Thursday 12 April 2012

Sandtrooper - Backpack well underway

From "The Making Of Star Wars" by J W Rinzler:
John Mollo:
"On top of all this, George announced that he was going to take some Stormtroopers on location and he wanted them to be in "combat order". I said "Oh yes George, what's combat order for Stormtroopers?" and he said "Lots of stuff on the back." So i went to this Boy Scout shop in London and bought one of those metal backpack racks; then we took plastic seed boxes, stuck two of those together, and put four of those on the rack. Then iwe put a plastic drainpipe on the top, with a laboratory pipe on the side and everything was sprayed black."
And that's just the reason i'm doing a Sandtrooper over a regular Stormtrooper, as that sort of cobble thinbgs together, scratchbuilt affair is far more appealing than building stuff straight from the box.
Anyway, this is where i am today.
Though most of the backpack parts are cast in black plastic, i'm priming them in grey then spraying Satin Black.
Sounds odd i know, but the cast black is VERY shiny, looking far too pristine and clean for a Sandtrooper. And i want all the black parts to match. And a satin finish will take the upcoming weathering far better than a gloss surface.
So here you have the "burger stacker" attached to a bowl:

And them joined to the cistern:

Radio back is on and the resin casts of the jacks and aerial painted silver and glued on:

And here's the aluminium bars that go onto the rack and which the seed trays join to. Loving this project - i'm using materials and tools i've never tried before.