Vintage Pick-Me-Up

In a first for this blog (and indeed, my life), I present a Mos Espa custom... The repainted vintage Luke Skywalker X-Wing Pilot figure!

I picked him up cheap in a pretty worn condition with the intention of doing a repaint, after seeing some pretty good repaints online, but as always with these things took a while to get around to it...

This is the original. The colours are nice, but the paint job was badly chipped, and I wanted to dirty it up a bit and improve the accuracy. For one I really wasn't sure if Kenner had given him a black helmet visor or black hair. Confusing either way... Anyway, it's not perfect, but I'm happy with it for a first go.

Things I like:

- Getting a more accurate colour scheme, like the brown belt and the buttons on the control box
- Going for blonde hair!
- Attaching the lightsaber hilt from my RotS Anakin - literally his father's lightsaber
- I now have my own Dagobah landing Luke, without having to pay in excess of £30!

What I learned:

- I went too heavy on the drybrushing
- The flightsuit looks more red than orange. It's not as bad in person, but the shade isn't right

All in all, it was a fun little project, and something that I will probably attempt again, should the right figure come along...

The Waiting Game

Yoda. Always in motion is the future, hmm? Then why did you risk it all by hiding in exile to wait on the fate of two babies rather than try and take down the Emperor in single combat when you had the chance?

Seriously, my friends and I spent hours talking about the prequels before 1999, predominantly based on what had to happen given the established backstory. By 2005, that speculation seemed like a lot of wasted brain effort...

Smoulder vs Breacher!

Those of you familiar with my Flickr photostream may have already seen these... Anyway, Transformers. It's been a while :D

Smoulder and Breacher are two of my most modern Transformers, and it's high time they had a scrap. I've got a pretty solid idea who would win this one, but what do you think?

Setting the Trap

The Rebel Commandos captured, C-3PO does something quite rash for a protocol droid, and draws the Imperial's attention. Within a moment, the Stormtroopers have the driods captured...

Today marks the 29th Anniversary of the UK release of Return of the Jedi; still my second favourite Star Wars film featuring Tatooine!

The Northern Lights

Lyra Silvertongue and Pantalaimon, how do you fare? I'm considering a new niche in toy photography, the oft underlooked and under-priced Golden Compass line. I think I'm hitting a literary mood for the summer anyway, this looks like a nice crossover of interests...

This was taken in February, when we had the snow. As unpredictable as the UK climate is, snow in May would be a bit too much...

EDIT: Sorry for the terribly small lo-res image, hopefully the picture looks a little better now. Basically, I tried to upload it directly from my phone using the Blogger app. I've had countless issues with that app, including a post I can't delete which is showing on my phone as 'publishing', and now it's compressing images badly. The upshot is: uninstalled!