Mr. Black's customs: Ven Zallow v4 update

[IncomT65]

Thanks KF. Making the removable helmet feature was great to do! Too bad clones with heads (AT-TE Gunners, Evo Clones) are still quite expensive for me, but I'm confident prices will drop eventually.

I've seen your work as well. I visited your website when dealing with Jon from customcards.co.uk. I was totally blown away by your 'Buggs Bunny Fett' figure! Plus, your Mandolorians are excellent customs too!

[Glassman6]

Nice marine, very good work, but i rellay like the formula racer guy you made.
Very cool. Cool idea. Do you have a picture from the real ones?

[IncomT65]

It was pretty hard to find good pics of them, but here's one:



Actually,  the lollypop-man was black and had a Vader-esque helmet. I may make him sometime too.

Totally forgot my F-1 guy isn't complete yet. I have to give him a comm unit on his lower back and a wire in his helmet. Oops.

[Nirvana]

I like that Red Bull Pit Crew Member, very nice.

[IncomT65]

Last night I finished working on my Galactic Marine v3. I attempted to make this one more movie accurate, now that we've seen that Sith snapshot of the 3D model used in ROTS. I used the Snowtrooper's torso for this and dremeled the arm sockets to the max.

I'm quite pleased with how things worked out, because there were times I wanted to throw away that chest and grab a Commander's upper body  . I only have mixed feelings about his right arm. Ball jointed arms and swivel joint sockets apparently don't match very easily.







Contrary to Marine v2 I didn't remove the rims of the visor. I need to practise more on that and didn't want to risk screwing up the head, because I made this one for somebody else.

Parts used:

Head, torso, backpack: Saga Snowtrooper
Arms, belt: Clone Commander
Legs: Clone Pilot
Kama: custom made and dyed

[BrentS]

The Galactic Marine turned out great.  If I recall its the first one we've seen made with the "corrected" armor.

The red bull Han is hilarous.  These humorous customs are always great to throw out there.

[IncomT65]

I made this Jedi Master. Nobody you know, just someone I made up. All I have to do is think of a name I guess. Let me know what you think 

[BrentS]

WOW.  I think he looks really good!  I love the parts and the paint.  Very believable.  I think the hair came out great.  I'd love to know how you did that.  My only question, is he blind?  It would appear so based on his eyes.  If you've painted them then the details are washed out in the picture.

[IncomT65]

Thanks, Brent! And nope, nothing wrong with the picture. He's blind. I remembered a line from a Faithless song: "you don't need eyes to see, you need vision". Quite fitting for a Jedi Master.

The hair is plain ol' sewing thread, only a lot of strands next to each other. I put on a bit of all-purpose glue on the head and placed 10 - 12 strands on it. My g/f helped me make the braid, she has a handy way to make one. After the glue dried, I painted black over it, to cover up the glue and parts that were er.... bald.

[Fritzkrieg]

I really like the look of this Jedi master. He reminds me of an Anistazi Jedi from the Clone Wars comics. The braided hair is an especially nice touch.

Good work, keep it up.

[IncomT65]

Thank you as well, Fritzkrieg. I'm very pleased with the hair as well. This guy was therefore a good testcase for another figure I have in mind.

[jedistyle]

very nice jedi. he looks like he has a refined personality. he could be a knights of the old republic jedi as well. i also like how you did the light saber with the ring hook, i've been trying to do that myself but i haven't be sucessful, you did a good job. do you have a recipe for this custom?

[CHEWIE]

Cool Jedi. I really like the lightsaber hilt, and the attachment to the robes.  I never would have thought a Valorum body would work for a Jedi but that really does look cool.

 

[IncomT65]

Chewie, Jedistyle, many thanks as well for the nice comments on this Jedi Master. I'd like to think he was on the Council some 200 years before the events in RotS.

The parts used for this figure were:
- Entire body + head: Valorum (tuff of Valorum's hair cut off)
- Arms: a Qui-Gonn figure. Not sure which one, but any human Jedi arms would work I guess.
- Lightsaber: Qui-Gonn saber, hilt modified a bit to remove it's Qui-Gonn look
- Belt pocket: from AotC Obi-Wan Pilot (that insanely crappy figure)
- Belt: from those plastic rings that hold six-packs together
- Hair: sewing thread

I just made tutorial pics on how to make the removable blade. When I wanted to make pics of how to make the D-ring, the batteries of my camera went dead. And so did the back-up batteries  .

Anyway, here's how I made a Qui-Gonn Ep1 blade into a lightsaber with removable blade:

Take your 'fixed-blade' of choice:


Cut the blade off precisely at the emitter. Using a pick or a push pin, make holes in the blade and the hilt, in a manner that the holes are at the same position on both parts. Do this very carefully, by gently but firmly twisting the pick/pin in the parts. Only has to be 3 or 4 mm.:


Take a paperclip and superglue one end in the blade:


Cut off the paperclip so that the 'peg' in the blade is too long. Place the blade in the hole in the hilt and mark where the peg enters the hilt. This way you know how deep the hole in the hilt is and how long the peg has to be. I just held my thumbnail on the spot and eyeballed the length:


Place the blade in the hilt and check if it doesn't fall out easily. If so, drop a little superglue on the peg, put it in the hilt and very slowly turn the blade until the glue starts to settle. Familiar to tightening joints, not unknown to you, I'm sure:




I read the How-to on FFURG, but there were no pics, but it's that method I used. FFURG also has a How-to on making D-rings, but I approached that a bit differently. When my batteries are done reloading, I'll make pics of that as well, ok?

[BrentS]

Thanks for the photo tutorial.  You may want to push this into another thread so that Jeff can link this up to our sticky thread with other tutorials and things.   I'm looking forward to seeing the D-Ring tutorial too!