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