Botwt's Hobby Blog

Ordered Bib Fortuna and a Jawa to complete the diorama, opted not to go with the Gamorrean Guard at this time as I am fairly sure it will look too cluttered.

In the meanwhile I’ve been working away slowly on Jabba…I think he is getting near completion and I’m pretty happy with the results thus far. I painted his eyes a dull red, highlighted with a bright red then a bright orange for his iris and finally a black slit for his pupil. The hookah pipe was painted with a series of greys and whites for the top part of his bong, while a series of greens were used for his feeding bowl below…to make it look more like glass I applied a gloss coat over those areas leaving everything else in a matte finish.

I am still going to attempt to paint his tattoo on his arm, but my free hand skills are terrible so I hope I can do it justice…it doesn’t look too difficult, but we’ll see.

After polling some of the more educated hobbyists on the Wizards of the Coast miniatures I have decided to fore-go getting the General Grievous, Droid Army Commander miniature and go with the Jedi Hunter and Scourge of the Jedi versions. I love the pose of the DAC version of Grievous, but from all accounts he is very flimsy and also very costly, so I think I will use the other two poses to create a unique Grievous for my collection.

The Jedi Hunter model (pictured above and right) is supposed to have great detail nearly comparable to a metal miniature so I will use his head and torso while trying to incorporate the pose of the Scourge model…but will have to wait until I get both of these miniature to make a final determination and plan for my Mr. Grievous.

Stay tuned! 🙂

Had some spare bits laying about and thought I’d put together Nahdar Vebb the Mon Calamari Jedi Knight. First rule of conversions is you never talk about…oh wait, that is Fight Club, ummm first rule is never throw anything away. I found this out early on when I was doing alot of Lord of the Rings conversions and I ditched some little piece that ended up being just what I was looking for about six months later. So no matter what it looks like or how unimportant it seems at the time, find a home for it as it will always come in handy for something along the way. That was the case with the Plo Koon body I had left over…made a perfect starting point for Jedi Knight Vebb. The head was scavenged from a Mon Calamari Mercenary and his hands were grabbed from a left over Kit Fisto…and again the blade of his lightsaber was made from a paperclip.

Progress is coming along on the Jabba the Hutt Diorama. I have Han Solo partially painted and positioned on the based…still need to work on the controls on the side of his carbonite, or nitroglyceride as my wife put it…hehe, container. I think I will also add a Gamorrean guard, Bib Fortuna and a Jawa providing I have enough space and not have it look too cluttered up. I still need to build a little platform for Jabba to lay about on but haven’t found the right material to make it from yet…might just use insulation board.

Here is the base w/Solo and a shot of Jabba Desilijic Tiure (the things you learn from Google eh?) as they stand presently.

I am liking the way Jabba is turning out so far, just wish I was able to remove a nasty mould line on his side…ehhh, no one will notice it in the curio cabinet once it’s in there anyway.

Comments and critique are always welcome. 😀

Being that I love westerns and science fiction this interesting character caught my eye pretty quickly. Cad Bane is some sort of villainous mercenary in the Star Wars Universe and has this wild west look about him…too cool! So of course I checked to see if there is a miniature of this guy that I could paint up…there is…and he runs roughly $60 USD on eBay…screw that!!

Not only is he going for around $60 bucks, but he is plastic and the WotC models are less that stellar in the detail department. If Knight Models made one and it was $60….I’d still have a hell of a time parting with that kind of money for one 30mm model.

So off in search of conversion possibilities I went.

So what kind of alien is he…looks like a Duros, OK, now what Duros models do WotC make that are cheap and decent looking. The Duros Mercenary looked to have the most potential as a starting point.

This guy cost me 39¢.

Then I bumped into Wyrd Miniatures Santiago – Ortega Gunslinger. Now, this is a miniature to build upon! Nice detail, white metal and looks like I’ll need to do a simple head swap and add a hat.

This model ran me $8.99

I added .045 in / 1.15 mm diameter power cables from Dragon Forge for his facial hoses and sculpted the cheek bits out of green stuff.

Here is the completed conversion on a Tatooine desert 30mm base.

So if we’ve been keeping track of cost, I have made this conversion of Cad Bane for a grand total of $9.38 instead of close to $60…now, for being on a budget, it’s not too shabby.

For those of you who play the Star Wars Miniature game I generated a card for you. The stats are the actual ones for the game and the front art was from a fan made card…just combined them together so you can print out a card if you need one.

So, I went with the winning vote of converting Quinlan Vos from the Watchman Jedi with some sculpted hair…what a disaster, but only due to the miniature. I messed around over and over with the hair, then finally got it looking alright. Painted the entire head black to get a feel for how it looked…the sculpting was fine, but wasn’t entirely sold on the face, so I painted the face quickly to see if I could live with the result. It oscillated between being too feminine to being too reserved for the pose…so off it came and on went the actual Quinlan Vos head. I wish it would have worked as that would have saved me $10, but perfection is what I strive for, and while I could have stuck with the original head I wouldn’t have been happy.

So now that the official QV model is being chopped up I decided to also use the lightsaber and hands from that model as well. I trimmed down the ferocious forearms of the Jedi model (the proportions were way off for the model) and then rearranged the lightsaber hilt in his hand to give it a stabbing effect while using his open left hand to guide the stabbing right one.

All in all a much better result than the sculpting effort on the standard head as now I think the model looks much more ferocious and suits the pose.

Thank you guys for the input! 😀

I may be spending hours playing NHL 11, but it doesn’t stop my mind from plotting my next hobby move. So today I purchased Jabba, Solo in carbonite and a nice base to display them on. Here are the pieces I am going to use for this diorama.

The base is from Dragon Forge Design, I think that they have some of the nicest resin bases on the market and are very reasonable in price. Solo will be places on the metal decking area while Jabba is going to be positioned on the cobblestone (over the grate to obscure it from view).

Should have all the pieces by next weekend so I’ll begin assembly then. 🙂