Like many of our readers, I am the resident Photoshop expert among my friends and family. Every year, around this time, I am asked to do at least one custom helmet for a friend’s fantasy football team. I usually poke around Google, looking for a template that allows me to be a good friend while working quickly so it does not become a distraction. Until this year, my search has been fruitless.

A few weeks ago, I found V2 Revolution Helmet, an Photoshop template from Fraser Davidson (aka rezland). The PSD file is very well organized and easy to use. Building a custom helmet takes only four steps.

  1. Copy an original logo or other image into appropriate layer in the template.
  2. Recolor the helmet background using the provided Color Overlay layer effect.
  3. Recolor the face mask; also a Color Overlay layer effect.
  4. Save for the Web at the desired resolution.

With clean source images, you can have a complete helmet within five minutes. Davidson has set up the template to wrap images around the helmet and apply lighting effects. Once you have the image in place, use the color picker to select colors from the logo to finish out the helmet background and face mask. The result is a professional-quality render of a football helmet.

Working with 300 dpi source images graciously provided by my friend Stan!, a professional cartoonist it took me about 30 minutes to produce the twelve helmets shown above. No cartoonists on speed dial? Draw from the Creative Commons. Or, use your own photos to make creative and unique helmets, like these two I threw together from my Instagram images.

The Shooters
The Shooters

The Snow Monkeys
The Snow Monkeys

Need another angle on a football helmet? Davidson has two other templates a Reverse 3/4 and Three Up available as well. Best of all, he offers all three templates free for non-commercial use.

I hope you found this little diversion fun and useful. If so, please share your helmet creations in the comments below.

Many thanks to Stan! for the use of his artwork on the helmets above. You can see the originals in 10×10 Toon, his webcomic about pop culture, gaming and geek life.