fernwood79

Thanks It's not too late to tell you about it, but I don't have any photos really. When I do the next figure I will try and take some photos and post to in-progress. First you need to source the digital asset either from the game if you know how, or there are certain sites of an "east European" nature where you can find such things 🇷🇺. If you are interested, PM me and I can give you a link. Once you have that you need to edit it so it's printable by a 3D printer. With this kind of thing it's mostly a case of extracting the head from the low-poly figure mesh and running it through a smoothing function (in 3DSMax it is Turbosmooth). This will bump up the polygon count from a few thousand to around 1M which I find is good. Then you need to make sure it doesn't have any artefacts (holes, open edges etc) and then export it as either an STL or OBJ. If you don't have 3DSMax, then stuff like Meshmixer is good. I quite often use it after 3DSMax to check the output is the right size and fix the remaining artefacts. I don't have a 3D printer so I've been using Shapeways 3D printing service using the fine detail plastic. Cost for each head is like $7-8, but after delivery and priority service that can get to around $15-$20. I try to order several heads at once if I can to get the combined shipping. Once you get the design through the automatic checks it goes for printing. Sometimes at the last minute they find an issue and you have to fix the design or decide to print it anyway if it's not a big deal. Printing head designs from game assets is easier than when doing ones I create myself using facegen and DAZ Studio. For those you need to find the hair model separately and most designs take a lot of work to make it 3D printable! Then it's just a case of painting her. I watched a lot of miniature painting tutorials on YT to get the hang of it but these tend to be for gaming type figures which are tiny. Applying the techniques directly would look OTT on a 6" figure so it was a case of toning it all down a bit and finding something that worked at that scale. I found having a wet palette helped a lot with the glazes and washes, and a good quality number 2 brush is perfect for almost everything apart from the very finest lines. HTH Chris

Here is the second in my series of Star Wars women pilots -Iden Versio, the leader of Inferno Squad, plus her TIE/Ln fighter from the Battlefront II game. The TIE Ln is the Finemolds kit with a standard imperial paint scheme plus Inferno Squad Markings. Paints are all Vallejo. Underneath Iden is the Black Series TIE pilot and the main changes involved dremelling down the suit bulkiness and chestplate after removing the chest box and adding the "O II" to the backplate. The belt is the original one with scratch built boxes and cylinder made from sheet and rod styrene plus metal sheet. Helmet and shoulder patches are painted over a custom decal template. Finally the shoulder pauldron is also sheet metal with red decal strips. Her head is 3D printed, the source of which is the Battlefront II game digital asset with a bit of work in 3DSMax. Thanks for looking Chris Next up will be Dorovio Bold!

Well Evaan was at the Battle of Scariff, but the pilot you are talking about is Wona Goban I think?

Ten points that man! I am currently making an R2-KT to go with Evaan from a slightly battered R2-D2 on Dagobah I picked up from eBay.

Hi Everyone, this is something I've been working on as part of a bigger project to cover the (rather neglected) female pilots of the Star Wars OT era. Each project will have a craft and figure. For those of you that don't know, when they were made, ANH and ESB had no female pilots, but ROTJ was supposed to have them. They even shot video of three, but apparently test screenings of ROTJ with them in got negative comments about women in combat (this was 1983) so they took them out. Except one - an A-Wing pilot called Sila Kott who you can glimpse for a second before her death. But they over-dubbed her with a male voice! Of course, films like Rogue 1 and Book and Graphic Novels have since put matters right, but so far despite all the alterations, ROTJ is still female pilot free - although you can see them in the briefing room scene if you look very carefully. The first pilot I have done is Evaan Verlaine. She was the pilot of Y-Wing Gold 3 during the Death Star attack in ANH. You can see her craft at the very end just as the Death Star is about to blow along with Luke, Wedge and the Millennium Falcon. This is a canon retcon based on the Leia Graphic Novel (in Legends this pilot is Keyan Farlander). To create Evaan and Gold 3 I used the FineMolds 1:72 Y-Wing and a custom based on the Black Series 6" Luke Skywalker. Evaan Verlaine So far Evaan Verlaine has only been visualised in comic book form (in the graphic novel Princess Leia). The base for her figure is the 6" Black Series Luke Skywalker. All of the figure (apart from the chest box) has been repainted using Vallejo acrylics, using wet-blending, glazes and other interesting techniques I learned on YouTube. Her helmet is based on the supposed official one, but that is exactly the same as Blue Leader Antoc Merrick (in Rogue 1) so I made the alliance symbols Gold to make it different. Her head is 3D printed (using Shapeways) based on one I created using FaceGen Artist, DAZ Studio and 3DS Max. So who is she based on? Well officially there is only the graphic novel, however, there is a female cosplayer who thinks they may have based Evaan on her! I think she might have something, so the head is based on her. Y-Wing The main feature of Y-Wings is their beat-up Clone Wars era nature. To re-create that I initially sprayed the whole thing silver, then went round with maskol covering up places that would get worn or places damaged by attacks. A coat of FS36622 from Mr Hobby went over the top followed by rust for the pipe work. There is no accepted scheme for Gold 3 AFAIK, although due to script changes, Gold 5 has squadron markings that indicate Gold 3 (the cockpit stripes). So I just used a bit of artistic license and made it look as I wanted - I'm not a fan of the overuse of blue on the cockpit and engine pods so I made it as subtle as I could. Worn areas were left silver, but any battle damage areas were edged in black to simulate paint singeing. The whole thing was washed with Tamiya Panel line Dark Grey and a small amount of dry brushing of dirt was done. Ten points for anyone who can ID the R2 unit. This isn't canon (yet) but you never know! The next pair in the series will be TIE/Ln and Iden Versio from Battlefront. Thanks for looking 🙂 Chris

Hi Julian, they're not *bad* at all! The standard of painting is fantastic like the rest of the kit. It would be such a shame to lose the colour that figures add. It would be easy to remove the W-SS decals, give them all black unis and revert to Heer Panzertruppe. Chris

Hi Julian just been catching up with your amazing build. As the attention to detail is so spot on with the vehicle I wanted to say your figures uniforms are slightly wrong. The original figues portray Army Panzer troops. You have modded these into Waffen-SS figures using the other insignia but there are a number of errors : Tank commander cap insignia is still Army Eagle insignia should be on left sleeve for W-SS, not right breast (you have the correct W-SS pattern eagle though) Totenkopf divison troops usually had skull collar patches not SS runes Cuff title is too low These are the main issues that anyone is likely to spot. On a more subtle point, the army and SS Panzer uniforms are slightly different in cut, but only a uniform nerd would spot that! Also I have not seen any examples of SPG or Artillery crew wearing black jackets with field grey trousers, but almost anything is possible, esp late in the war. I am away from home at the moment, but can dig up some pictures to show you what I mean if you like. Chris

Outstanding work. I have one in a similar state to how you started. Now you're inspiring me to do the same! I wish someone would bring out a First Order Star Destroyer...

Nice job of weathering the black scheme, always tricky! In fact Poe and BB-8 do fly a blue/white T-70 in the film - it's the ship they try to escape Jakku in at the start of the film.

Thanks! I got the Bandai kit on EBay from a reliable Chinese seller called goodjoy. Stuff comes quickly and shipping is free or inexpensive. I got the Brienne figure from Forbidden Planet.

The Star Wars Bandai fest continues! This time it's their 1/12 Captain Phasma figure. Another superb kit that goes together without a hitch. Handling the chromed plastic is quite tricky as you can't fix mistakes like with other kits, but thankfully as the kit is well engineered there weren't any disasters! The only painting I did was a coat of matt varnish on the undersuit to bring the shine down and the small black areas on her armour. I also added restrained amounts of panel wash to bring out the details of her armour and tinted the rifle light gold using gloss varnish with a touch of trans yellow as the kit one is silver. The only let-down in my view is her cape. The kit has two choices; a three piece styrene one or very thin but stiff material neither of which look good. In the end I borrowed the cape from the Hasbro Black Series figure which which although plastic actually looks like the real thing! To further customise her, I adapted the head from Gwen Christie's Game Of Thrones Brienne of Tarth figure (just a bit of a re-touch to her make-up to make her look less medieval and more Star Wars). Photographing her was also tricky due to the shiny armour reflecting everything! I think I have a better solution but it needs some work. So anyway, here she is, comments welcome

The bases are really cool, much better than what comes with the kits. I noticed you have tinted the FO TIE transparencies red. The Bandai box shows it that way on the box art, but no other reference I have seen does. Did you have any other source for it?

Star Wars started the idea of 'The Used Future' all those years ago. Before that, pretty much all SciFi was Star Trek shiny. Your R5 is done in the finest tradition of that. Excellent work

Further to Wayne's answer, the cockpit has space and locating recesses at the back for the gunner and controls. The SF Bandai TIE has another sprue with the pieces. Looking at it though, it's hard to see how either crew could eject through the hatch without losing one or more appendages!

Doh! I knew there was something I missed... thanks, post edited!