Hey everyone! This is my first post, although I've been lurking and being blown away by a lot of the customs on here for a couple of months. I've been into customizing toys for a few years now, but a lot of what I've done so far comes more under the heading of repair and minor alterations. I have an almost 5-year old son who is central to my getting back into Star Wars collecting, and he knows to just leave broken toys on my workspace desk, where they'll be dremeled and glued back to life.
Ever since we got the new big AT-AT for the lad this last xmas, I've felt the need for a commander to go with it. Couldn't seem to find one though; they're out there but I live in Japan where Star Wars figures are pretty darn expensive and aren't even sold at TRU or other regular retail stores anymore. (I've come across some good deals with vendors on Amazon over here and in thrift shops, but it's more just sifting through what's available rather than shopping with particular figures in mind.) That scarcity is also why I'm relatively hesitant to make permanent alterations. Hence, the female AT-AT commander was assembled without cutting or painting the original figure parts. (Comic Pack Deena Shan body, Princess Leia head, AT-ST Pilot Han Solo helmet.)
Once I got my hands on a somewhat suitable helmet, I was satisfied for a while, but realized I needed an armored chestplate. After putting it off for a long time, a couple weeks ago I got to work on a budget method. Using milliput, made a mold (really just an impression) from a snowtrooper's chestplate (using lip balm as a mold-release agent, ghetto but it works) and shaved down the sides a bit. After the mold had cured I used more milliput to make the piece. First try came out pretty badly, I tried greasing up the figure with lip balm and pressing her into the untextured putty on the reverse side while it was in the mold, resulting in a piece that just didn't fit the figure right, so last weekend I tried again. This time I pulled the piece out of the mold before it had cured and pressed it onto the figure to get the contours right, then let the putty cure under a 100W light bulb for a while. A bit of sanding and then I gave it a shot of gray primer and was about ready to call it done, even though the armor details were horribly smudged. (I should mention that I'm very interested in getting into resin casting, but for now that road remains untaken)
Then Sunday morning I woke up and had an epiphany: use sheet styrene to make sharper details on the armor. I dremeled out the abdominal square area and first attempted to sculpt some details in fine white milliput, also filling in a big concave area on the chest piece.
That still didn't look right so I prepared a similarly-sized square of styrene with the middle cut out (micro-sizes here so I was basically at the limits of my miniature modeling ability) and then later cut out an even smaller square with some random bits stuck on it to simulate the little faders and such. For the vertical rectangular area I drilled holes and stuck pinheads in them. (I spent a whole evening once cutting the heads off of pins for another project and still have a bunch.) I know the buttons aren't really bright red on General Veers' armor, but I couldn't resist. For the rank bars I took another practically microscopic scrap of styrene, scribed some lines into it, painting first in silver and then in red and blue and using a toothpick to clean out the spaces between the squares.
Well, it's not 100% movie accurate, and has a few rough spots that give it away as a handmade piece, but I'm pretty satisfied with it. The armor fastens to the figure using poster-tack putty. Now I just need to take some pics of this commander at the helm of a walker!
I'll be posting some more WIPs of other projects soon, but for now I gotta get to sleep!
