The Star Wars Hanger Build

Wow! For a while now, folk over on the SFMUK Site have been prepping for last weekends Crew Model show and the biggest build challenge so far - help to fill a hanger with all manner of Star Wars craft. The idea was that it be a Rebel hanger, maybe on a planet, maybe on a Starship, so would be filled with all manner of good guy ships. Scale decided on was 1/72nd as there's plenty of readily available kits out there, notably Fine Molds. And, boy, did folk deliver the goods, filling the HUGE hanger that Alun had so amazingly constructed with all manner of craft, crew and Droids, there's even a captured TIE Fighter and Probe Droid too. Alas, i couldn't make the show but i have the honour of my Falcon and green-livery X-Wing in there amongst the fine work. Tons more detailed photos can be found here: http://www.scifimodels.org.uk/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=3&func=view&catid=44&id=13477#13490

Apologies for the layout

Yeah, this is getting real annoying - this here Blogsite has changed the way i put up photos, going from the simple, old way, to complicated, fiddly and blummin' frustrating to do. And starts sentences alongside the picture above instead of below where i want it, and now randomly sticking words between pics. Like i say, apologies for it - hopefully they'll sort themselves out soon.

Jabba's Throne Room - Bib Fortuna & Sy Snootles

Nearly finished on these two, just tidying up here and there. And boy will i be glad whne i do. Dunno why, they're okay scuplts i guess, just not very inspiring i guess. Bib Fortuna is, of course, pretty much the best known of aliens from Jabba's court after the Big Guy himself and why not - great design, great performance and great voice. His figure has no voice, has a vague nod to the design and fails miserably at performance, standing there with his massive hands flat to his side like that: Sy Snootles was fantastic in, and i can't stress this strongly enough, the original "Jedi", a rod puppet that performs its function - to convey that there's no way a bloke in a suit is there. Not with those legs. The figure? Oh boy. Too fat, wrinkles too pronounced, total lack of eyes or lips. This was a struggle.

Genestealer Hybrids

There's been talk over on a Forum of what miniatures folk have still from years gone by and what about posting pics up of them. Rather mercifully, i've either sold or repainted any of mine from the 80's and early 90's. The only one's left from that time are the Genestealer Hybrids i'd collected for Space Hulk and are still as is in the box. Digging them out for a photo, some things are very apparent - that i'd slavishly follow the paint schemes in White Dwarf, no matter how crap they might be, what awful colour co-ordination i had for anything that wasn't in the magazine, and the really rubbish idea i had of basing them with grey flock:

Spoon Ship - building up the detail

So here we go, adding lots of tiny kitbits for detail. Dunno why - the underisde will never be seen. But i'll know its there i guess.

From the back of the cabinet - Skull Soldier

Dusted this fella off for you today. Can't remember which genius sculpted it, but its either Takeya or Nirasawa. LOVELY figure and i had a blast doing him. I went my own way with the colour scheme and i decided to stick with black, white and grey, with blue inside his cloak for a contrast. And i also picked out a bunch of rounded shapes in Clear Blue to have them as some sort of jewels or technical readouts. As i say, love this sculpt - a brilliant design, very reminscent of the decadent nobles in Micheal Moorcocks Hawkmoon saga - one of my favourite book series.

Gorebeast - nearly there

Just finishing up the individual characters now. My least favourite sure didn't anything to endear me once he had paint on: Chariots nearly done: Kind of happy with this guy - once i've sorted that rubbish eye out: And, my favourite bit so far. I wanted something a bit different from the usual green shades, metals and rust so, with the beasts back being a mass of whip scars, i thought i'd go to town with the gore, to inject a nice lot of red into the build:

Troll vomit

So, my Son gets these three Trolls for his army, chooses what shade of greens he wants them - then promptly hands them over to me to do them for him. Happy to it of course and it made a nice change to gloss everything as they're River Trolls and my Son wants them to look like they've just crawled out the water. Another challenge was - how do you paint vomit? These beasties have the charming ability to chuck up on thier enemies and one of them is in mid-chunder. But, how do i go about it? Figured it'd have to be a creamy sort of affair, so what i did was to build up from a flesh tone, highlighting with ivory then washes of brown and orange inks, go back to the flesh tone and starting all over again. And just build it up that way - with copious coats of Gloss varnish to finish off.

TD 7362

You may remember my Sandtrooper build of a while back? Well, very chuffed to have me and it in this form now:

Gorebeast

Desperately trying to keep up with my Son's builds, i've gone out and got this here new Gorebeast. Nice sculpts and an easy enough thing to put together, only troubles were trying to work out just where the horns attach on the chariot and that the instructions tell you to build the crew first, but neglect to say that the lugs on their feet are supposed to fit in recesses in the chariot. So i snipped them off, thinking they were pouring lugs. Oh well, never mind. My favourite of the figures is this guy:

You're given a choice of heads and i went with this zombie looking one and i've glued it on at a crooked angle just to make him a bit different to the norm. Next favourite is the Gorebeast, which is basically an ape wearing armour and covered with whip slashes:

He went together well and i'm really impressed with the eye holes being actual real holes in the helmet. The Charioteer suffers being a tad dull:

With his helmet being the most striking thing about him. Here they are at the start of the painting:

The charioteer is getting a quite healthy colour scheme for Nurgle as i figure he's got to be pretty fit and not falling apart for his job. The rider i'm doing in a very dark metallic with only a touch of rust as, again, i want him to be a bit different from what i usually do with this army. With mind made up to have the chariot and armour for the Gorebeast in green, that kind of ruled out any sort of greenish tone for the beastie as i'd all blend into one. So here i've been experimenting with greys for it. Something that's just not working and, since this pic, i've gone for a more human skin tone.

Jabba's Throne Room - Oola & Wol Cabasshite

Today, i've got for you:

The lovely Oola. One of the few times Star Wars almost veered into Star Trek territory with its Alien depictions being nothing much more than "paint a girl a different colour and give her not much to wear" (Orion Slave Girl anyone?), it veered back again by at least bunging some tendrils on her head. And having her not being rescued by our heroes and chomped on by that Rancor. Not much i could do with her figure (so to speak) as its tiny compared to the rest. And thin too - not much more than a carved cocktail stick.

Next up, we have easily one of the most bizarre Alien lifeforms seen in the series, and the best surname ever. Am seriously thinking of changing mine to it by deed poll. Wol Cabasshite only makes a very brief appearance, trying to have a lick of C3PO, and i'm not surprised that the species has cropped up in the EU. Model-wise, its pretty darn good - very accurate and a good sculpt. Waaay out of scale, but. I was thinking of maybe having a go at making my own studio-scale version but, looking at pics of it being sculpted, its about four feet long - a tad too big methinks. Unless i have it hanging from the ceiling as in Jedi. Hmmm...

Spoon Ship

With the Mark MK6 nearing completion, i'm looking around for some more hardware to do. Back in November i mentioned this ship i thought i'd have a go at finishing. So lets go.

Since November, i've attached the spoon to the neck of the ship. I did that by making a "shelf" on the underside which the sppon simply sat down on to. Next up is to detail the white underside, but not too much - i like and want to keep that profile of the spoon.

Nurgle Lord - a step back, then a step forward

Well, that was a failure. I'd painting the armour of my Nurgle Lord in Silver as i then planned on putting on Tamiya Clear Green. Partly because i wanted a change from my usual colours for this lot, but also to distinguish him from the rest, that even rotten and diseased and poxed up, there would still be a bit of opulance about him. Didn't work:

It ended up looking like i'd used car paint on it. Oh well, back to the usual then:

The Mark MK6 - rusty

So, nearly there now and i'm going my usual route for rusting things up

Stuart Freeborn RIP

SO sad to hear today of the passing for Stuart Freeborn. A brilliant makeup artist on many, many films, his contribution to the Star Wars universe was immense and, of course, is loved by millions of folk who don't know his name, for having used his own face for the basis of Yoda.

Mangler Squigs - all done

Here's the Bad Boys done then. Had an absolute blast doing these, and they're SO much better than the crappy, caroony box pic would have it. Heartily recommend them to anyone, as they're a neat, different project that really stand out in the cabinet when done.

Jabba's Throne Room - Squid Head & Bubo

Okay, next up we've got:

Squid Head. He's always been one of my favourites of Jabba's hangers-on, i guess because he's so reminiscent of the coda for the 50's B Movie monsters i love so much: Get an actor, bung him in some exotic clothes, stick a rubber mask over his head and alien hand gloves on his hands too. Again, it seems the sculptor slavishly followed a promotional photo as, again, the finished figure almost exactly duplicates the pic above it.

Bubo, or "Frog Dog" as they'd have it, is the classic puppet creature, worthy of Sesame Street, as he's clearly being operated by some schmo under the floor, making it bark as the Droids enters the Throne Room. All well and good, nothing wrong with that, nice to see an alien that's not human-sized etc etc. Until you touch on the back-story. Which has it that this fella (full name, Buboicullar) had actually been "an assassin and spy". Total and utter tosh, and i gave up reading right there. The figure is very basic, with no detail at all apart from a few folds of skin and very rudimentary eyes. I did what i could, adding a bit a variation by mottling the colours on, but its still not good.

Mangler Squigs - bits to show you.

The beasties are nearly done now. Its one of those projects that seem to paint themselves and everything goes very well and very fast. As i say, nearly done now and i thought i'd show a couple of things i'm pretty pleased wi8th the top one's eye and tongue: