Topic: Clonehead's Custom Figures reloaded

[Clonehead]

TY, buddy! I knew that you would like it. It's kind of nice getting back to my other job for a change, as you said, Tamer.
  Now lets get started on that extra helmet........
Using a casting of a hollow comic pack tie fighter pilot's helmet, the plan is to add accessories to make it look like an ATAT driver's helmet in shape but paint it up to work for the camo driver's body.
The casting that I chose had a couple of airbubble holes in it including one in a sensitave area on one front tip of his crest that I needed to address. As a cheat, I drilled a couple of wire lengths into these holes to fill them or, in the case of the front crest hole to make it easier to fill with paint. This one terminated where that front corner would normally be, that way, the paint build up in that negative area would be easier. These wire bits were trimmed to terminate flush with where the resin should have.
  Unsurprisingly, the helmet didn't quite fit over the figure's head so some carving with the x-acto and wood chisel was required.   There, the helmet fits the head how I like and it's time for the first coat of paint. See how that front corner filled in?
  Now Tamer, If you are going to request little imperial symbols on his forehead, I might just pull some of my hair out.
That's not to say that I won't try it, I just don't know how good it will look. I see that we have gained a couple of new members in that last few days. Don't be afraid to post here, guys.We would love to hear from you and I promise that we won't bite. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have about anything that I'm doing here.

[Clonehead]

Wanted to take a break from this subject for a moment to show some pics of a 12 inch Shocktrooper that I did one time. I told ReconSgt that I would find these pics after seeing his 12 inch 501st figure in his customs thread. I used Testors oil based paints on the figure plus I added the shockie's graphics to the box art with a red felt-tip pen and wrapped him back up in it. This was a year and a half to two years ago.
  The ebayer's went wild for this one.

[Clonehead]

Submit my ideas to hasbro, huh? I think that they would laugh and shake their head.
Thanks for your comments, as always. Yeah, they liked the shockie. They always liked the custom carded stuff. It was around Christmas time and I had listed him to start at 99 cents. as I remember, I think the winning bid was around $80.
I can see that Tamer has been checking so I had better post an update.
  After some comparrison I can see some more subtile differances than I had noticed before inbetween the ATAT helmet and the hollow comic pack tie pilot helmet. Since Tamer is such a die-hard atat driver fan, I changed my mind and decided to hollow out the factory driver helmet that was originaly on his driver. The factory plastic is softer than the resin and it didn't take much more than an hour to whittle out as much material as I dared so that this helmet fit like the other ones. Sure I had to start over again but I figured it might be quicker to paint, this way and I wouldn't have to modify it further. As for the resin pilot helmet, I might paint it up as well, that way, I could try a different paint scheme and Tamer could play musical helmets.

[Clonehead]

Three shots of the paint work on the factory ATAT helmet, thus far. Some more detail work is required prior to applying the camo. As for the imperial symbols, to me, the red was too harsh to go with the brown so I covered them with a thin see-thru layer of paint and may try to re-do them with a black fine tip marker. If it doesn't work out, I will cover them up completley. Now the eyes are still black and I will take this helmet as close to completion as possible before asking Tamer his final decision on their color. Shawn, you had mentioned that you may perfer them black.
  The pics don't do the helmet justice as I was unsure how this paint scheme would look until after I got it this far. In person,to me, it's gonna look sharper than I thought it would.
  Thanks for the FP story, Tamer. you are too kind.

[Clonehead]

I've been doing some painting on these two helmets and took a break to do another model kit review but took this one pic to show my progress.
  The detail painting is done on the stock hollow atat driver helmet. All that remains is the camo on the brown parts.
Sorry Tamer, I tried the felt-tip pen thing on the imperial symbols but it was just too small. some water slide decals from a model kit would be perfict for this. The cast resin pilot helmet, I am painting pretty much with the same color scheme but opposite from the stock helmet as far as what parts are white and what parts are brown. I will leave the stock helmet's eyes black and paint the resin helmet's blue. That way, you don't have to choose. I will still have to find something to fab up the air hose receivers onto the back of the resin helmet.
More pics, later.

[Clonehead]

Initial detail painting is complete on the two extra helmets. I gotta admit that I have reservations about camoing up these two latter ones but that is probably because I was a stickler to make their paint jobs as flawless as possible up to this point. Besides, these latter two have a bigger amount of brown and wouldn't look right on the fig unless they included the fig's camo. I have also painted the resin tie pilot helmet's eyes blue.

[Clonehead]

Let the camo application begin......
  Here are pics of the one tie pilot helmet after the camo scheme was applied. I have touched it up back and forth with the two camo colors and still need to touch it up a bit around the camo with the base brown color. That leaves one more helmet to camo, recieving holes drilled in the one's back cylindars, and air cylindars to be fabbed for the other.
  How are we looking, Shawn?

[Clonehead]

Here are a couple of shots with the resin tie pilot helmet posed on the fig for a camo comparrison. And then a couple of shots of the camoed stock ATAT driver helmet. Whew! I'm about camoed out.

[Tamer]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SWEETEST DAGGONE FIG I HAVE LAID EYES ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Clonehead]

Now Tamer, take it easy there pal............
  I appreciate it, my friend. I wanted to do this one to get you pumped up and fell in love with the project early on.
Wouldn't you rather I held onto this one and you take this snow camo Jar Jar that I've been working on instead?

  It was worth a try.

I didn't do any work on this project, today, but did take some pics of him wearing the third helmet, the factory hollowed out ATAT driver helmet.
  Also, I thought you would like a pic of him wearing the first one and holding the other two.
Emporer's voice........"you want this, don't you?"

[Clonehead]

Jonesing huh? I'm sorry about that. Thanks you for your comments. I knew you would like the shot of him holding the helmets.
  Got some shots here of the cylinder fabrication for the resin tie pilot helmet.
1st shot  I have cut and cleaned up the ends of some lengths of sprue from the sprue runners from a plastic model kit to use as our cylinders.
2nd shot  I have drilled holes in either end of these sprue pieces and glued wire lengths coming out of one end. These will be cut into short nubs to be a detail to the top of the mounted cylinder.
3rd shot the nubs are present on the top of the now mounted but unpainted cylinders. Here, you can see by comparing with the factory ATAT helmet that my fabbed cylinders are a bit bigger than the factory ones.
4th shot  another comparrison shot.

[Clonehead]

1st shot   another comparrison shot
2nd shot  showing how the figures hose ends look attached to the new helmet cylinders
3rd shot  showing the attached hoses to the atat helmet for comparrison
4th shot  the painting of the new cylinders is complete. this shot is a bit fuzzy but I painted the cylinders the same color grey as is used for the camo and painted the top and bottoms flat black with a ring of black extending a bit down the side from the top and bottom.
It's a wrap, folks! That's all she wrote for this custom. I may have to dig out my atst to pose him with for a pic, later.

[Clonehead]

Needing something to work on since the Tamer project was wrapping up, I chose to dig out a ROTS AT-RT and driver that I had started to customize for another project and had abandoned, years ago.
  I had started to paint this atrt and driver to have orange graphics for a group scene dio that I had planned a long time ago and had split up the componants of the planned dio for other projects.
  My new plan is to possibly give this ATRT and driver a new Desert ops theme. I'm not sure how this will turn out but Iam working on it and I am hopeful. I have already planned on using a mix helmet for the driver as well as some other extra accessories.

[Clonehead]

I've been working on this driver fig for the Desert ops AT-RT.
 The combo hollow resin biker scout helmet with the nose and nozzles from the ATAT driver's face fit the neck nub of the ATRT drivers body almost perfict so I made no modifications there. I furredout part of his helmet behind where the cheek nozzles meet the bikerscout face with cut and shaped lengths of wire insulation glued in place and have painted the helmet and body a sandy yellow with dark brown detail lines and belts. The visor got the same light blue color, and the light brown part of his pauldron and one equipment bag on his belt were painted khaki. I may add another ammo pouch to him or perhaps a pair of microbinoculars on a strap.

[Clonehead]

Got a couple of shots of the driver and his mount although the atrt doesnt look alot different. i have painted the seat brown and have detail painted his handle bars and equipment behind the seats a bit. Now, I am detailing the seams and cracks in the vehicles armor which I will soften and weather over eventually. I plan on hanging some extra equipment on the atrt including a painted gm backpack, a casted pistol holster on the cab under the handlebars on the right side, a bandolire with a grenade case and ammo pouch, possibly a strapped rifle. What else would this vehicle need?

It's obvious that I need to put together some kind of light box for taking my pics. I'm getting tired of those darker shots.