Jabbas Palace - Boba Fett and a table

Oh boy, you can't polish a turd can you? This is the best I could do with Boba, pretty much the coolest character in the Star Wars universe, but not served at all well with this lanky, misshapen figure.



And we've got a table with, i'm guessing, a light cluster.

Ray Harryhausen at The Works

If you're UK and live near a Works shop, I urge you to pop down and get this fantastic book, marked down from £30.00 to just £4.99.
I did 8)

Gonk Droid - change of plan

Right, since the last post for the Gonk Droid build, I've had a change of plan colour-wise.
The metallic brown i'd chosen just wasn't working out as I hadn't counted on it being translucent - two 6.99 cans along and it was barely covering, and still showing the scratches and scribbles i'd done on the Grey Primer.
So have decided to go with the same sort of colours as seen in the one in the Sandcrawler, using Grey Primer for the basecoat. So here it is in that:



Next up was a very sloppy wash of black:



And the bit i'd enjoying on my Sandtrooper build - the dirtying down:



What I've done so far is pretty crude, so got to go in now with smaller brushes just to pick out details and refine things more.

Romulan Bird Of Prey - through the stages

Quite an update for you here.
First up was to basecoat the ship, and for that I used "Polar White", a car spray that I don't remember for what brand of car it was used for. Anyway, went with that as its an odd white with an almost greenish/grey tint to it:



With that on it was decal time, and what I thought would happen happened - the clean bright decals on the clean bright white made it look very toy-like:





The big underside decals went on pretty well, considering how large they were and the fact they all had to be joined up: the two halves for the body of the bird and each wing being made up of two more decals.
Took away the toy appearance by breaking out the pastels. I put them on pretty heavily as I figured, what with the aerodynamic shape of it, that it'd certainly be able to scoot through an atmosphere, so would pick up some wear and tear there.
Final thing to do was put the clear hemispheres on the end of each pylon, and to pick out the windows.
To do that I used a pencil as (A) i'd have more control over things, (B) a dark grey would not be so jarring as black paint.





And that's him done. A lovely, simple build of a classic design, that I've enjoyed re-visiting all these years later.

Ma.K Tank - platform

Little bit of progress here to show you today.
This is the platform that'll be carrying the actual barrel of the tank, now more than an Ovaltine jar lid with a helicopter floor attached.
We've now got more kitbits, some to disguise the fact that the tank upper body at rear is very flat and one-dimensional, and others to busy it up a bit.
Not mentioned it before but, once the barrel is on, I plan to have an almost crab-like shell over the top of things.

Jawa Blaster - the search for a barrel

Been a delay in this build as I've been trying to find a suitable shape for the barrel.
As I said before, the problem with making one of these is that no-one knows what this strange fluted shape used on the original was:



I've seen folk in the States make terrific versions using very tall plastic tumblers:





But couldn't find anything like that over here. So I've spent the last few weeks scouring department stores, DIY places, plumbing suppliers, toy shops etc looking for a suitable donor.
But then I hit on the idea of maybe a plastic vase might do. Having a trawl on the 'Bay, this lovely blue affair looked to be about right, so I bought one:



Its not 100% accurate, missing that lip at the end, and was a tad too long, but figured, with it cut down to size, it'd pass. So that's what I did. Trouble there was, the diameter of it at the blunt end didn't match with anything i'd already built. So that was all scrapped, apart from the lid of the green tumbler i'd bought, which the blue vase sat just right into.
A quick pop to the 99p store this morning got me this tub of conditioner, which I emptied out, then bolted the green lid to one end, then hot-glued the blue vase to that:

Too blummin' right

Jabba's Palace - Hermi Odle and some tables.

Running out of characters now for this project, so guess I've got to address some of the boring parts.
You don't get much more boring than these tables - all three the same, all with a plate, cup and vase. For a bit of variety I've done the various items in different colours and then dirtied every thing down.
Hermi Odle looks to be at first a standard big muppet creation: a big guy in a big muppet costume wandering around to great effect as in the tv show.
But, those rags, those pale yellow eyes and whatever the heck that is coming out of his mouth notches him up way above some his more muppet-like cohorts in Jabba's court, and more into Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and borderline horror film character i'd say.
A superb design, that I wish we'd seen more of in Jedi.

Tank Girl

Dusting off something else to sell, this here Tank Girl resin kit has sculptor Jason Brokkes totally nailing her likeness.
Biggest challenge on this was to paint in a comic strip way - big blocks of colour with jet black instead of subtle shading.

Gonk Droid - starting basecoating.

Been a long while since I've gone anywhere near to this project. And that's because I've needed a day at home where the weathers going to be 100% dry while the paint, er, dries.
And that's today.
So, here we are then with the top half done. I knew I wanted a brown or tan colour for the basecoat, as its a Tatooine Power Droid, and quite light as to show up the later weathering and dirtying down.
So a trip to Halfords got me a can of "Peugeot Blaze Yellow". Something i'd not counted on is that all their brown tones are metallic but that's okay isn't it? Its a Droid after all and, with all the muck i'm about to start throwing on it, don't think it'll be too noticible when done.