Bandai First Order Stormtrooper

[Andy Moore]

First Order Stormtrooper

Bandai 1/12

This guy turned up yesterday (less than 2 weeks from Japan, not bad at all), so I thought I'd do a small wip for him. As anyone who's made any of the Bandai figures will know, they just clip together with little effort, so I'll just show the basic steps of the construction, and what ever paint and weathering I end up doing.

As it stands, I'm intending to do him as one of the troopers in the attack on Maz's castle on Takodana, so I'll make some sort of forest base along the lines of the one I did for my speeder build (so I'll be breaking out the tea leaves again). If I find the time, I might try making a shoulder pauldron for him too, to spice him up a bit.

Before I get going on any construction, I'll show a run through of the sprues, and some of the (pretty amazing) mouldings you get in these kits.

So, two sprues in white, and two in black for the trooper, plus one sprue of vinyl joints and one for the base.

Obviously, the two white ones contain the main armour

The black sprues have the body parts and weaponry. The second one also has the clear tinted parts and a couple of soft plastic clips that attach to the back of the riot shield

Lastly the soft plastic/vinyl sprue for the joints, and the standard figure base that comes with all the 1/12 kits

As usual with Bandai the plastic is very glossy. Although that's realistic enough to the real trooper armour, I always find it make the kit look a little toy-like, so I'll probably tone this down with a light coat of satin varnish, but I won't bother actually repainting it. The dome for the helmet is one piece, which avoids the rear seam that the OT trooper kit has

Nice shiny shoes (in stark contrast to the ones I'm wearing)

Chest armour (upside down here). I like the fact that the little slits are actually open, so you'll see the black of the bodysuit underneath

Riot shield. This has a clear tinted insert that fits in the hole at the top

The grill piece on the helmet. Most of this is covered by the white panels, leaving just the textured area showing

Nice tread detail on the soles

Ribbed parts to cover the joints. These are inevitably going to be the awkward looking areas due to the articulation. At the moment I'm not intending to fix and fill the joints, but I'll see how they look once they're built up

There's a choice of hands depending on what he's currently doing, or grabbing hold of

The blaster is a two piece moulding in black. Much of this will need to end up white, so quite a bit of detail painting will be needed. I can't help thinking that it would have been better moulded in white, as it would have been easier to paint in the black areas rather than over-paint black plastic in white

The original gun for comparison

Despite the awkward painting required, the detailing on the gun is beautifully done, right down to the individual bolt heads

The two tinted parts. One for the helmet visor, and one for the little window in the riot shield

The Z6 Riot Control Baton. Again, a lot of this ends up in white, and would have been better starting out in that colour

Last up we've got the usual Bandai instruction manual, and the standard option of stickers or decals for the markings

Hopefully I should get to clip a few bits together over the weekend, so I'll update then

Andy

[Air-to-Air]

That was an excellent review of the kit.

The quality of the detail, e.g. the blaster, is outstanding. I'll be adding this kit to my stash of similar Bandai figures.

Thank you for taking the time to prepare your post and share it with us.

[wkennerley]

Wow I like this

[The_Lancaster]

Looking forward to this!

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys

I've managed to get a bit of work done today, mainly on the helmet which is now finished. I nearly managed to make a mess of it on step one, through being too blasé about checking the instructions.

I've got used to Bandai placing the sprue gates in such a way that they aren't on an area of the part that will be seen, so I tend to just chop parts off without checking first. In step one, the black part in the photo below (part A2 48 for anyone building it) forms the black rim on the helmet, above the visor, and the two sprue attachment points are right on the edge of the part that will be seen

I didn't notice this when I cut the part from the sprue, and ended up with a scar on the exposed edge of the part. Fortunately, I managed to sand and polish it out, so no permanent damage done. There's quite a few parts in this kit that have similar sprue gates, so it's worth checking before you cut, and maybe using a razor saw rather than clippers.

That part then slots between the two halves of the helmet. They didn't have the same problem, as the gates were on areas that were later covered. You don't really need any glue here, but I ran a bit of Tamiya extra thin along the hidden joints just to make sure

On to the front of this you clip A1 3 which has the grill and the area around the visor. It's also got the little bolt, which is meant to be a connection point for an external air tank. I gave that a coat of Vallejo Metal Color Aluminium and painted the grill area in a dark grey to give it a bit of contrast to the rest of the black parts, which had a coat of Klear to gloss them up a bit

The rest of the bits just clip in place (I added a little glue hear and there), and you end up with one First Order Trooper helmet

I've also got a bit of work done on the blaster. The trigger was moulded as a solid shape, so I've trimmed away the back edge of it to better match the prop version. I've also drilled out the line of holes that run beneath the barrel, and opened up the sides of the sight, which were just solid lumps before. I suppose I should really open up the gap between the folded grip and the barrel, but I think it'd end up looking a mess, so I'll just paint that area in black like it's in shadow

Should get a bit more done tomorrow

Andy

[T8247741]

Perfect timing for your WIP, just ordered one off ebay last night, will be following this with interest

[Hunter Rose]

Nice! Great work with the gun

[The_Lancaster]

Nice start! Seems like a well engineered kit?

[Mechanised Dwarf]

84

I have to agree with T8247741 perfect timing as mine arrived last week as well :-) I will be following this and taking notes as we go, so I wish us all good luck!

[BobSolo]

Awesome! Another one of your cool threads to add to my bookmarks for future reference! Along with your other builds you really help us all make better models, so thankyou for taking the time to show this build and with great photography too!

Good luck with the rest of him! .. come to think of it, i did hear a regular Stormtrooper with a female voice on Star Killer base.

I look forward to seeing more

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys

Nice start! Seems like a well engineered kit?

Definitely one of their best so far. Perfect fit and the majority of the seams are hidden or covered by other pieces.

Not as much done over the weekend as I was hoping, what with visiting family and general easter egg overindulgence, but I have got the blaster about finished.

I decided the best way to paint it would be to base coat it with alclad, mask of the bits that would remain silver then spray it white, on the basis that the white would coat better over the alclad than the black plastic

The Alclad White Aluminium looks a bit speckled but most of this will be covered with white

The aluminium was masked, then it was sprayed with Gunze white. It took a few light coats to build up a decent coverage.

The white was gloss coated, then I hand painted the black bits (followed, inevitably, by quite a bit of touch up on the white). It all look quite scrappy in the photos, but everything does with a macro lens. In person it looks reasonably OK

I'm tempted to give it a wash to tidy up some of the demarcation lines, but the original props are pretty clean, so I'll probably leave it as it is. I'm not sure yet whether he'll be holding it, or if I'll put it on the leg clip/holster and have him armed with the baton. If I do use the baton, I'll have to do all this process again for that too, as it has the same colour combinations.

In the mean time, I'll get on with the rest of the trooper

Andy

[Andy Moore]

Little bit more progress tonight.

As I mentioned in the first post, I'm going to add a shoulder pauldron, and the first job was to make a paper template

This is still a work in progress and needs a bit of reshaping. I also need to get the left arm built up to check if the overhang of the pauldron is too much. Compared to the film costume, I think the lower swoop on the coloured section drops down too much and needs shortening. The turn back up to the neck also needs to be sharper

Film Version

To make it, I've got two main options. I can either heat form some plasticard over a buck to get the basic curve, then cut it to shape, or roll out some greenstuff, let it stiffen up, cut it to shape, then form it over the figure's shouder. Either way, I'll make the basic shape by one of those methods, then add the additional padded shapes from thin plastic. I'm going to try the greenstuff version first, as that way I know it'll be a perfect fit on the shoulder.

One other thing I've got to sort out is the orientation of the elbow and upper arm. It's a little hard to explain, but the way the kit builds up, the upper arm armour has the panel line with the rectangular clasp facing outwards, as in the photo below

On the real armour, that panel should face forward, with the top edge of the armour sloping down towards the body (you can see that on the costume shot above). However, the forearm is orientated correctly, so effectively the upper arm is twisted through 90 degrees while the forearm is OK.

The upper arm can swivel at the shoulder, but the elbow joint can't, as the pegs that connect it to the upper and lower arms are square. If you twist the upper arm at the shoulder to get the correct orientation, the forearm is facing inwards as in the photo below

Wow, that was an involved explanation. For those that are still with me, and haven't passed out through boredom, the fix should be relatively simple. I'll just round off the square pegs on the elbow joint, so the forearm can swivel as well. That will probably mean it will no longer be a push fit, so I'll probably have to pack the holes they go in to, to keep them tight.

Hope all that made some vague sense

Andy

[Andy Moore]

Progress is pretty slow on this at the moment, but I've managed to get the basic construction done, apart from the right arm. I've also knocked up a little base for him. This is just a round MDF blank, skinned with plasticard. The lip at the top will be infilled with Das putty to form the groundwork for the forest base, and I'll probably end up drilling and pinning the feet to the base, as he's not very good at standing on his own.

This won't be the final pose, but it probably won't be much different as the figure, despite all the articulation, isn't that poseable. The only rotation on the legs is at the hip and ankle, meaning he stands a bit stiffly. I'm also starting to think there's something slightly out with the torso. It seems a bit elongated, so I may have to shorten the abdomen slightly where it slides under the chest armour.

I've made a first attempt at the shoulder pauldron. It still needs trimming to the final shape, and the padded parts adding, but at the moment the greenstuff is refusing to fully cure. I left it about an hour after rolling it out before cutting it to shape and forming it over the shoulder, and it's now had about 24h to set, but it's still not hard enough to trim it to shape. If it doesn't harden up any more I'll probably have to do another one and leave it a little bit thicker

Andy

[Flag_overlord]

Like the work, especially the detailing on the blaster with the power level showing.

[Andy Moore]

So, the greenstuff finally hardened up enough for me to finish trimming and sanding the pauldron. I added the small padded bit that goes under the neck from an offcut of the putty I'd rolled out for the main piece. Technically it should have five scribed sections, but mines only got four, so it's not 100% accurate, but then the overall shape isn't really accurate anyway, so I'm fine with it as it is. The coloured section should also really be a separate piece, but I wanted to keep the construction relatively simple, and it's close enough. It's main purpose was simply to add a bit of colour to the otherwise monochrome trooper, and it does that well enough

The red was a mix of Tamiya Red and a little Gunze Russet to deepen it a bit. The black's just Tam Black with a tiny bit of grey added to take the edge off it.

If anyone want's to have a go at one, this is the template I made. As I mentioned, it's not perfectly accurate, but close enough. Just print it out so the widest part of the pauldron is 34mm, roll out some epoxy putty, and trim it to shape

Andy

[BobSolo]

Hes comming along nicely, the red really does add some extra Awesome!

[Hockeyboy76]

Sweet work Andy.

[Air-to-Air]

Good work. Thanks for adding the template, that will come in handy one day.

[jake the snake]

That shoulder pad is insane! You are strong with the modeling force Andy!

[Hunter Rose]

Nice work with the pauldron, it looks great and really does pop against the white

[rockpopandchips]

Top notch work.

[Caerbannog]

Nice work. The pauldron is a nice addition. I always thought to build this on (if I build it....) with the blood smeared helmet of Finn but the pauldron is a nice alternative...

René

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys

Nice work. The pauldron is a nice addition. I always thought to build this on (if I build it....) with the blood smeared helmet of Finn but the pauldron is a nice alternative...

René

I'd initially thought of doing Finn with the bloody helmet, but I've always liked the look of troopers with pauldrons so that's what I ended up going with.

I've got a bit of work done on the base. The top of the base has been covered with Das putty up to the top of the platicard lip. A piece of bark was stuck in it and the rest was stippled with a brush to blend it round the wood and give it some texture. The finish isn't really critical as it'll all get covered with the scatter

Andy

[Mike]

Looks great so far Andy

[Caerbannog]

Thanks guys

I'd initially thought of doing Finn with the bloody helmet, but I've always liked the look of troopers with pauldrons so that's what I ended up going with.

(...)

Same here :-)

The Trooper looks very cool on that base

René