Okay, I made a couple of pictures. They're not very good, but what do you think of how they look in space on maneuvers?
I don't know. It's pretty fun to do something like this. I bet if I put it in the hands of my daughter, who is a Photoshop wiz, it would look even more awesome. Maybe I'll try that some time. Maybe once I get all the ships weathered and she can pick and choose what ships to include.
I kept going with the weathering. I guess it's going to be my theme for the week. Here's a few more ships that I updated with some wear and tear, starting with the XL-02. It used to look like this:
And here's its new look:
If nothing else, with the weathering it looks like it fits in with Star Wars ships better, since that universe is more known for being a lived-in universe. This ship isn't my favorite, but it looks a lot better than it did, I think.
Here's a side-by-side:
I also did the XL-15. Which once looked like this:
This one came with some partial weathering already. I guess it's supposed to be the post-hyperspeed flight of the ship. I just took it up a notch or two, making the ship even grungier.
It really toned down the burn marks with the dry-brushing. Not sure if that's better or not. I wouldn't have minded having them more prominent, but I can't put the toothpaste back in the tube now. I still love it.
Oh, did you notice that I clipped the blue backward-pointing things from the wings? I just didn't like them. They seemed like laser guns pointing in the wrong direction, so I snipped them.
Here's a side-by-side:
Lastly, since I had all the paints out and everything, I figured I'd try weathering one of my Star Wars ships. I got this X-Wing on sale at Walgreens. It used to look like this:
It already had it's own weathering as well, looking pretty dirty, or...as I've heard many people online describe it...like somebody spilled their coffee all over it. I took that and changed into the weathering that I've been doing on the Lightyear ships.
I need to find the R2-D2 that goes in the back. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I think it fell out while it was in the box in my closet. I sure hope so. I hope I haven't lost Artoo.
Because it's a mostly-white ship, it's hard to see the silver paint, but it's got a bunch...maybe more than it should, since I had a hard time seeing it on there and kept putting more on. Here's a side-by-side:
I wonder if the lighting conditions were the same, how different they'd look. The all white ships are definitely harder to dry-brush, but they take the black wash a lot better. All in all, I think it looks good too.
Maybe I'll see if I can't throw together some pictures with the ships in action together in space. I'm not much of a Photoshop wiz, but I'll give it a shot. See you tomorrow with that, hopefully.
Continuing from my post from yesterday, I kept going with more spaceship weathering. I moved on to the ship that I most wanted to weather since starting this collection of Lightyear Hyperspeed Series ships. This is the Armadillo...with a name like that, Star Command probably constructed it right here in Texas...and I love the look of it.
I found it for half off at Target a long time ago. It was the first Lightyear ship I ever bought.
It kind of looks like a big brick of brown poop or something straight out of the box, but it is ready to be turned into something much cooler. The first thing I did was take the teeth sticker off. I'm not a fan of that. I don't know why Star Wars had to put that onto all of their Clone Wars ships, ripping off the WWII planes that did that.
The prequels suck, and even though people say Clone Wars improved upon them, giving them good back story and the like, it is still prequels era garbage. Polishing a turd and all that. But it's even worse when Lightyear rips it off from Clone Wars. So, it had to go.
Next I weathered it with black paint thinned out by a very small amount of water. Lastly, I dry brushed some silver on to give it more wear in certain places.
Here's how it looks now:
What do you think? Here's a side-by-side of what it used to look like to what it is now:
I love it. I might have gone a little heavy-handed with the silver dry-brushing though. Some spots feel like I did a bit much. I don't know. I still love it. It looks like that old rust bucket has seen lots of action, and really is a reliable old girl.
Makes me think of this exchange from Firefly:
Mal: She won’t be winning any beauty contests anytime soon, but she is solid. Ship like this, be with you ’til the day you die.
Zoe: ‘Cause it’s a death trap.
Mal: That’s not— You are very much lacking in imagination.
Or better yet, the line from the salesman in the same episode:
Salesman: Yep. Real beauty, ain’t she. Yes sir. Right smart purchase, this vessel. I’ll tell you what, you buy this ship, treat her proper, she’ll be with you for the rest of your life. {but Mal’s attention is on another vessel} Son? Hey, son! You hear a word I been sayin’?
Last week, I showed off some pictures that some people had shared of their own repaints of some of the ships from the Lightyear movie. I said that I ought to get working on weathering some of my own ships and see how they look. Mostly I don't bother to actually ever do anything, but this time around, I went for it. So, here we go.
I decided I would start with these two ships. First up was the XL-07 on the right. With watered down black paint for a wash and dry-brushed silver enamel, I turned that ship into this:
Here's a side-by-side before-and-after shot, since I actually have two of those ships.
Now it was time to do the other one. I used the same method, and now the two ships match.
Here's another side-by-side with this ship too:
What do you think? Pretty good? I really like the way they look. I want to get after weathering all the rest, and maybe making the first bits of a space station. Maybe I could make the Valkyrie headquarters for all these ships to dock at.
I posted a little while back about my growing collection of Lightyear spaceships. It had made it to eight, and I was despairing as to whether I would ever find the last four on sale anywhere. These were the last four ships, the XL-04:
The XL-05:
The XL-08:
And the XL-10:
They're alright, but most of them aren't amazing. The only one I really want is the XL-08, because it actually looks different than the rest. Although I kind of want the XL-04 just so that I can have Buzz in Boba Fett's outfit.
I was vexed, however, to see just how hard it was to find anyone that was offering them for sale. The only place I could find that had the XL-08 listed for sale was Entertainment Earth, and they still wanted full price plus shipping for the thing. There was no way I was going to pay that.
Then I actually looked a little closer at Entertainment Earth's listing, and I realized finally what the problem was.
I was just looking at the price and frowning, and moving on, but I should have looked at that great big green bar going across the screen. This was just a pre-order. The toy wasn't even scheduled to come out until June 2023 according to the website.
It's time to kiss this ship goodbye. There's no way I will ever be able to buy it, because there's no way it will ever come out. I'm sure Mattel has already canceled these things.
This last wave of four ships is never going to hit stores, because the movie tanked, and nobody is buying the toys. The rest of them are already showing up at Ross for $5. They're not going to be throwing bad money after good to produce another shitload of ships that nobody (but me) wants to buy. So, it looks like I've got myself the full collection.
I'm kind of sad to see that the XL-08 will never be mine, because I really like its design, but I guess I'll just have to make do with what I've got and call it good. Maybe I should start trying to gussy the ones I have up with some weathering and see how they look after that. I searched online and found some pictures that one guy took of the XL-07 after getting the weathering treatment that looks frigging amazing:
And another guy did a really sweet weathering and upgraded paint job for the XL-01:
I hope mine can look as good when I'm done with them. The Valkyries will be so proud to fly these ships around in Ankletown Station.
I told y'all before about how I bought a Cyber Hero LeBron James Space Jam figure, thinking that it would be a nice fit with the rest of my 3.75 inch figures that would inhabit Ankletown Station, but when I put them together, I found that they were horribly out of scale.
I was thinking I would just have to sell it on eBay or give it to my son to bash together with his other toys, but Rish said that I just needed to give it an alien head, and that would explain why it was so much bigger. Then I could still use it.
I considered it, and my options. I looked at a bunch of different ideas for an alien head, but never quite pulled the trigger. Then, I found the one I wanted. A new wave of Final Faction figures hit the dollar store, and they included this thing:
If you're like me, then you have no idea what you're looking at. The bubbles on these packages are so hard to see through. They make the figures look weirdly warped and distorted. Here's what it looks like out of the package.
Looks like an alien spider or a crab or something like that. I was looking at that thing one night, and I thought, could I pull the legs off of this thing and make it a head? So I tried it.
The legs came off easily enough, I think they were made to be easily fixed if they broke off. When I held the thing where the head would be on the LeBron body, it looked pretty good. So, I got my drill, estimated what size bit I needed to make a hole that would fit LeBron's neck, and drilled a hole in the bottom of the alien crab spider.
It looked even better when it was properly fitted to the neck.
I couldn't decide if I should keep the pincers or not, so I texted a picture to Rish. He said the pincers should stay, so I let him be the deciding vote.
I couldn't leave him there with these human hands and a decidedly non-human head, so my next move was to turn something into alien hands. I took my snips to the legs I'd removed, and fashioned a set of alien claw hands. Then I snipped LeBron's hands off and drilled out his forearms so that I could shove these new hands up inside like pegs in a hole.
I also shoved some beads into the vacated arm holes. I didn't mean for this to happen, but now they looked like eyes. Not sure if I'll leave it that way. I'm going to have to paint all this stuff now. I don't want it to be the lavender and gold that it is right now. I think I'll turn my alien into a little green man...or giant sized green man considering the scale difference. I'll get to it eventually, I suppose.
I think I like it. It's at least made that LeBron figure that I thought I couldn't use into something that I certainly can. Looking like this, though, I think we have to say that LeBron is playing for the Monstars team now. He doesn't look like he belongs on Bugs and Daffy's team any longer, that's for sure.
I also have the leftover LeBron head. Maybe, instead of using it in TikTok videos, I should put it on one of my Halo guys. He could be in the military with our friend Laka Baba.
I think that works. He needs some paint and stuff, but I think he'll be a good member of the guards...I think these guys are going to be the guards at Ankletown Station. Old President Government uses them to intimidate the citizenry into keeping quiet and docile and paying their exorbitant taxes.
I was looking at Walmart the other day, and they had this Darth Maul Mission Fleet thing:
I don't want the figure, it's just one of those tiny Galactic Heroes-type figures that's only about 2 inches tall. I have nothing that I could do with it. However, I was looking at that spider/crab machine thing that he is supposed to ride on, and I thought, "that could be a really cool droid." But I couldn't see the back of it to know what it looks like.
So, I had to come home and look up a video where you could see the back of it. Sadly, it's totally empty on the back. It looks like this:
So, I don't know. Maybe I could trash bash the back to close it up and make it a proper droid, but I don't really trust my skills with that, so I probably wont.
I wonder how the scale would transfer over to 3.75. This thing could be like a droid taxi that gives people rides around town...if it fits a 3.75 figure. Otherwise, it's kind of useless. So, I don't know if I'll get it. I probably won't, but we'll see. Maybe if I see it really cheap, I'll give it a shot.
Every now and then, Empire Toy Works does a picture in front of the Rotgut Station exotic dance club/brothel. They're always kind of whimsical, based on the idea of sex with an alien creature and what kind of person would be looking for that.
I suppose that is likely to be the first business that opens up on a space station or a mining town or a port city, so there ought to be one.
I was at Ross, and found a figure that I thought might work for exactly that scenario. I had passed it up before because I hated the colors on it. I almost bought the six-inch version that Hasbro put out this year, but I just had nothing that I could use it for. However, in the 3.75 inch version, I could definitely use it.
It's the figure for the character called Lynx.
Yeah, it's like a Catwoman meets Maria from Metropolis or something. Except the colored arms and...what? Socks? I didn't like the colors, but I figured I could probably paint them silver, and then I'd have a nice sexy robot catwoman that would be exactly the kind of thing you'd expect on a space brothel.
I tried using this silver paint I had at the ready, but it slid right off the figure like the thing was made of Teflon. I was thinking that the plastic might be especially impervious to paint. Some plastics are like that. I learned all about it watching The Crafsman Show, as well as a potential fix.
I just needed to take some heat to the figure, it seemed. I was thinking about using the heat gun on the figure, but then I was at Hobby Lobby and saw a silver Sharpie in the impulse buy section at the register, and, on impulse, I bought it, thinking it might work for the figure, after all, I'd used Sharpies on figures before.
I gave it a shot...if I screwed it up, at least the figure only cost $5. Here's how it came out.
I was pretty satisfied. However, after taking this picture, I noticed that some of the silver had rubbed off and the color was showing from underneath. I hadn't been very careful about where I held the figure as I colored on it with the Sharpie, so I wasn't surprised. I hit it with another pass of the Sharpie, and I thought it looked much better.
It looked much better after that. I thought that maybe I ought to see if I could cover the silver with a lacquer to seal it in so that hopefully the color doesn't show through the silver again. Haven't tried that yet.
I did, however, happen upon another Lynx at Ross. Since she's just a robot seductress, there's no reason to have only one of them. After all, in the first scene of Star Wars we see another C-3PO in the background.
So, I bought another Lynx, and I'll have to color over the red, blue, and purple again.
Or maybe I should leave it? One colored one silver? Better selection at the brothel that way. Hmm...
Anyway, having these two makes me think of what else I could put with them. There is a Reaction Figure by Super7 of the aforementioned Maria from Metropolis.
Having Maria from Metropolis would be super cool, but I am loathe to buy the Reaction Figures version of it, because their figures are so simplistic and lame, yet cost more than anyone else's. It really kind of disgusts me. I guess we'll see if I give in and buy it someday or not.
Another idea is the Boss Fight Studios blank figures. It's a much higher quality sculpt but with the same kind of idea as long as you get it in the silver version.
Sorry, I hat the official Boss Fight Studio promotional images. They're so crappy. It's a miracle that anyone buys any of their figures at all. Toyark did a good picture when they reviewed the figures back in 2016. This will give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.
There's that one old set from Star Wars of the Jabba's palace dancers. I've seen them used in such a context a bunch of times.
Funny to see a sexy Greedo...or Greeta as they so cleverly named her. Remember when they named the Greedo looking guy in Jabba's palace Beedo? Recycling costumes must save a bunch on the budget, I guess.
