Saturday 9 June 2018

Let's hear it for the band.

A quick post this morning to showcase the band members that formed part of the care package from Dave Stone of ‘Wargames Terrain Workshop’. As with the previous miniatures, I need to stress that these are created for Dave's own personal amusement and are not commercially available due to licensing restrictions. Dave has a hankering to create the many denizens of Jabba’s palace and so it was inevitable that he turned his sculpting skills to the Max Rebo band.
Now as gigs go, being the house band for one of the vilest, most dangerous gangsters in the outer rim, must have been a tough act to pull off!  Jabba the Hutt’s propensity for violence and torture is well documented and still the band played on!

Max and his band first appeared in the Return of the Jedi, as a three piece with Sy Snootles as the vocalist, but with the release of the special edition in 1997 another nine members have been added to the ensemble and Dave looks determined to represent them all!  The resin sculpts that I have are instantly recognisable as Droopy McCool and Sy Snootles from the original line up, with Rappertunie* and Joh Yowza** from the special edition.
* Rappertunie is a stage name, his full name being Rapotwanalantonee Tivtotolon.
**Again another stage name, but hardly surprising that he adopted a non de plume given that his real name is J'ywz'gnk Kchhllbrxcstk Et'nrmdndlcvtbrx!
Unfortunately, Joh Yowza had lost an arm in transit and so one of the first jobs was to stick it back with superglue, which seemed to be a lot harder than it needed to be. Is this peculiar to resin models or just me being impatient I wonder?  After much cursing and swearing I finally got the limb attached only to drop the blasted thing and have his feeler snap off instead – the air was now very blue!  I had considered rebasing the miniatures on to some nice 'stone slab' MDF discs that I have and even asked Dave what was the best way to go about this process.  The answer was with a Dremel, at which point I decided not to push my luck and went with them as they are.
My band members were primed in white, which is a bit of a departure for me, and as I had the trusty air brush to hand gave each one a basic base colour to hopefully speed up the process. First to be tackled were Droopy McCool and Rappertunie. Droopy was relatively straight forward to paint, in fact after his base coat he was given a wash with Agrax Earthshade and then some shorts and that was pretty much it. 

Similarly, Rappertunie was also a case of building on the existing base coat, although I did try to achieve some roundness to his tummy with some highlights.
Buoyed with the success of the first two, I was keen to tackle what I believed would be the more challenging paint jobs.  Sy Snootles with her wonderfully distinctive, mottled skin was great fun to work on, the large protruding lips standing out with their deep red accent.  Finally, Joh Yowza was done, but somehow he ended up with a grey/green pelt!  It seemed to work quite nicely against the rust brown, I had used for his skin and what with his ruddy complexion has actually turned out to be one of my favourites.
So my line up was complete and at this juncture, I discovered another trait of the exceedingly generous Dave Stone Esq. - his unbridled enthusiasm for a project!  Already he has progressed more band members, which can be seen in a post on 'The Game Cupboard' and in a flurry of emails, I found myself swept along by same said enthusiasm and before I knew what I was doing an order was placed with 'Tritex Games' for a couple, or three, Star Wars Miniatures!  

So once again Dave a huge, Thank You , this has been such a fun distraction and I dare say I will sketching out some ideas for a throne room board before too long!

45 comments:

  1. They'll be our Xmas no1, NO doubt!

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  2. Marvellous stuff Michael. Dave's impact upon our little hobbying circle has been tremendous in my humble opinion, matched only by his awesome generosity and amiability. Top sculpts and paint-jobs all round :-)

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    1. Thank you Simon and I couldn't agree more, he is proving to be quite the inspiration.

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  3. You've done a marvelous job on them Michael - but I've got "that" tune stuck in my head again! ;-)
    Du-da du-da du-da du, duddly-du da du-da duh da.........

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    1. Ah yes, sorry about that. Thank you though. :)

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  4. Cracking work Michael! Very evocative of the movie.

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    1. Thank you Nick, really pleased with them.

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  5. Will they be entering the EUrovision? ;)

    Nice work Michael :)

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    1. Well they surely couldn't do any worse than we usually do?

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  6. Really great work on the painting Michael, I see you found a model from Tritex that I missed, sounds like I'm going to have to make another order, might wait a while as I've done two this week already ! LOL

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    1. Thank you again Dave and I did get a bit carried away, including a couple of quite expensive ones! I may have just put a third order in today - oh dear Lord! :D

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    2. Far too easy to do ! LOL, which one is the one in orange in the bottom picture ? I didn't go for Ephant Mon as that's one I really want to sculpt for myself as is Hermi Odle

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    3. The chap in orange is the Ugnaught droid destroyer and I did pick up Ephant Mon - if you press 'add to basket' button quickly it doesn't hurt so much. Fortunately I couldn't find a Hermi Odle otherwise he might have found his way home too!

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    4. Ahh I did order one of those so that's okay, no they didn't have a Hermi or a Klaatu but did find a Nikto, I also ordered one of the wookies to compare in size to the IA ones, as that could add some real variation. Hoping to do a post next week, with some of the repaints I've got done

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    5. I shall look forward to that as I am worried about painting them. I keep remembering the dinosaur I painted that went tacky, I would hate that to happen to these. Oh by the way ordered a Squid Head, but will need to fashion a cloak. :)

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    6. That's one I've painted already and comes with a cloak, what I've done is use the prepaint as base colours, then added washes or highs and glazes, to get the desired effect. Not had a problem with any going tacky so far

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    7. That's good to hear, sounds like I picked up a different Squid Head.

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  7. They are fantastic. I’m well jel.

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    1. Thank you Kieron and I can't believe how lucky I have been.

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  8. Wow! Nice paint jobs and what a gift

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    1. Thank you Andy so very thrilled with them.

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  9. These are awesome! I'm glad to know that my hobby room is not the only one that could use a "blue" warning. When things go wrong, it gets very hot in there. :-)

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    1. Thank you Monty and I have noticed the 'blue' air has got worse with age and not helped by now juggling my reading glasses with my usual pair. :)

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  10. Lively and colorful group, Michael! They certainly liven up the party!

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    1. Thank you Dean, they should certainly lift the mood.

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  11. Awesome stuff all round!

    Cheers Roger.

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  12. Colorful (what a lipstick!) and beautiful collection Michael!

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    1. Thank you Phil, it was lovely to work on something completely different.

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  13. Nice collection of star system characters. Possibilities for their blog adventures = lots!!

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    1. Thank you Jay, hoping to see them as a support act in a game or two.

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  14. Very nice brushwork, Michael. I can see that the Firve is strong in you this month. Understandably with all these cool SW figures clamouring for your attention, I can understand why Forgotten Heroes has taken a back seat. But that's not an issue, as paticipation is not mandatory...lol

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    1. Thank you Jez and yes they have rather put pay to Forgotten Heroes for the time being, still there is always next year. :)

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  15. Stunning work Michael. Lovely paintjobs on lovely sculpts by Dave!

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  16. A great looking band Micheal!

    Christopher

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  17. Great paint job on some stunning sculpts. Well done to you both.

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  18. "On" Possibly the most covered tune ever but I´ve yet to hear it.

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  19. Great sculpts and paint-job, even if I'm not enamoured by the whole cantina scene

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  20. O you lucky so and so. Love the paint jobs and seeing all the characters in the group shot is fantastic mate.

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  21. Fantastic work on the band Michael. I can just about hear 'her' belt out the jazz-like number now.

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  22. What talented guys you both are, these look amazing!

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