I absolutely suck...

Latest progress:

Haven't gotten any further with that dome sculpt... I seem to have started too many projects!

Though, painted parts of my Kaiyodo Vader, so now he looks really weird, with grey primer parts and the black leather suit painted.

The dome sculpt turned out badly... the super sculpey is too brittle when pulled out so thin at the flanges. May need to figure out a kind of support for those areas, so they won't break apart.

Here's a little humor until I come up with something new to update this with. I call him SchwarzeVader!

Nice work. I know this has been a long time in the making. Good to see you start it again.

ArtisanProps' cool sculpt prompted me into re-starting my project. Having tried from scratch several times before I decided to take a new approach this time with the facemask. Knowing that I would probably need some sort of structural support I decided to cut up my Screamin' 1:6 scale Vader head and began filling the insides with aluminum foil and super sculpey:


Further progress:


I think the most difficult area will be the mouth and the teeth... wondering how the heck I'm gonna do the grills... but I'm slowly making progress, so that's great. The approach of tackling this as a face compared to a helmet seems to have paid off.

I should probably have stripped the paint prior to starting work on this, but I got so excited that I started right away. Will need to try and remove the paint later.

As you can see I decided to save the Reveal features, so I'm not going for prop accuracy on this one, but rather a movie accuracy of sorts. Just wish I can nail the face features well enough to be satisfied with it... tbh, it has to be damn well near perfect and honestly I have no clue whether the areas I decided to keep on the original piece will interfere with the accuracy of the sculpt or not. We'll see.

I know this will prevent me from EVER offering casts of it to anyone - I simply cannot justify it to myself - though, I will need someone to make a mold of it and cast some for me for further refinement, as I cannot do it myself. But more on that when the time comes.

In this same thread I might as well also make updates on the sixth scale Dave Prowse head I'm sculpting. It is made to fit with the Kaiyodo/Screamin' Vader, so hopefully that'll be a good likeness too.

Cheers mates.

I like the approach your taking with this.. good start!! I'm glad to see I
helped to restart your interest in this, and don't count yourself out yet
just take your time.. the face is the hardest part and the one your working
with is really tiny..

I'm definately a newbie at this, but I'll help, offer any tricks, or advise if needed.. I learned a lot from this first sculpt..


Lookin foward to the progress

Well, one thing I can tell you about the 3 or more times I attempted it before I approached the project all wrong. I have a few real helmets and I used PICTURES as reference... really stupid choice.

Will start building up the cheek areas soon, but I don't know if I should finish the teeth area first, as it may be more difficult later. Difficult to figure out what to do first and what to do later.

But that sculpey flesh color is just so utterly irritating on the eyes... because of its translucency, you can't really see what you're doing when what you're working with is so small.

And thanks for the vote of confidence!

the super sculpey is great, but for future projects try adding some Sculpey III
black to the SS, it helps out a lot and you can see the detail much, much
easier..

as for the grill area. I just did a real rough marking and filed it out after
I made the cast because my skills for such a tight area still aren't that great
yet..

Wouldn't black be a just as annoying color to work with? I'd imagine grey would be easier on the eyes.

Just a little progress I made to see how the mouth looked. He looks like a monkey turd atm, imo.

Well, since I cut up the face I thought I might as well just cannibalize the rest of the kit as well. Decided to do the Tantive stance where (when looking at him) he's turned slightly to the left and is more hunched forward in the upper body. I cut across the back of the kit above the belt all the way to the front leather section, trimmed out some pieces at the tunic to better manipulate the pieces into position, trimmed a little at the bottom of the tunic and glued it back into place. The first part of the re-shaping is done and he is now slightly turning towards the left, instead of the right, which will be a perfect pose for the ESB I'm going to do afterwards.



This picture shows the first progress. As you can see the upper torso is still leaning a bit back, instead of forward, but that will be rectified once the glue has properly dried and I've glued the whole belt and cod to the legs for extra support to that area. Then I'll work the back section back into place, pull his torso a little bit forward and glue it down - might have to do some more trimming to the right back piece to get rid of excess vinyl that is easier to just cut off and resculpt later than to try and shape fit it to the figure and risk pulling the pieces apart again. Vinyl is the worst material to glue imo... as the tiniest pull will rip it apart.

Will also have to re-shape his feet, so he will be able to stand on his own with the new pose. A little heating should do the trick and once cooled It'll be time to fill up the insides with something, so it'll keep its shape forever.

Still need a little trimming here and there but ooooooh, do I LIKE this new pose. It's almost as if he's lurching forward... very menacing, imo... can't wait to work more on him.



Trimmed the chest, very little, to pull the right side of the chest armor down, so he didn't look so crooked. It's a very tiny fix, so you may not spot it, but it made all the difference, imo.

Actually when you mix the Black with the Super Sculpey it turns Grey:)

LOL... silly me. Though, I've never seen black Super Sculpey...

Daghth Aghnold!!!

Wow, it's really looking great, NHM!!!

I know you can't really see the details very much, because I was stupid enough to photograph towards a light source, but I think you can get the general idea of the different poses to the upper body. The one to the left is the ANH and the one on the right will be the ESB.



Just wondering how the hell I'm gonna do the small details on the chest and belt boxes.

Additionally... I have to resculpt the three center stripes of the chest armor as it curves inwards at the neck, where it should be more straight.