28mm Sci-Fi Wild West “or the good the bad and the greenstuff” (part 2)

As I said last week the weekend was the make or break on whether I’d get the sculpting finished on these figures, well I’m happy to report that after a knuckling down (something I’m usually not very good at) I had the first three figures completely finished and the last two pretty well started by Monday night. Anyway lets go into a bit more detail as to what was done to whom and why.

First off an easy one, I added the moustache to my pistol packing leader that I forgot to do last week. Next I added the other sleeve and some suitably long and unruly hair to the chap in the long shirt and he too was finished. Lastly I added the back of the poncho to the third chap, I decided as things were progressing so well that I’d add a fold to the back as if he had flicked it back to stop it getting in the way of his right arm (like “Clint” used to do in his spaghetti days), I then went right around the edge of the poncho adding a long fringe, this really finishes it off well I think, finally I added a little bit of hair sticking out of the back of his hat and done (I’m really quite pleased with how he turned out).

While doing the above I also began work on the last two. After sitting, staring at them and trying their arms on in various positions for a while I decided that I’d try and re-pose them to add a bit more variation to group (the lack of different poses is one of the worst aspects of these fig’s). This meant I had to chop away the arms moulded across the figures torsos and the arms moulded onto the guns (I left the hands attached again), the heads were also removed as the new poses would require the figures to be looking in different directions. So for the first chap I filed away his waistcoat and re-sculpted the front of a much tighter plain version buttoned up at the front, then re-attached his rifle higher and slightly further around his body as if preparing to aim it. Now rather than messing about with wire, trying to get it the right length and shape I added his basic arms with thin sausages of greenstuff and then next day built his sleeves up over these. Next came the back of his waistcoat and a really thin “string” of greenstuff as the cord on his sombrero which was stuck on next day hanging down his back. Finally I added a handkerchief around his neck (to cover up the rough join from moving his head) and some long hair and done, easy! (Yeh right!).

The final chap (thank god!) I decided to put in a long “duster” style coat and pose him with his rifle held up to the side. So once again his moulded arm was removed and his body filed down, this looked a little rough so I applied a thin layer of greenstuff to his chest and stomach ready for the front panels of his coat then while this was still soft I set his gun into position on a blob of greenstuff so I could adjust the position till I was happy with it (it does however look a bit of a mess I think where his coat bulges out to far by his gun, oh well) the inner parts of his arms were added as above and then next day the rear of his coat was applied, once dry his sleeves,  belt buckle, “hanky” round his neck, coat collar and hair were added, just leaving his sombrero and the lower parts of his coat lapels to add on Friday.

So that’s my little band of bandito’s finished, now to get to basing and painting “Painting, we don’ need no stinking painting!!”.

Cheers Roger.