Magic of Myth: the Diorama

[fettsei]

Ditto on sammy's idea. That would really emphasize the whole idea in the a fantastic way!

Glad to see the effort put forth for your wife. Marriage is a precious thing.

Love the pics!

[JediKnutt]

Brilliant idea! Although be VERY careful when customizing your own wife. Dangerous, very dangerous. "That's supposed to be ME???"

[New_Bornalex]

Customize my wife? You mean like put her head on another woman's body? Hmmmm... Do I use the boil and pop for that?

Just kidding. Actually, I'm way ahead of you guys. I had this same idea while at work the other night. The torso for her is easy... she was expecting our oldest son at the time, and I saw an extra pregnant Padme the other day while searching through the fodder. And I think I have some Baroness hair from a failed attempt at Ysanne Isard that will work.

I didn't give much thought to what recipe to use for myself, other than needing to find the shoulder-shot videocamera accessory that came with 'Animal' from the Godzilla movie... which just so happened to also come out in 1998, the same year we went to DC for this MoM exhibit!

I think the little camcorder is in a box that I saw the other day, let me make myself a note.

And, dang it, wouldn't you know, as I'm typing this, it dawns on me that I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans that day. I guess I'll have to go buy another Mutt Williams!

Alex

[New_Bornalex]

Okay, am I the only one who can't get the 'add to clipboard' feature of the RS photopost to work like it normally does?

Anyway, I can still post these as thumbnails.

The Leia figure that I posted earlier was slightly more involved than a simple repaint. The mannequin at the MoM exhibit had the hood up, but it was further forward on the head, and there were no cinnamon-bun 'Star Puffs' on the side of its head either.



But since I had several extra of this Leia figure from the ANH tin set, and also since the right arm's pose was pretty good, I decided to make it work.



I used some Super Sculpey to make the edge of the hood further forward. I also made a new stand for the 'mind probe' because at the MoM it only came up to the Stormtrooper's knee. While molding the shape of the stand, also from Super Sculpey, I pressed a nearby Darth Vader cape into it to give it a fabric texture.



I then painted Leia's face and hands matte black with acrylic paint. This photo shows it before the new Sculpey extension of the hood was painted white.



I painted the probe's stand black, then did a drybrushed layer of light blue over that.

Bear in mind, I am recreating one specific day that we saw an exhibit which did undergo changes from time to time. When you surf the net you will find pics of the mannequins and props in different positions at the various venues, and even sometimes at the same museum things were changed. I saw several pics of the mind probe suspended on a black metal bracket, but when we saw it, it was on some support covered in fabric.



Neither the Stormtrooper figure nor the probe accessory itself are permanently damaged for this diorama. I'm trying to customize as little as possible.

The only other thing in the 'Call to Adventure' area when we were there was an 8-foot long Star Destroyer. Anybody know of a Star Destroyer toy that's approximately 5.25" long so it's the right size in scale with these figures?

Alex

[New_Bornalex]

Wise and Helpful Guide

I decided to tweak the Ben Kenobi custom that my pal Pete had made. I'd recently used a Flashback 'Sebastian Shaw' Anakin face for a Marcus Brody custom, and the body had a nice neutral pose.



So this is the resultant hybrid. That's the head, torso, and also the pelvis (unseen) of Pete's custom, with the arms, legs, skirt, and robe of the Anakin figure.

I cut off the hands so it would look like just fabric hanging down, and I repainted the glossier black face with a matte black to match my Leia custom.



At the exhibit, the Ben film costume was posed along with a bandolier-less Tusken costume and a Jawa costume.

The vintage-style Tusken action figure's bandolier is removable without damaging it, though I recommend boiling it first. Unfortunately, the torso is sculpted with deep grooves to offset the bandoliers, so I put the cloth cloak back on him afterward. He still needs the collar-tube thing, which will have to be scratch-made.

The Jawa's 'vest' has been removed, and he's been given the Jawa ion blaster from a different action figure.

Alex

[New_Bornalex]

I'll need to procure an extra of the correct Han figure, so for now we'll skip The Threshold and instead concentrate on Into the Labyrinth...

(No, not the Jim Henson movie starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. In this case, the Labyrinth is represented by the Death Star.)



That's a pretty good pic, except when we saw it, the mouse droid was on a pedestal behind and to the right of the Officer mannequin.

So look at the ridiculous pose of this mannequin and tell me the wide-legged Jerjerrod figure isn't (finally) PERFECT for something!

I found two partial Jerjerrod's in my fodder and pieced them together. I'm not sure, but the arms may be from some other Imperial figure. Once I removed the fleshtone hands (to test some black gloved hands from another figure), I discovered the arms would pose perfectly against the waist, so I just left the hands out entirely.



I also decided to use a Luke/Lt.Jundland hat on a Sculpey head, in part because the Jerjerrod hat is positioned well above his eyebrows, while the mannequin hat was halfway down the bridge of the nose.

I pre-painted the neckpost black and began sculpting an intentionally simplistic 'mannequin' face. Some black paint on the neck got swirled into the Super Sculpey, and at one point I thought the head strongly resembled a Ralph McQuarrie sketch for ESB.



Once the hat was positioned on the still-soft Sculpey, it changed the shape of the head a bit. And once I had painted it matte black...



... I kept thinking it looked like Odo from Deep Space Nine! LOL

Finished shot:



Alex

[New_Bornalex]

So it occurred to me that some of the 'mannequins' don't really have to be customized. If their helmets are removable, I can accomplish the 'black face' look with a small piece of black felt. This is faster than painting them and they're not permanently damaged.



Another time-saver... and money-saver and energy-saver... was the realization that I had several spare ANH tin-set Darth Vader figures already on hand. (Like the tin-set Leia used above, these were bonus figures from my efforts to army-build that removable helmet Sandtrooper.)

I was *this* close to buying another of the new Vaders with the three-stage helmet, so I could cut off the head and use the lower 'jaw' section of the helmet for this little display:



But the tin-set Vader's lower jaw is removable with a simple boil and pop. Pose it with the other helmet pieces from the new Vader, et voila!



Alex

[JediKnutt]

Was the Vader helmet display on that type of metal sheet? If so, they have that by the sheet (in plastic) at HobbyTown USA. Made by Plastruct. Also available at their website.Plastruct

[New_Bornalex]

I'll have to check my videotape. He's at the end of the exhibit, and I haven't gotten that far yet. But if I recall correctly, the metal sheeting was used just for the 'official' photos, which often differed from the real displays.

For instance, in the official photo, Ben Kenobi was holding his saber hilt in a slightly outstretched right hand.



But when we were there in person, his arms were at his sides with the mannequin hands hidden from view... and his saber hilt-- for some unfathomable reason-- was in a display with Hoth Luke and the Wampa!

If it turns out I do need the metal flooring, thanks for the tip. My only other idea was to make a press-mold of the floor of the GIJoe Warthog vehicle or something like that, and then do a positive cast. But it would be really hard to get that perfectly flat.

Alex

[New_Bornalex]

The only other thing in the 'Call to Adventure' area when we were there was an 8-foot long Star Destroyer. Anybody know of a Star Destroyer toy that's approximately 5.25" long so it's the right size in scale with these figures?

Does anyone know how big this Starship Battles #35 Star Destroyer is?



Alex