1/6th scale Damaged Synth custom WIP

As with so many of my projects, I started this one without a plan.

I've always loved cyborgs/androids and the concept of artificial intelligence and sapient robots is one of my absolute favourite sci-fi concepts. I've got a host of characters I'm intending on making dolls of, one of which has a cybernetic arm, so I've been meaning to practice making one before committing to the final design. I knew I wanted to preserve as much articulation as possible, so moving joints was super important, and if I could surpass the original figure's range of movement, all the better.

The Drifter and the Droid (plus bonus stopmotion)

I’ve been in a real sci-fi mood recently after playing Detroit: Become Human (which I would 100% recommend if you love everything related to androids gaining self awareness and the resulting fight for acceptance and civil rights combined with a noir style detective game and branching storylines with many many endings - I could gush about this game all year, it's fantastic) and this proved fortuitous as I’ve had plans to make a robot arm for a future cybernetically enhanced character for a long time, so I decided to grab something from one of my many body boxes and give it a go just to see how it turned out and well, things progressed slightly…😅 (This post will have the whole start to finish guide of how I put everything together)

I couldn't resist doing a photoshoot inspired by one of my favourite sequences in the game, although just to clarify, this figure isn't intended to be from the D:BH universe, just vaguely inspired by it.

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Shift 17

Unbeknownst to most of you because I've been a really terrible blogger this last year, I've been working behind the scenes on a film.

Don't get too excited, it's hardly oscar material as it's only a student production but it's been an interesting experience nonetheless. We managed to score a nice little budget thanks to Kickstarter (most of which went towards making the set) and you can see a little clip here with Liam, Julia and my Unicorn from last year! (Alas, I wasn't in the day they filmed it or I'd have been there too!)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/264586587/shift-17

....see below for millions of photos...

OC Fanmixes!

I've been working on these for a few weeks now and these two at least are more or less finished. They're just a couple of playlists that I think reflect the personalities or histories of some of my RP characters but they're good to listen to if I need inspiring - especially Kes' as it's mostly instrumental.

The descriptions kind of work as a narrative to the mix...kind of. XD I'd be interested to see if anyone can guess which tracks represent what moments actually! (although the track names are probably fairly self explanatory, lol)
I went into a little more detail with Skai as I've gone on about Kes rather a lot so it's probably already old news, lol.

Oh and click on the images to see them full size on my DeviantArt gallery - I finished them the other day. :D

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Kes Varin's Mix

Kes, - or KE5VRN as he is officially known by the Syndicate - awoke to the world as an adult after only seven years of growth in a tank. He was developed, along with several hundred other Pilot drones, to fly ships more effectively than non specialised humans. He had no real knowledge of normal human behaviour, only the basics were ever explained to him as he had only one job and that didn't involve socialisation. The first year of his existence out of the tank was spent training and undergoing tests before he was finally allowed to take control of a ship. He took to flying instinctively, as he was intended to and discovered what it felt like to feel pure joy and exhilaration. However, he soon found himself questioning his identity and role in the world around him, but it worried him that none of the other drones seemed to realise what they were and that he was the only one who did. He kept these thoughts to himself as he was all too aware of what happened when you stepped out of line and stood up to authority. This changed when he met Lix, the AI of the [i]Elixir[/i], the ship he would go on to pilot in the years to come. She treated him as an individual, as he did her and the two of them grew close, eventually falling in love. They both hated the way they were being used by the Syndicate but knew there was nothing that could be done the way things were. The turning point came when the [i]Elixir[/i] was attacked out of the blue by an unknown enemy, releasing a virus into the system and rendering her inoperable. After a fierce battle, the captain issued a evacuation order which included everyone, including the Pilot. Kes defied a direct order - the first time he'd ever done it - and refused to leave his seat as he believed he could still save her. At that point Lix sent an energy pulse through him, knocking him unconscious and simultaneously uploading a copy of her own program into his brain, possibly as a way to save him as she knew they'd never kill him if he had such a valuable AI encoded into his port. (Kes doesn't know this however, he is still under the impression that the captain, who never liked him, did it for his own purposes.) He woke up a few hours later on a communal escape pod, just in time to see the ship finally destroyed via a video feed. He was devastated and, grief stricken and overwhelmed by the amount of data streaming through his head, he managed to escape the Syndicate when he landed and downloaded Lix into a data pod which he wore around his neck from then on. He spent the next few years trying to survive, still grieving...right up until he joined the crew of a little hybrid shuttle and started to feel the spark of hope once again. The first five tracks are of his 'birth' and awakening to the world as written -here-

• 1. Apple Chamber - Jesper Kyd
• 2. Welcome To The Real World - Don Davis
• 3. I Swallowed Hard Like I Understood
• 4. Help, I'm Alive - Metric
• 5. Facial Reconstruction - Jack Wall
• 6. Follow Me (Instrumental) - Muse
• 7. Radioactive - Imagine Dragons
• 8. Northern Lights - Cider Sky
• 9. Electric Feel - MGMT
• 10. Strict Machine - Goldfrapp
• 11. Untouched - The Veronicas
• 12. The Fleets Arrive - Clint Mansell
• 13. Scheduled For Deletion - Jesper Kyd & Lorne Balfe
• 14. An Unsubtle Approach - Jesper Kyd & Lorne Balfe
• 15. Love and Loss - Two Steps From Hell
• 16. Labored and Lost - - Jesper Kyd & Lorne Balfe
• 17. An End Once and For All - Clint Mansell
• 18. The Feeling of Losing Everything - Archive
• 19. I Was Lost Without You - Clint Mansell
• 20. Old Souls - Hans Zimmer
• 21. She Is The Sunlight - Trading Yesterday
• 22. Back Home - Nitin Sawhney
• 23. Nocturne - Daft Punk
• 24. Save me - Globus
• 25. Broken - Lifehouse
• 26. The Revelation - Jesper Kyd & Lorne Balfe
• 27. No Death in Love - Nitin Sawhney
• 28. Holding On & Letting Go - Ross Copperman

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Skai Azzura's Mix

    

Skai grew up on the desert planet of Asidura and always dreamed of travelling offworld and seeing the stars. Her dad had never left the continent, let alone the planet but her mum, who had died when Skai was very young, was born offworld and passed her sense of adventure and stubbornness onto her daughter who spent her childhood hoping that something would one day allow her to leave. When her cousin gave her the opportunity to travel around with him for a year she leapt on it and started planning her future as a trader/part time smuggler. She got into a few skirmishes here and there including one particularly horrible incident with the Syndicate which left her with scars, both physical and mental. It didn't put her off however, far from it, it just strengthened her resolve to make her dream happen and gained her a reputation back home for being someone you really didn't want to mess with. When she got back she threw herself into her work; repairing ships and racing speeders to earn enough money for her to buy passage off the world. Her cousin then gave her his ship, the then unnamed [i]Helios[/i], when he upgraded to something a bit more classy and Skai turned her attention onto adapting it for her own purposes. Unfortunately this got her into quite a bit of debt with a local gangster but she dealt with that in her own inimitable way. (in other words she legged it and hoped for the best. :P) Soon afterwards she managed to acquire herself a crew which she quickly grew very attached to and they headed off in search of adventure - all the while doing their damnedest to avoid detection by the Syndicate.

• 1. Touch the Sky - Julie Fowlis
• 2. Paradise - Coldplay
• 3. I See The Light - Mandy Moore/Zachary Levi
• 4. Merry Go Round - Tanner Patrick
• 5. Big Bar Fight - Greg Edmonson
• 6. Burning In The Skies - Linkin Park
• 7. I'm Your Captain - Grand Funk Railroad
• 8. Me and My Gang - Rascal Flats
• 9. Pop That Lock - Adam Lambert
• 10. Yes - Coldplay
• 11. Romani Holiday (Antonius Remix) - Hans Zimmer
• 12. Final Hour - X-Ray Dog

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I'll get Ruby and Bacchus' up here eventually. :D

Hetche Nambarrae - Thief...

The ship is silent, the engines are dead. The Transient drifts lifelessly through space, a cold and empty corpse of a ship.

Suddenly there is life; a light, a presence on board with the power to reignite the soul of the vessel.





The light burns and moves through the decks with a sentience that is not its own; only coming to a halt when it has re-established contact with its master.



'It's alright'



'There's nobody else here.'



'We're...alone.'









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A while ago I stumbled upon a secondhand 'Get Real Girls' figure from the charity shop for the wonderful price of £1.99. The figure itself was good with decent articulation but the face was err...interesting. I didn't want to faff about with decapitation in case I snapped the neck so I broke out the epoxy and resculpted her nose and most of her jaw. Alas, my facial sculpting isn't all that great yet and ended up with major flaws which, no matter how much I sanded, wouldn't go away so, to compensate I repainted her with a bit of an alien twist which thankfully masks many of the issues.

Before:



After:







Hetche is a bit of a mystery - no one is entirely sure what species she is (a hybrid perhaps?) and she certainly isn't telling if she even knows at all. She's a highly skilled thief and one of her many talents is the ability to summon and control strange electrical lifeforms which she uses to disable or investigate ships and systems before she moves in to take her pick of the cargo.

She likes shiny things, as shown by the collection of trinkets on her belt and can often be distracted from items of real value when there's a worthless but glitzy charm in the vicinity.



She can't let a potential opportunity go either so when she stumbled across the Transient in a shaky orbit around an abandoned refuelling station; deserted and with most of the systems malfunctioning or completely shot, how could she resist? After giving it a bit of a recce and deciding that there was no point in investigating further, she made to leave...just as the crew returned from scavenging supplies...

Jerran was suffering from a self inflicted hangover and Carus was not particularly amused to find that someone had broken onto her ship without permission but they both agreed that with a bit of work, she'd make an admirable addition to the crew...
















Everything you see is scratchbuilt (with the exception of the silver gadget she's holding in the next photo - that was one of her original accessories I repainted)





Apologies for the terrible writing - I can't think straight today. XD

I'm nearly finished with the Pilot too - he needs a pair of trousers and some augmented technology I think...

OH and if you, like me, LOVE photostories with incredible realism and historical accuracy - check this out. Absolutely mindblowing.

http://www.mickbaltes.de/af/memento_mori/content_e.html

1:6th scale Sci Fi background...

As I mentioned before, I'd really like to do some proper photostories with my 6th scale guys (if and when I actually get them all into some proper clothes lol) but as they live on a salvage ship in some far off galaxy, I was somewhat limited by all the nice green fieldy backgrounds I used with my model horses, not to mention the fact that they were all too small! Sooo, this weekend I decided to make them a ship. Well, not a whole ship obviously, just a bit of panelling. ;)

Ideally I didn't want to spend any money on it so aside from a big piece of card and a small plastic grate/vent thing I bought specially, everything else was found in the house.

To begin with, once I'd gathered all the junk and assorted crap that I'd been unwittingly stockpiling over the years, I laid out where I'd like them all to go. When I was happy with their positioning, I glued them all in place with either superglue or bostik all purpose. Then, when they'd set, I secured most of them in place with more superglue around the edges - some of which had bicarbonate of soda sprinkled over the top to simulate rust and erosion.





Bonus points if you can guess what everything is! (click on the photo below to find out :P)



Once all was dry I gave the whole thing a quick skoosh of black spray paint, then, once that was dry, another light coat - this time of silver. The first can gave a really shiny coat which ran out quickly, but luckily I had a much nicer matte version stashed away in the cupboard so I used that instead. I wanted a nice gunmetal sort of colour rather than the brand new and shiny look I had at the moment so it was in dire need of some weathering.





I used a Games Workshop wash - Devlan Mud I think - and wow, isn't it effective! At the moment it might look a bit OTT but once it had dried off it didn't look quite so stark. Originally I was just going to do a little bit but I liked the effect so much that I just kept going! XD







Ignore the (lack of decent) clothes, but here's a few shots to see how it looks with figs.

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Jerran has somehow found himself in possession of a firearm which envariably means he wants to try it out...





Poser. :P

I wish I could say this is scratchbuilt but it isn't. I merely chopped up a pre-existing weapon from one of my 5" Doctor Who figures and constructed a new grip. What I know about guns could be written on the pack of a postage stamp so apologies if it's highly inaccurate. (and try to ignore the lack of a trigger - it kept falling off so I thought 'sod it' and left it off XD)



Oi! Jerran! Leave the Pilot alone!



I said leave him!



Finally...



I'm rather tempted to name him Kes as he has exactly the right expression and general air of emo (I repainted the entire head btw) but I really want to make a port and as I don't want to have to hack up the nicely sculpted hair to get to the back of his skull, I might just make him another example of the same batch and make do. XD I made him a new leg this week too! I got him off ebay months ago for £3.99 as he only had one leg and I fancied a bit of a project...











I managed to make a balljoint for his ankle as well as a hinge joint so he's got almost the exact same articulation in this new leg as he does in the old! It'll be written into his backstory as the result of a serious injury he sustained during a firefight... ;)

Anyway, Carus has finally confiscated Jerran's new toy, only...who's she pointing it at now? O__o



I finished off the weathering this morning...



...and the entire thing this afternoon. :D

The signs were all printed off the internet and weathered a bit with what was left of the devlan mud wash. The touchscreen panels were made up in gimp using some brushes I found on deviantart and then printed out onto some semiglossy photo paper. The rest of the things - buttons and panels and such came from CGtextures.com















This one just makes me think of a microwave! XD



Obviously I'll be using this with my 1:6 guys but the good thing about sci fi is that if I raise the floor level...



I can use it with smaller figs!



(and no, I don't know what they're doing in these photos - I picked these up off my body pile XD)

Anyway, there we go, done! I've got a section of corridor in progress now too but I'm not so keen on it as it's just a little bit too short and I'll need to stick it onto a bigger piece of card or just shoot from the waist up to get the figs in. XD