Judge Fear - helmet set-backs

Bugger.
First plan to light up Judge Fear's helmet was to cut the LED strip into strips, one each behind each slot in the helmet and a couple either end of the eye holes, allowing me to see out in the middle.
Nixxed that as the LED's are so bright that you can see each individual one even through three layers of acetate.
I first thought of backing the acetate with frosted plastic to diffuse the light, but instead went with cutting a strip long enough to encircle the eye/slot area and have it on its edge pointing inwards, so the LED's would be visible from outside.

Pic 1: And that worked fine.
Pic 2: And looked pretty good from the outside.
Pic 3: Here's me son wearing and... not only can you see him in there, he's completely blinded by the things.

So, back to option 1 - back the acetate with a diffuser for the slot area and, fro the eyes, i'll check out the red glowing sunglasses that have been recommended to me by folk.

Cursed Earth Wanderer - chest armour

So this is the chest armour, made entirely from foam except for the goggles that form the basis of the gas mask, the hoover tubing, a plastic lid at the end of the rear tank, lighting gel in the eye holes and plastic chain at back.
The mask is permanently attached to the container and i figure that's some sort of filter system to deal with the irradiated air.
While i'm happy with the dull, matt and rusty finish, there's still stuff to do:
I'm thinking some sort of stripe on the mask to break the colours up a bit and add a bit of interest,
have lots of gadgets and things hanging form the bottom both front and back,
and the two pouches on the rear. I was thinking of removing them and putting real one's on, but now think i'll just add more "stuff" over the top of them to cover them up and hide their foamy origins.

Cursed Earth Wanderer - pads

Here you go with some parts of the armour, and they're all made out of foam, with drawing pin for studs detailing.
The shin pads will be held on to my legs by just elastic strapping, and i've rusted them up a good deal more since switching to a Cursed Earth character.
The shoulder pad will be attached to whatever undergarment i use by heavy duty Velcro.

Cursed Earth Wanderer

If you've been around here for a while, you may remember the Chaos Renegade outfit i was working on?
Well, i gave up on that project when i started my Judge Fear one and did intend to sell the Chaos one to fund it.
No go there - couldn't flog it as much as i tried.
So i was resigned to putting it up into the attic.
But on Sunday i was at a Con and a bunch of folk from a group i belong to, The Cursed Earth Drifters, were there in their Mad Max inspired outfits.
Marvelling at the amount of imagination that'd gone into the scratchbuilding on show, the lightbulb went on - why not change my Chaos into something from that world?
So, that's what i'm going to do, using Mad Max as the jumping off board but also Hardware, as i don't see my character as a driver nor a gang member with the mask/armour arrangement he's got, so more of a Wander Of the Wastelands, much like the guy at the start of Hardware, a nomad foraging the Bad Lands, trying to survive.
That's set then so lets have a recap:
The helmet has the Warhammer arrow icon but i can live with that. The rusting is just right and i'm thinking just a bit of sand/cat litter/Fullers Earth is needed to finish it off.
Ditto the arm protectors though, now it firmly Earth-based, i may put a logo on the bigger one to try and suggest its been cannabilised from something or other.

Biog Living Spaceship - done!

So, really decided to put the organ into organic spaceship, and here she is done.
Very happy i decided to change tack away from the garish version in the Prog.

Judge Fear - rusty pads

Nearly finished now with changing Fear's shoulder pads from a nice, clean metallic to a nasty, rusty, 'orrible finish - you'll tetanus or worse by just brushing by them.

Judge Fear - starting the lighting of the helmet

As i'm making the rest of Judge Fear's outfit look like you'd catch something nasty just touching it, i figure i've got to do the same for his helm.
But, all pictures of the fella clearly show that its shiny, therefore is still in pretty good nick.
To get around that, i've limited the weathering to some rust and dirt in the grills.
Not a good picture here, but i've also dirtied down the skull emblem.
And this is the start of lighting the helmet up - i'm using clear red gel, but three layers of the stuff to ensure no-one can see my eyes when looking in. That's worked, but not sure if, when the lights are on, you won't see them.
I'll cross that bridge when i come to and, to hedge my bets, i'm attaching the gel inside the helmet with Velcro so i can replace them if it doesn't work out.

Biog Living Spaceship - the new flesh

First step on getting away from the garish 70's colours of the Biog Living Spaceship and turning it into a Fleshy One (2000AD in-joke there) was to re-prime in white - but only a dusting so that the bolder colours show through, i've then done the bulk of the craft in regular skin tones, started on the orange on the "mushroom", i'm adding flesh washes to the rear tendrils, and next up is to pick out the details in the bulk, do the "mouth" and then the "flowers".
I tell you the feel i'm going for - the Zygon ship in Doctor Who's "Terror Of The Zygons".

Decisions, decisions

What to do? What to do?
As i add each colour to the Biog Living Spaceship, i keep hoping it'd start gelling things together and the whole thing starts to work.
But its not - its just becoming a multi-coloured mess.
So, what to do?
Carry on and finish it in an accurate colour scheme as seen in the colour spreads?
Or, taking the tack that Massimo Belardinelli didn't colour it and we've no idea what colours he'd envisaged for it, do i scrap this idea, reprime and redo it in a more realistic skin tone as i did with the Biog Warrior bust?
What do you folk think?

Biog Living Spaceship - colour choices

With painting the Biog Living Spaceship, i had to decide what way to go with the colour choices.
Dan Dare occupied the colour centre pages, so we have an idea what colours the Biogs were, but i'm not sure if the colours were what Massimo Belardinelli intended for his creations - i've read before speculation that he didn't colour the pages himself, but by someone else, and i've seen mention it was letterer Tom Frame who did it.
So, do i follow it or not.

Pic 1: With my Biog bust i chose not to go with the odd blue/white combo seen here bottom right:



Pic 2: Instead, i chose to go a more icky, horror route:



Pic 3: But, the Living Spaceship is SUCH a unique, outlandish design, i thought the very 70's colours fitted it very well, so i'm going with them, albeit maybe reined in a bit. So, here we go with the yellowy flesh tones:

Biog Living Spaceship - build done

With the "flowers" on and last of the tendrils attached, its time to prime this bad boy.

Judge Fear - cape thoughts

Starting to think about the cape for Judge Fear (Cape Fear shall i call it?).
First thought, to keep costs down and it is a very long very good quality one, was to use the one from my Garindan outfit.
That would certainly work, as you can see here, but:
(A) It would mean having to use magnets to join the outer to inner shoulder pads as i can't be stitching Velcro to it,
(B) Really, to match the beat-up nastiness of the rest of it, the cape will have to be torn and filthy. Something i'm not going to do with this one.
But, i could use it at a pinch if need be.

Biog Living Spaceship - globe detail

Balls!
Didn't use the beads from the water filter cartridge for the strange globe things near the front of the Biog Living Spaceship as they're a tad too small.
What i did instead was to roll myself a bunch of balls out of Magic Sculp, differing the quantities of the stuff each time so as to give them various sizes - something Massimo drew.
Next up, the front prong thing, add the "flowers" at the side, a few tendrils coming out the "mushroom" then we're near to paint time.

Judge Fear - feet

Its going to have to be make my mind up soon with Judge Fear's feet.
Though i tried and tried to find a UK supplier of monster feet i could use for the project, they all seemed to be real blocky affairs much like you'd see Boris Karloff wearing in "Frankenstien", i guess due to them being made to fit over your shoes.
Not at all like the long, thin, emaciated look i was after, and that i'd already found with the gloves.
I kept putting it off, the almost exactly what i was after pair from the States that were out of my price range even more so when you added postage, but they were EXACTLY what i was after and so, after getting fed up searching over here, i gave in and ordered a pair, which have just arrived.
Though expensive, they're really nice - a tad long but then i do have small feet and i'll have to pack the ends, and the neck is rather wide so i'll have to put some sort of Velcro closer at the back.
And i'm also thinking of sticking either Plasticard or the soles from a cheap pair of trainers on the underside to protect the rubber.
Where i've got to make up my mind is what to do about the colour of the feet and hands.
Originally i was going to repaint both pairs so they'd match, going for nice undead tones.
But i know from experience with my Garindan's snout that rubber has to be painted with a mix of paint and latex to stop the paint flaking off when the rubber is flexed.
But know too that that can create all sorts of problems with the paint drying too glossy.
And i was thinking the feet would get a LOT of flexing over time and would need re-doing.
But i was resigned to it.
But then i realised that the feet aren't too bad a paintjob at all - just the nails needing redoing and some detail brought out.
Then noticed that the hands aren't too far off the grey of the feet, just the rubbish purple detailing needs going over.
So what to do?
1. A complete repaint with latex mixed in that will need reapir over time?
2. Or go with the existing colours and hopefully better them with detailing?
Veering towards option 2 at the moment.