. Looks absolutely amazing. Can’t wait to see it assembled. Thanks. I'm pretty impressed with it so far. Hè did such a good job . 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chile57 Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 Happy for you man - looks like he killed it based on your requests. Will go perfectly with your new(er) set. Going to stick with the strap set you have or are you inspired by the paint job to go yellow? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 6 hours ago, chile57 said: Happy for you man - looks like he killed it based on your requests. Will go perfectly with your new(er) set. Going to stick with the strap set you have or are you inspired by the paint job to go yellow? Assembled pics are up ^ Thanks, I'm pretty pleased with it and super excited. Good point on the straps. That's one composition detail I didn't think to specify, the monster's straps vs the real straps. You can see he layed them out perfectly in terms of placement....Sportmask being different, of course (haven't seen the back with real straps yet...But the color is mismatched, especially with the monster's top straps being more visible than the real top straps. The monster apparently is not wearing a Sportmask, haha. It's not a big deal to me right now. I doubt I will track down yellow straps for it. I don't want to spend any more money on this helmet and if it ends up bugging me because it looks weird....I'll just blame the monster He obviously has very low standards on aesthetics. . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaveByRichter35 Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 Love it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 1 minute ago, SaveByRichter35 said: Love it thanks dude. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bunnyman666 Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 Good stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coopaloop1234 Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 I give it a 3/10. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 4 minutes ago, bunnyman666 said: Good stuff. Thanks Bunny, so glad this story has come to a close.....well, it left Mississippi this morning, so almost closed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 Just now, coopaloop1234 said: I give it a 3/10. We are not figure skaters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coopaloop1234 Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 7 minutes ago, seagoal said: We are not figure skaters. I don't know about you, but I bust out a mean pirouette. You already know my public rating is much different than what I told you previously. Deadly mask man. Have you been practicing your ducking in order to preserve the paint? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chile57 Posted January 10, 2022 Share Posted January 10, 2022 (edited) @seagoal forgot SM does a different strap setup (been a minute since I took a look at my Mage) - thanks for the reminder. I actually think it looks great as-is with the black straps/red buckles. Totally fades away into the perimeter of the mask. Will even moreso if you fold your excess strap back through the buckle (that's how I roll and provides a much cleaner look as far as I'm concerned (plus it provides some bit of protection for the buckles themselves)). You didn't ask - but I prefer the chrome cage to red. I might be interested in what a white one looks like (but would stick with either chrome or white - period). Here's a shot of what I mean if its useful... Edited January 10, 2022 by chile57 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seagoal Posted January 10, 2022 Author Share Posted January 10, 2022 4 minutes ago, chile57 said: @seagoal forgot SM does a different strap setup (been a minute since I took a look at my Mage) - thanks for the reminder. I actually think it looks great as-is with the black straps/red buckles. Totally fades away into the perimeter of the mask. Will even moreso if you fold your excess strap back through the buckle (that's how I roll and provides a much cleaner look as far as I'm concerned (plus it provides some bit of protection for the buckles themselves)). You didn't ask - but I prefer the chrome cage to red. I might be interested in what a white one looks like (but would stick with either chrome or white - period). Yeah, I always tuck the strap end back through the clips, on all 4. My only other choice at this point is what color my dangler laces will be. Probably red. 13 minutes ago, coopaloop1234 said: I don't know about you, but I bust out a mean pirouette. You already know my public rating is much different than what I told you previously. Deadly mask man. Have you been practicing your ducking in order to preserve the paint? Oh yeah, a lot more blocker saves coming my way as I cower behind it up high for months. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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