The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

Scratchbuilt Skipper, using a mini artists mannequin and Milliput.

Awesome!

Cheers Iggie, but I'd only rate this a 6/10 myself.
It's been a learning curve for me, and I'm posting this to warn others of the difficulties of using these mannequins as a base for conversions.

* The articulation of these particular mannequins is limited, a lot of positions can't be posed without removing the springs in the limbs, particularly the shoulders and elbows.

*The proportions of the mannequin are not terrible as far as a drawing aid is concerned, but just off enough to require a fair bit of adjustment for figure building. Even with the springs in the arms removed, the forearms were too long and required a lot of cutting and sanding before being glued into position. (I should have taken the springs out of the legs too, but had already slapped on the milliput before realising that the legs were not quite at the stance I was aiming for)

*Use a jig to hold the mannequin parts that need cutting! The plastic is hard but gives way unexpectedly sometimes, resulting in a stabbed thumb.

6/10 or not, that's very impressive. Love it.

VickersVandal wrote:6/10 or not, that's very impressive. Love it.

What he said..

Especially after trying to turn a blob of left over brown stuff into a new face for a brutally mutilate squishy plastic figure earlier today. Mine looks like it came out of some cheap horror movie; I have some (read "a huge load") of training to do before I'm anywhere near that 6/10..

thanks. learned something here. I need a 6"figure for an archaeology site
diorama I will be building.found terrifick skeleton.i will make my own
manaquin out of wood.

I think that looks excellent, PT and would score it a lot higher than a 6. It looks human, I dread to think what it would look like if I gave that a go! I can't even paint the faces on ready made figures to look like normal people - especially the eyes, my efforts usually end up looking like they have been up all week, fuelled by the finest Columbian marching powder

@ Purplethistle, that´s a very nice artistic achievement! What´s the size of the pilot? (in inches, or cm, as you like it)

Cheers guys, I ignored one of my frequently invoked 'Notes to self' again, namely 'When trying a new technique, practice it on something that doesn't matter much to avoid disappointment due to shortfall in expectation' The Skipper is one of my favourite characters from one of my favourite movies so nothing short of 95% was going to be satisfactory.

Crashpilot wrote:@ Purplethistle, that´s a very nice artistic achievement! What´s the size of the pilot? (in inches, or cm, as you like it)

Hi Crash, the Skipper is just under 14cm, most 1/16 figures are just under 12cm so he would be about 1/14 scale as any spare 1/16 parts I had thought I might use with these mannequin conversions are just too small to look right.

rob_van_riel wrote:

VickersVandal wrote:6/10 or not, that's very impressive. Love it.

What he said..

Especially after trying to turn a blob of left over brown stuff into a new face for a brutally mutilate squishy plastic figure earlier today. Mine looks like it came out of some cheap horror movie; I have some (read "a huge load") of training to do before I'm anywhere near that 6/10..

An easy enough mistake to make first time Rob, With any alteration to faces it is important to make them smaller than looks 'Right' before painting as the several layers of base, shade and highlight are going to add bulk to the features, in fact I sometimes use paint thickened with coloured chalk dust to paint on eyelids, creases around the nose and sometimes the outside of nostrils, such are the fine tolerances!