Following on from my intro to the 2017 Forgotten Heroes challenge (see here -
Forgotten Heroes Challenge 2017 - Intro), here is an update of my work so far. As I said before, I was originally just going to make the two human heroes, Melissa Ravenflame and Jackson T. Kalliber from
The Bug Hunters series. The good news is that I have sculpted both figures and they are undergoing paintwork right now. Both have come out really well, but I'm particularly impressed with my figure of Melissa.
I was lucky enough to find the parts needed to convert an old Citadel
Paranoia robot into B-Con. He was an easy conversion to do, and he's also being painted right now. I am not going to show these three just yet. I want to wait until all six figures are completed.
I had no intention of making the other three robots, OTISS, X and Big Red for this challenge. I thought it would be too much work, especially making Big Red, who is huge. However, things soon changed and when I realised that OTISS and X looked a lot like RoJaws and Hammerstein from 2000 AD comic's
ABC Warriors and
Robusters series I knew I could make them as well. Wargames Foundry make excellent figures of RoJaws and Hammerstein. How hard could it be to convert them? So I ordered them last week and they arrived two days later.
I had to add a bit of Milliput to the base of Hammerstein as he kept falling over, due to his centre of balance being off kilter. So, now all I had to do was find a suitable figure for Big Red. I did not have high hopes, but anyway, I decided to check out toy robots on Amazon UK... and found the perfect robot for Big Red. This big fellow is Baymax from the Disney animated film of 2012 -
Big Hero 6. He is a posable action figure, but he'll be a lot less posable after I've finished with him. As always, Amazon were very quick to post him to me.
Size-wise he's just about perfect, although I will be lengthening his legs. As soon as I saw the figure, I knew I could work with him and make, what I thought would be a very difficult challenge, a much easier task. Yes, there is a lot of work to do on him, but I have the basis of his figure all ready to go. Most of the hard work has already been done for me. I just have to add some detail to him. Hah! That's all!
The first thing I had to do was remove certain body parts from the three figures. RoJaws had his arms and head cut off. Hammerstein lost his head and right arm. I had to saw them off. I've drilled and pinned a paper clip into his shoulder so that I can sculpt his new arm around it.
Baymax has had his head and shoulder pads removed - they just clipped off quite easily. I sawed off the mounts on his back for his wings. His wings came separately but were never going to be used by me.
Now I can get to work on them with my Milliput and hopefully get them finished by the end of June. I'm pretty confident I'll meet the deadline. I don't usually do work in progress posts but I especially wanted to do this one, just to show you how Big Red was going to evolve. Next time you see him he'll be looking a lot different.
