The company behind this helmet, Volpin Props (http://volpinprops.blogspot.com/), produces absolutely amazing work, especially considering it's all one guy. Some of his other projects include:
I'm assuming the time frame involved a lot of research and learning new skills to implement the design.
Regardless, the accomplishment of this alone would surely be enough to land the guy a job in the costume department for a special effects company. I've seen much worse work on huge budget movies, if a guy can do this in his free time with his spare cash he should definitely get a hire somewhere.
I saw the stills on his blog - it looks like he does this sort of thing on a regular basis. I'd wager that learning how to create the electronics took the longest in terms of learning new skills.
According to one of his comments on OP's Youtube link, he also interspersed work on 15 other projects while he was working on this. Would be interesting to know the actual amount of time spent on it.
For a pro who knew everything on how to do this, I would likely expect little over a week of man-hour work. However the guy looks like he had a great grasp on the modeling aspect, but not so much on the electronics, so I wouldn't be surprised if he spent equivalent of about two-man-hour work weeks on this.
For someone like me, it would likely take the full 17 months to produce something like this purely for the modeling portion. I'm actually adept at electronics, but I wouldn't be able to model something like that to save my life.
What's the most amazing is watching his progression through his flickr stream over years of making props. I love being able to spot techniques and tricks, witness failures, and track someone's development through their own documentation.
This is really awesome, but I have no idea what this is a reproduction of. (I haven't seen a Daft Punk video in at least 5 years). Anyone who's more versed in Daft Punkology have a link to whatever this came from?
Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo wears a helmet like this in the Daft Punk video "Robot Rock" (I can't provide a good link to it from here as I cannot access Youtube from work), as well as in a number of live performances.
Thomas Bangaltar wears a differently-styled helmet. Searching "Daft Punk helmet" on Youtube will show other crafters making helmet replicas.
He did make a cast, so it's a lot easier from this point (except for the electronics I guess).
The guy even mentioned this was an on/off project for 17 months, and it also looked like a lot of trial and error in the beginning to get the shape right. A dedicated modeller with a stereolith machine could slam that out a lot quicker.
Big Daddy (Bioshock) http://www.flickr.com/photos/14455307@N07/sets/7215762286087...
Portal Gun http://www.flickr.com/photos/14455307@N07/sets/7215761888999...
Force-a-Nature (Team Fortress 2) http://www.flickr.com/photos/14455307@N07/sets/7215762302451...