Happy Christmas to me! Hasbro Boba Fett EE-3 Blaster Modification

It's been a while since I spent any time in my 'workshop of dreams', partly due to indecision but mainly due to the fact I've been acting the rock and roller and recording a new album with End Of Level Boss it's gonna be a corker... some very wierd grooves and heavy riffery will be up soon for your delectation either here... www.myspace.com/endoflevelboss or here... http://www.facebook.com/endoflevelbossmusic

Meanwhile a fairly straightforward modification project has landed on my interalactic workbench. The conversion of the Hasbro Boba Fett blaster from a kids scale to MAN scale (please use husky voice here).

Seriously though...it doesn't get much cooler than this dude, and concidentally he's handling the weapon in question as well as just oozing general shit the bed badassness...

The 'off the shelf' toy is actually pretty good considering it's meant for kids..but well..we all know that Star Wars kids are usually in thier mid 30's. Not exactly screen accurate but I'm not gonna cry myself to sleep over two inches of plastic that's missing from the 'proper' version...boohooooo.....

Introducing...The Toy

Below is the comparison pic of the toy and the actual prop (originally adapted from a WW1 British army Webley Flare gun)

As you can see the Toy comes up a little bit short-scale, To better fit into 8 year old bounty hunter's mitts no doubt. But I'm no 8 year old (at least not physically..although that's also debatable) so it's onto the bench and under the knife for this baby.

So in this adult child's mind I reasoned firstly that the least sculpture heavy way to progress would be to add some inchage to the shoulder stock and secondly that the handgrip could be more comfortable for my hamfisted farmers digits.

First and easiest by far (bar almost slicing the end of my thumb off with the scalpel) was removing the handgrip from a waterpistol from my box of 'bits'

as you can see from the test fitting photo below it adds the necassary inch or so required for a comfortable grip.

Before...

After...

Just needs a bit more filler to attach seamlessly and we're good to go.
Next, the shoulder stock...

So after deciding with the help of a photoshop mockup where to cut...I cut the child sized stock into three parts.

Then using a supremely dodgy corrugated cardboard filler and some jiggery pokery (advanced technical term) I attached it all together to extend the stock by approximately 3 inches or so

aaah..much better...

lastly, at least for this update, I began to fill out the gaps with Fimo airdry sculpting clay. Leaving me with the below state of affairs. Should be ready to sand flush in 24 hours.

I've also filled in all the screw holes that reveal it as a toy and will now await the drying of the filler clay before moving to stage 2...sanding and primer undercoat! (ooh 'citin')

until the next time...which could be a while due to Christmas alcoholism...

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.

Well that didn't take long....E11 Blaster - DONE!

For the amount of time this mod took the results are, as always in my humble opinion, rather spacetastic.
All the parts pained, weathered and glued in place, the scope set and active, front and back, even the super cool curly wires added to the counter and rangefinder for that extra '77 vibe. AND the sound and lights still work!!!

It's almost a shame I've got to part with it soon....but such is commerce.

have a butchers hook at the finished jobbie, here it is (bottom) compared with my Sterling cast screen accurate resin E11 (top)

Curly wires...

Rear of the scope

Front of the scope

Weathering detail on front cooling fins

LOOK LASERS!!!

looks anything but a toy now, That's gonna make some happy trooper even more deadly looking! And now for something completely different..well, not much but..

THE CLONE TROOPER HELMET PROJECT - PHASE 1 COMPLETE

The other side of the visor add-ins is complete, it's taken a long time to accomplish this as I've been glueing it on literally inch by inch so the plasticard doesn't buckle or warp. There's a little bit of "roughness" to it but that's fine by me as it's going to be painted and weathered to look used and battle scarred .

below you can see just how much bigger the original visor was...visibility is severely reduced from the weaers point of view but hey, this is not supposed to be useful, its supposed to look COOOOOOL!

 and here she is hastily put together with the rest of the helmet elements...

Much, much, much more work to be done yet...updates as soon as..

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.

Star Wars overload....E-11 Blaster build and Clone Trooper Helmet

While I biuld up the confidence, not to mention the designs for my promised comic style version of the Judge Dredd Lawgiver (based on) I've not been lazy...It has fallen to me to convert two Hasbro Star Wars toy items to be more screen accurate and realistic the first and by far the easiest is the toy Stormtrooper Blaster that's been around since the 70's, It gave me much joy as a junior trooper and obviously still does...here's how it looks off the shelf....

pretty much the same nowadays as it did back in good old '77 except now with a funky paint job...there's worse ones out there believe me! (see below)
Now the beast way to make the best out of these less than screen accurate renderings is to get yourself a resin kit that modifies the worst elements to make them more passable...the below pic is of one such kit (not my pic or horrible blaster, but you get the idea)

I've started prepping the toy and kit parts with an undercoat of primer and a second coat of chrome/silver and it just remains to overcoat with a black, either metallic or matte (your choice) and glue it all together and then proceed to weather/age it with nice knocks and scratches.

All too easy you think? well, frankly it is fairly trouble free and needs minimal prep...but...BUT...for this baby I'm going to recreate my patented Baronial Starwarsian wonder - The realistic looking scope! HOORAY i hear you cry...

With my scope graphic painstakingly designed in Photoshop including real Aurek Besh characters (go nerds!!)...

I print it onto a sticky back transparency and sandwich it with a layer of reflective material, in this instance some Hi Spec Eroski aluminium foil, no expense spared. Then glue it to a pre-prepared mount that sits nicely inside the hacked up toy scope...

Giving it the proper distance from the little cannibalised toy telescope lens that sits on top of it, thus creating the illusion of depth... please see example B and C.

Example B.

Example C.

Cool huh? I think so too. But now I have to wait for all the paint to dry on the prepped parts before I can proceed. So what can I do in the meantime? Watch X-Factor? um..no thanks..watch Battlestar Galactica again from the beginning?..maybe...or..I could begin with project number 2..concurrent Star Wars modificationalizing...

THE CLONE TROOPER HELMET PROJECT - PHASE 1

There's a lot of Clone Trooper Helmet variants out there, costing from £30 to £300. I dunno about you but I'm not insane enough to spend the equivalent of a flight to Sweden on a dust catching relic, no matter how obsessed I am with all things Star Wars so I went for the do-it-yourself option. Again a Hasbro toy but a pretty well designed and very durable one at that. Here's the original clone bucket as seen in the movies...

Here's a very expensive prop replica...

 and here is the toy version that I picked up on ebay for about £15...

as you can see, there's not a lot in it. However, the Hasbro toy version has loads of vents, spaces and a MASSIVE oversized visor so it needs the gaps to filled, the buttons for the voice features to be sanded and glued and probably after all that a decent paint job so it doesn't look so shiny whity virgin and new.

So that's how it looks off the shelf, this is how it looks after screwdriver attack!!!!...

LOTS of bits do be modified...The first and most exciting one is the visor. I cut an overlay using a paper template onto my trusty friend plasticard...here is the first side glued so you can see the difference from the original...

Simply superglued on and trimmed with a nice razor sharp scalpel for uniformity. It makes a massive difference already!

This is just the beginning for both projects and there's a fair few man hours to go and fumes to inhale from toxic chemicals..here's to paranoid hallucinations and vomiting in the name of NERD.

stay tuned for more updates...

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.

GRUD! Almost done!

Happy days are here..all the cosmetics are done...I've sanded off the corners of the foregrip boxes to make them look less like plasticard abominations and more like the rubbery molded effect the real prop has. I also sanded the top edges of the templates glued onto the sides as they also looked far to conspicuous.  Everything has been painted  - the top half in a metallic gloss black, the lower half and handgrip in a soft matte black and the chrome parts..well..chrome. A couple of little detail screws have gone in and DROKK! it's all looking pretty good if I do say so myself.

For geekmatic comparisons here's the orignal Playstation light gun....

and here's the original prop from the movie...

and after 50 years hard labour on Aspen penal colony, here's my effort...

Now the final stages are yet to be completed - It needs two LED's installed at the rear for the power up lights (red and blue) and the battery pack is under construction so the ammo selector lights at the front of the weapon light up when the trigger is pulled..as soon as that's done I'm out on my Lawmaster dispensing Hi-Ex justice to all the local perps

Next project  - Comic version Lawgiver...stay tuned!

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.

Lawgiver progress...detail and undercoat

I'm 90% done with the physical mods of this project. All templates except the final vents on the foregrip are affixed. The vents are proving to be quite tricky with eleven very small and very precise cut outs. I've ruined 2 so far trying various techniques and so I'm am finally gonna go for the thinner plasticard (0.5mm) to enable easier and more precise cuts.

here's progress pics thus far....

Justice Department Eagle detail for the right side

left side - undercoated with primer

Right side showing eagle detail - also undercoated with primer

I've also made progress on the badge templates...everything is there...In theory, all thats left is to isolate each layer, print and cut!

And finally, whilst strolling nonchalently around a large and overwhelmingly evil supermarket chain looking for trouble, I found the NERF Nightfinder dart shooting toy gun and it immediately leapt into my basket for the next project...Here's a very hurried Photoshop mock up of what could come to pass should I get my act together....a REAL Lawgiver no less!!

Until next time....keep it geeky!

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.

I AM THE LAW...or I WILL BE THE LAW...SOON...Dredd Lawgiver update

I'm kinda getting into this plastic cutting lark, it's fun, fairly quick to get results and pretty sturdy for construction. Thats right I said construction..I put aside my weak excuses and made the leap from 2D to 3D

First and foremost is the foregrip box...

I've just superglued the edges, sealed with some electrical tape and cut a rubber washer into 4 pieces to act as little support braces on each corner...it's surprisingly strong.

Next up is the front box structure - the Playstation gun has a small one already moulded but I really wanna bulk out the front lower part like the movie version so more box making...

With the front on it doesn't look half bad..and again is surprisingly strong construction. I've had to cut a bit out though so it fits snugly with the larger box created above

Submitting to my inability to work out the complex templates for the rear box atop the handgrip I fell back on my trusty friend FIMO Airdry and sculpted, dried and sanded the offendingly awkward spot....

lastly with the application of a little nugget of plasticard to tie in the detail and some careful sanding to make indentation to carry round from left to right, this section is almost in the bag

Another application for the FIMO was the shoe plate of the handgrip. Again on the movie version its quite bulky so I've layered 3 steps of 1.5mm plasticard and sculpted a more bulky front end...It may need a bit more bulk but that remains to be seen.

lastly for todays update...As with the PKD Blade Runner project I've been inspired to think of other items to display with the finished prop so here's the side thread that's going on when I get time....

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.