Botwt's Hobby Blog

Went on kind of a Darth Sidious shopping spree here the last couple of days. I picked up a Darth Sidious, Sith Master #7 Jedi Academy Star Wars Miniatures, a Sith Lord Evolutions Emperor Palpatine, and The Clone Wars CW45 Darth Sidious.

The CW45 Sidious is going to be put into one of the AFA acrylic collectors cases to protect it…apparently they are extremely rare and cost a ton! So he was purchased for a nice investment down the road. The Evolutions Palpatine I plan on displaying on my PC desk as a custom conversion piece (I picked up a spare CW45 Sidious head), and of course the WotC miniature is here with a nice new base and paint job.

Cutting this miniature from his original base was a trick, but he came off without injury (how novel). Of course his lightsaber was mangled so off it came and was replaced with a paperclip. I used to below picture of the Sidious bust for inspiration for the color palette.

I have to admit, this is a really nice piece for a plastic model…you wouldn’t (and couldn’t) tell from the pre-painted version, but once I primed it he really have alot of detail to his face. Really nice sculpt WotC (cannot say that about too many of their pieces)!

Darth Sidious

Not having things perfect bugs the crap out of me, and staring at Quinlan Vos with the wrong skin color was annoying me the more I looked into his character (I knew nothing about this guy until very recently). Wizards of the Coast decided to make the model pictured above (the same one I used in my conversion) with a darker color of almost African skintones, and I was kinda going by this picture below when I painted him and also trusting that WotC knew what he looked like.

In this drawing above he looks either Native American or African, but then recently I started looking at other pictures of him, including an action figure and he looks like a honky. Color me confused.

So I decided to shoot for the middle ground, and went for a more Native American skintone for him…figure that will be a happy balance between the contrasting pictures/models/toys of this guy and I shouldn’t feel like I didn’t do the model correctly from here on out.

Quinlan Vos (Redux)

And now I return to this miniature after bouncing around all over the joint in a hobby A.D.D. haze. One trait I inherited from my father was his ability to stall out on projects (home or hobby, it made no difference) and I am beginning to understand why he did and I do this…we are afraid of failure. Completion means that I have to except that the job I’ve done is either really good for my standards or complete crap. I am really hard on my work and have redone many a model just because I know that it isn’t right (to me), and not finishing one makes my life easier because it is always in that state that has the eternal upside of being top quality. The stuff you learn from your parents isn’t always the best that they can give you. LOL

Anyway on to the paint job.

I painted his armor plates in Astronomican Grey (GW), washed with mix of Badab Black and Devlan Mud (both GW washes) and then highlighted with a mixture of Bleached Bone (GW) and Astronomican Grey, then another wash of Devlan Mud (maybe a bit heavy, but I will leave it for now). All in all not too bad.

The stock Astromech’s that came with the Eta-2 Actis-class Light Interceptor models have both been replaced with repainted, shaved down WotC R7 Astromech Droids to proxy as R4-K5 and R4-P17, and to give continuity with the two 30mm based ones I’ve already done up. The replacements fit perfectly into the hole left by the original…couldn’t have been a better fit if it was made for this model.

R4-K5

R4-P17

Got two more Jawa’s painted up. This time it is the Jawa Trader and Jawa Scavenger. When I glued my Jawa Scavenger to his new base I accidentally placed him a bit off center…so I decided to place some droid bits off to his side to fill in the empty spot. Used a leftover bit from General Grievous and the dome of one of the Astromech droids from the Eta-2 Actis-class Light Interceptor models.

I am still waiting to get a good price on the model of the Jawa on Ronto from the Alliance and Empire set…not planning on paying $9 + for this one, so I’ll sit back and wait.

I picked up all four of these Republic Commandos for next to nothing and thought that I would repaint their less than stellar paint jobs and base them to accompany General Kenobi on retaking control of the display cabinet. Hehe

Boss

Fixer

Sev

Scorch

Picked this nice piece up on eBay for a whopping 99¢! It’s not in scale with Knight Models or WotC (probably in a 54mm scale), but that isn’t why I purchased…I just thought he’d look cool next to my Star Trek Rawcliffe miniatures. Sometimes you can really find some awesome deals on eBay!

I wanted to make K’Kruhk wearing his Jedi robes based on the above picture and so he would blend in nicely with the rest of my Jedi, however the model of him that I liked was without them, and the other model just looked crappy. He is also much larger than the other characters so using some generic Jedi miniature for the robes wasn’t going to work…I was beginning to believe this project was doomed until I found a perfect piece to use as his body. Hasbo’s Clash of the Lightsabers Card Game comes with two metal pieces in the 2 inch range which works perfect for transplanting K’Kruhk’s head and hands onto Qui-Gon Jinn…sadly I cannot find a model that is 2 inches and has the robes I’m looking for, but I can make due with this all the same. As for the game, I still have a WotC Qui-Gon and Knight Models Darth Maul (still coming from Spain…last package was lost in the mail over Christmas) if I want to play it.

Here you can see how the Qui-Gon and K’Kruhk pieces scale up to one another…damn near spot on perfect! Darth Maul will probably end up as trade bait, or head off back to eBay.

Now when working with white metal, pewter or what-have-you, be very careful when removing parts. I find that a jeweler’s saw is the best way to remove whatever you need to cut off…just remember to let the saw do the work and don’t push the blade through the metal or you run the risk of snapping the blade. Also, make sure you wear eye protection. When cutting the plastic model a simple razor knife/X-Acto knife will do the trick…just go slow and watch your finger tips. Here below you can see the conversion pre-paint and how I placed the pieces together.

I went with the below image for the paint scheme…really just a series of greys mixed with some light browns here and there.

The finished model came out fairly well…my hands seemed to cooperate throughout most of the process this time which was nice. Hehe. Overall, I am very pleased with the miniature as this project nearly didn’t happen, but my patience paid off and it really feels great to see the imagined model come to fruition.

K’Kruhk

After sending a few unwanted miniatures to a new home in Australia via eBay, I decided to purchase Han and Chewy and in the process also try out my new Skullcrafts Snow Flock. Of course I cannot leave well enough alone so I decided to do a little conversion work on Han. I removed his hooded head, replaced it with another Han Solo head and then resculpted the hood from green stuff. The nice thing about the replacement head is that his hair is blowing so it fits the model perfectly.

Now, when I painted Han I wanted to make sure I got the color of his jacket correct…for years I have always thought the thing was blue (and I nearly painted it that color) till I found this picture of the actual prop costume.

For Chewbacca, I just painted him as if he were in an indoor environment then when I applied the snow to his base I also glazed his fur with a bit of glue so that it would also stick to him to give that snow caked look from the scene in Empire Strikes Back. I went this way because I didn’t want the snow to look any different between fur and base.

Han Solo & Chewbacca