Topic: Clonehead's Custom Figures reloaded

[Clonehead]

Let's get away from those darn jeg's eyes for a bit, shall we?
  I had been putting off working on his pauldron as I knew that it might be a trickey chore but I need to get it out of the way. Let's try something new, shall we?
In the first shot, you can see that I have touched up Rex's hairline with some paint mixed to match his skintone. In that shot, he is wearing the trimmed down clone commander pauldron. I wasn't sure which side I wanted to face forward and hadn't cut off the angled left shoulder pads as of yet.

In the second shot, I have trimmed off the left pads, and have marked where I want to cut the right side pads to more match the length and angle as shown in shot 3 The existing plate seperation cracks will be filled in later.
I will also have to cut a new notch at the end of each angle where the new plate length ends and drops to the lower material of the pauldron.
  How come every time I find a Rex picture, his Jeg eyes look different?

In shot 4, I have chose an angled area of the plastic packaging of a titanium to cut for the remaining front and back pieces of his pauldron.

[Clonehead]

Prior to cutting the titanium plastic, I had held the trimmed remaining pauldron piece next to the plastic and kind of traced the shape that I needed with a fine tip pen. I then, cut it out large, trimmed it to fit the corrisponding side of the pauldron and then superglued it into place. This plastic is stiff but semi moldable which helps matters as you can kind of shape it to fit.  After the glue dries, I will trim the outside of this new plastic to look right and then start to fab the individual plates to wrap around and sit on top of this plastic.

[Clonehead]

After the glue dried, I tried the piece onto the fig's body, marked where I needed to trim some more on the outside edge, and marked where I wanted the separate pieces of armor to lay.

I marked and cut some paper using adds from my paper, to serve as the individual armor pieces for the scratchbuilt part of the pauldron. I felt that paper would be thick enough and would still easily conform to the curved pauldron piece.
  Sizing and cutting these pieces was a tedious chore. I glued these paper pieces to the pauldron using a mix of water and white glue. That way, the wet paper would more easily conform to the curvature of the pauldron.
Last two shots, time for a final test-fit before I paint anything on the pauldron.

[Clonehead]

One more shot of the final fit, and two shots of the new pauldron with the stock seperations in the plates of the shoulder area filled in with paper strips and white glue. I have painted the cracks in-between armor plates and around the outside edge, flat black.

[Clonehead]

Here are some shots of the complete pauldron with paint.

[Clonehead]

A couple more shots. Don't mind that grey paint in the recessed cheek areas or on the figure's belly area. That was an idea that wasn't going to pan out and I will repaint those areas white.

[Clonehead]

Got one last update for tonight on this fig.
First, here's a pauldron shot with out his helmet on.

Now, I have been telling you that the helmet's optical device has been bugging me. I intend to replace it using a thin guage piece of wire and part of a resin-cast Jango Fett rangefinder that I had in the basement, part of a ruined Mando helmet.

Cutting off the stock flexable rangefinder was easy enough but thinning down it's square shaped base was a little more challenging. Working with resin is so much easier.
 After I got the mount thinned, I drilled a hole down into it with the trusty pinvise, trimmed and cleaned up the optical end of the resin rangefinder from that partial helmet, which also got a hole drilled up into it.
  I cut me a length of wire, glued the bottom part, first, then trimmed the top part to a taller height before gluing that resin optical part onto it.
  There, that's the height I was looking for. The optic part is closer to the right shape, and the stock is now the right thickness and shape. a round rod rather than a square tube.

[Clonehead]

Darn! I changed the page again. Make sure and look back a page or two to see how I made that pauldron.

Four more shots of the new rangefinder after some grey paint and some white touchups to the helmet. I had painted over the grey color that I had painted in the recessed areas of the helmet's cheeks, leaving a thin line of grey twards the top of the recessed area emulating a shadow and forcing the look of more depth.
  I also added some thin yellow hashmarks above the clone's right eye like Rex has.
He is shaping up, folks. It's time to move onto modding his kama, next.

[Clonehead]

Not much of an update today, folks. Work has been too much of a bear.
  It's time to work on Rex's kama.
In the first shot, here is the stock kama with some of the red piping painted over with a primer coat of flat white.
In the second shot, I have taken the sprue cutters and trimmed the lower front straps of the belt off and cut the square ammo boxes off. I also trimmed the belt back to the sides to accommodate the relocation of the square ammo boxes.
If all works out, I should be able to wrap up this fig, this weekend.

[Clonehead]

Well, I got up early this morning and started working on Rex's kama.
 I broke out the Tamya dark grey acrylic and repainted the outside of the kama and finished primer coating the belts and piping with flat white.
 I trimmed out the sides where the ammo boxes were to be repositioned and drilled and glued some fine craft wire to serve as pins to hold the ammo boxes in place. After drilling and gluing the ammo boxes home, I broke out the blue and painted the kama's piping.
 I need to touch up the grey and white a bit and then it will be time to put it back on Rex and start the scratchbuilding process of the belt.

[Clonehead]

Got time for a quick update before my trip to Wallyworld.
  I touched up the grey paint on the inside and outside of the kama and touched up the white paint on the belts.
I drilled a couple of holes into the mounting ring just inside of the relocated ammo boxes and cut a piece of craft wire to glue the kama back around his waist tightly. As before, this wire will become a support for the scratchbuilt belt assembly and the whole kama will be able to spin around his waist like from the factory.

[Clonehead]

I found this, my favorite pic of the desert camo heavy gunner in my ebay picture manager and didnt think that I had ever posted it before, so I threw it in, tonight.

[Clonehead]

I hear you on rereleasing the GM, buddy. Yeah, the heavy gunner fig was always one of the favorites that I shouldn't have let go. I may have to do another one like him, one of these days.

I got some update pics for the Rex fig, here.
In the first shot, I have built the belt using three layers of plastic strip cut from a build a droid parts container, and have measured and marked where the seperation lines in the belt are to be using a fine tip mechanical pencil.
  Where I cut the ammo boxes from their stock position, I was left with a gap on either side where the top of the kama should meet the belt. I have patched these areas using paper clippings and strips of the same plastic glued into place.

In shots 2-4 you can see that I have painted these patch areas, etched the seperation lines and painted the belt, and I even painted that one arm strap that Lighuen had pointed out. I decided to leave the outer part of the boxes hung on that strap white but painted the recessed inner part of those two boxes for details sake.
  There is a correction I should probably make to the bottom of his two jeg eyes that I havent gotten around to yet where the bottom line on each side starts from the outside aiming in but dies out before reaching the inside lines that stretch up.
  Should I do this? Yes or no?
 
As with a lot of other projects, twards the end, I am ready to work on something new.

I am ready to work the Snow Mando a little closer twards completion, have a CW skinny clone to paint up for ebay fodder, and need to get started on that contest prize mando that I had mentioned.

[Clonehead]

Looks like I'm pretty close to a final reveal on the Rex fig but first, I had made a pre production troubleshooting sketch last night on the upcoming ATAT walker project and I promised Tamer that I would show them when I drew em.
  I still have several sketches to do just to work out some engineering questions on this project and probably need to ink this one so that it will be easier to see but here is a basic top view of our walker with a rear mounted gun mounted in an area that used to be enclosed but will now be open.
  I will work out how and what to do with the existing part of the walkers body panels so that it can be posed either open like this, or enclosed like a stock walker.

[Clonehead]

Here you go, Shawn. I inked that one and did another of a side view. Once I get more familiar with the walker's shape and these crazy things called pencils that I never use anymore, I will work up some sketches of the side panels in their down positions.