Sci-fi Models Gallery

The Creature (from the Black Lagoon)

This photo was published in the February 1997 issue of 'Fine Scale Modeler' (pg 47).

One of my favorite Aurora models from my childhood was the one of The Creature, aka "Gillman". When I saw that Horizon had made a new version of him, I got the kit, with the idea that I would paint him like they had done on the box, with a "fish" motif, colors like on a bass, with camouflage spots, and a pinkish colored belly and gills. But after viewing the old b/w videos, I decided to stay true to the movie version; dark green all over, and a lighter version on the belly and "fleshy" areas. The gills, fins and webbed areas are painted with a very thin, watery green, over the white primer, so as to give a translucent look to those areas.

Before this photo was published, I was bored, and I was again thinking of re-painting the Gillman per the box version, but then when they published the photo, I had to leave it as is

The diorama was made from scratch. I made the dirt and the moss from stuff I bought at the railroad hobby store, which that hobby uses for landscaping around tracks. The front plants are fake aquarium plants, and the long weeds in the back were found in the silk-flower area of my local crafts store. I made the water surface by painting the wood of the base a very dark blue. Then I poured layers of "clear" acrylic lacquer over the blue to make it look shiny and shimmery.

Vinyl Building Alert !!
If you look closely at the left knee, you may notice that it is "collapsed". I had not yet learned the technique of filling the lower torso/legs of vinyl kits, with Plaster of Paris. I did fill the webbed-feet with lead shot and clay, to weight him down, and felt it un-necessary to put plaster further up the leg for more weight. This model was left in sunlight, and the heat collapsed this joint area. Later, I had to break the legs off, and fill them with plaster.

The Crow (Eric Draven)

The pose on this kit was so natural, and the facial features were so much like those of the actual actor, the deceased Brandon Lee, that I decided to build this kit. Assembly was simple since there was only 4 pieces !! The scanned image above washed out his face, so you can't see translucent white over flesh tone, representing the white make-up he smeared on in the movie. Also the thin black mascara lines running up and down through each eye cannot be seen.

The diorama was made from scratch. Tom Sosenko carved me the wood base and the headstone. I made the dirt and the moss from stuff I bought at the railroad hobby store, which that hobby uses for landscaping around tracks.

Rick Deckard (from Blade Runner)

In 2011, I was looking for a kit of a character that I could convert into X-Men's Gambit, so I bought this resin kit of Rick Deckard, off of eBay. But after getting it, and thinking about it, I realized it would take a "lot of work" and modifying to make this into a Gambit that I would be happy with !! So this kit sat in the closet for a long time. After I watched the sequel (Blade Runner 2049), I got interested in the Deckard character, so I decided to build it in December of 2018.

Since it's now 2019, and we have better digital cameras then when I first started taking photos of my completed models, it's easier to take photos all through the build process. So for this build, I am going to also show what the original kit looked like, and include a couple of intermediate build photos.

• The first photo shows all the parts of the kit. Note that the outer raincoat came in two halves, and there were thin spots and holes in the resin, so I had a lot of putty work to do for the raincoat.
• Note that the inner jacket has two pieces, each meant to be glued to the inside of the rain coat. However, to me, if you looked closely at the finished model, you could see that the inner jacket did not wrap around his body but looked like two "hanging flaps". So per the second photo, I used very thin layers of epoxy putty to extend those two pieces so when painted, the inner jacket looks like it wraps around his body.
• The third photo shows the assembled model, including all the putty needed to fill voids and gaps in the resin.
• The last three photos show the completed model. Per reference photos I found, the neck tie pattern was a "challenge" to paint !!

Indiana Jones

I've had the Horizon Indiana Jones and Dr. Jones kits for almost thirty years. So in celebration of the upcoming final movie (out in June 2023), I decided to finally build these two kits !!

I've always "hated" painitng the kits that had human faces because geting the flesh tones to my satisfaction is always tough. And also making the face "look real" is also very tough. But both of these kits have fairly decent resemblances to the actors portraying them.

The neat aspect of the Indiana Jones kit is that you can choose to either have a bullwhip or a machete in his right hand. The kit comes with two right foerarms; one formed holding a whip handle, and the other formed holding a machete handle. What I did was I didn't glue either right forearms to the socket above the right elbow. After heating the socket end of either forearm, it can be carefully popped into place, thus allowing the model to hold either the whip or machete.

Note: The bullwhip is a very clever design ... it's a 40-inch long plastic twist tie. You are supposed to fold it in half (makes for a scaled 10-foot length) and keep twisting to form "overlapping braids". To be more accurate to the actual bullwhip, I painted the section at the end that would be the fall, the color of a normal cotton rope, and the very tip black as the cracker would be.

Indiana Jones' Father

I was impressed with how Horizon created this model kit.

• Before opening the box, I was wondering how they molded the glasses around his face, but realized they actually included two pairs of plastic glasses !! I assume the second was in case you broke one ? The trick was I had to cut slots above the ears so I could slide the glasses into place after painting the head and hat which was one piece.
• The briefcase was nicely done, with a male tab at the back of the case to help align it wth a cutout at his waist to help align where the briefcase was meant to be. Being a molded vinyl piece, there was a hole in the back of the briefcase, which though wouldn't be ssen from the front, I covered anyway, in case of "close inspection"
• The other tricky aspect of the kit was the positioning of the two hands; the right one so his fingers would wrap around the bottom of the briefcase, and the left one so the fingers would rest on top of his hat. I didn't glue the hands in place until after I had the briefcase and head/hat glued in place, so I could position the hands as best as I could relative to final positions of the briefcase and head/hat.

RoboCop

I was always interested in this kit because it looked like a very good representation of RoboCop. I bought a partially assembled kit, and did so when the seller indicated that all of the main joints could be left unglued. Thus the kit was posable, even after completed assembly. The head and waist can swivel in the horizontal plane, and the two arms can swivel at the shoulders. I did glue the legs in place since I filled the entire lower torso with Plaster of Paris for weight, and to lock the feet into position. Photo 1 shows the completed kit in a "relaxed" pose, with arms down at his side and head looking straight ahead. Photo 3 shows the kit posed such that he is shooting off to his side; the head is swiveled to lineup with the gun sighting.

Photo 2 shows the back view. I actually replaced the hydraulic lifts on the back of his legs, that came with the kit, with ones that Tom Sosenko milled out for me from round styrene stock. These new parts are more like the ones on the actual costume. Photo 4 (slightly out of focus) shows the head with the helmet removed. I think it is a very good likeness of Officer Murphy !!

The silver portions of his costume were "painted" by using a product called Rub n' Buff, which is actually a Carnauba paste wax with very fine silver pigment in it. I bought it at the local craft store. I was really impressed with this stuff. I applied it with an old paint brush, and then a few seconds later, I buffed it until it had a nice shine and felt dry to the touch. Now this stuff does NOT have a mirrored finish, but looks more like fine polished aluminum, and as you can see from the photos, is very reflective.

Alien Warrior (from first 'Alien' movie)

As with many of us sci-fi geeks, I had always wanted a nice model representing the Alien Warrior from the first movie. It is the version with the translucent head dome. In the second movie, the Alien costume was "simplified" by James Cameron; so to me the one from the first movie is the "true" Alien Warrior. My problem was finding a kit that was my preferred 1/6 scale. Geometrics makes a nice one that includes an egg, but it is only 1/9 scale. This Halcyon kit was listed as 1/5 scale, but I was hoping it might be closer to 1/6. But it is HUGE standing at over 17" tall, with a tail that is over 18" long. Other nice features of this kit are:

• it includes a translucent dome which appears to be made of a slightly yellowish rubber. The Alien's skull can be seen through it.
• the tongue (that has its own teeth) can be retracted or displayed sticking out (see animated photo to the left)
  Note: on some browsers the bottom photo, which is an animated gif showing the tongue going-in-and-out of his mouth, does not seem to work
• the arms can be left unglued such that they can be repositioned whenever the mood strikes to change them.

Seeing the "really cool" pose on the box made me buy it. However, after building it I realized that the pose on the box was not representative of the kit. The sculptor of the model made him very upright (see second photo on left) ... not how I picture this creature. I think the sculptor did that for stability of the finished model. I thought about reworking the knees to make it crouched more but abandoned that idea after seing the structural problems with doing so.

After assemblying and puttying the kit, the next major task was WHAT COLOR TO paint it ?!?! I won't go into the hours I spent on the web trying to figure out how to paint it .. from the actual studio grey and mottled brown aspect, to the dark green per the enclosed instructions, to purple version via Geometrics instructions, to all black per the later Alien movies. Also, various recommendations for the skull under the translucent dome was for a cream color (like that for the retractable tongue), but that seemd to be too stark a contrast to any dark paint job. What I settled on was to try an airbrush technique I had been told about, but never actually tried before. That is to base paint a figure black, and then to airbrush over it with a transparent color, such that when the light strikes parts of the figure in a certain way, the transparent color can be seen as sort of a "tinge".

I used the above technique, using a transparent purple. However, this didn't work as well for me as I would have hoped; the black was just too intense to overcome with the purple. So later I drybrushed over high areas with an opaque purple. After using Rub n' Buff Silver (as first used on RoboCop above) on the fingernails, toenails and teeth, I took the cloth that just had a trace of the Rub n' Buff on it, and went over the drybrushed purple areas ... giving the figure more of a purplish-silver tinge. Unfortunately, the photos do not show this very subtle effect. For the skull, and "brain area" I also used Rub n' Buff silver, and then misted it over with transparent purple. I left the eye sockets black to show a contrast between skull and eyes. I then applied the dome.

Finishing touches includes:

• painting the retractable tongue cream-colored, with a reddish wash, and silver teeth
• bending the flexible tail (which has a "moldable" wire inside of the entire length) into the desired shape, and attaching into a hole in the bottom of the spine. I could have glued the tail in place, but I left it unglued to make it easy to remove for transporting the figure. Also, the natural seam between tail and spine makes the lack of gluing "not noticeable" to the casual observer.
• added drool made from "clear" hot glue. After taking these photos, I actually removed the center Tear-drop shaped piece of drool

Horus (from 'Stargate' movie)

I always been interested in the two Horizon kits for the two bodyguards (Anubis and Horus) from the 1994 movie 'Stargate'. But because they were 1/5 scale and resin, they were not in scale with my other 1/6 scale models. Also, these kits are among the most expensive Horizon kits still out there !! But in early 2008, I decided to build one of these for a friend (Tom Sosenko) as a birthday present

Highlights:

• To get a good weathered copper look for the helmet, mask, shoulder protector, and arm and leg bands, I used Spanish Copper Rub-n-buff. This Rub-n-buff was darker than I expected, so in some areas (such as the arm and leg bands) I mixed it with Gold Rub-n-buff to make a "copper-bronze" color. Then as per the painting instructions, I used washes of turquoise to give the copper a tarnished look.
• Though in the movie, the two eyes on the mask are brown, I painted them a bright red as seen on the mask in the susbsequent TV series. I felt that red eyes were also "more interesting" aesthetically.
• I had never painted the skin for a "a black man" before so I had to figure out what colors to use/mix for these darker flesh tones. I knew that the actor (Djimon Honsou) was a dark-skinned African.
• As I had read with others building this kit, the staff weapon was made from a semi-flexible resin, and was warped. Sosenko replaced the middle portion of the staff with a brass tube. Though the instructions called for the staff to be gold, I thought that wasn't realistic, so I used the copper-bronze Rub-n-Buff mixture on it. Also, I airbrushed layers of a "transparent" blue where the Naquada jewels are.
• There were no instructions on how to attach the horn device, so I added a thin cord to both ends of it. Sosenko made a small "hook" by splitting a small piece of styrene tubing, so that the horn device can be hung from the belt, as per the movie.
• We couldn't decide which position to glue the head into, so I came-up with the idea of using a male-threaded screw and a female-threaded collar. After drilling the appropriate holes, the former was glued to the underside of the head, and the latter glued to the top of the neck area. The head can now be pivoted and won't fall-off !!
• The kit comes with a base which is four identical triangles with hyroglyphics on it. Sosenko came-up with the staggered concept (see photo), and he wanted the glyphs painted, so I did so. Me, I am "more boring" in my thinking than Sosenko, so I would have just put the four pieces into a flat larger triangle, and not painted the glyphs

King Kong

Dark Horse was a company that made a few vinyl kits during the mid-90's. They were mainly sci-fi and horror-related. I bought this kit having only seen the box art. The box claims that the model is 1/20 scale, but based on the approx. measurement of Fay Wray as 2.5", I would guess this is closer to 1/24 scale ?

I had never seen the finished model and was disappointed to learn it came with a base and that the King Kong model would not stand alone. The kit was fairly simple, though the vinyl material was much thicker than the vinyl on Horizon kits ... this made for tough cutting even with a new X-acto blade !! There are only 4 seams, which was good because to putty them meant having to reform the fur. The only interesting part of painting this kit was the mouth, and Fay Wray in his right hand. Otherwise, it was a base coat of black, and dry-brushed layers of dark grey followed by lighter layer of dark brown, and then medium grey to tone down some of the brown. I did coat the chest and face areas with a clear acrylic varnish, so as to give those areas a more leathery look.

I tried to zoom in on the Fay Wray portion of the model, but unfortunately my digital camera could not handle that much of a close-up and the photo is slightly fuzzy. But you can see her blonde hair, and white evening dress. This is the New York City dress, so the base which depicts the island plateau does not match what she is wearing

Transporter Pad

AMT/ERTL 1/6 scale Vinyl

Star Trek TOS

Transporter Pad - 1/6 scale scratch-built
The transporter pad photo was published in the April 1998 issue of 'Fine Scale Modeler' (pg 48).

I consider the four AMT/ERTL Star Trek (Original Series) models of "low quality", but the Spock kit was the fourth one issued and the best of the four. Aside from the fact that it is difficult to sculpt human faces to look "realistic", some of the other body parts of these kits are not quite properly proportioned. Notice how the gun on Spock's hip is attached; there was no holster or clip provided in the kit for a more realistic effect. So I just had to glue the gun to his hip.

I call the transporter pad scene 'The Search for Spock' because initially, only the kits for Kirk, Bones and Scotty were available. So, when this photo was taken, I did not have the Spock kit. The transporter pad was made by Tom Sosenko, with minor help from me, to the same scale as the models, and turned out to be "huge" ... 27" in diameter. The silver pads which the models are standing on, are "pegged" such that those pads can be rotated. The lights in the ceiling are just cut-off tubes, but we considered putting Christmas lights in them so that we could make them blink on and off, but we never followed through to do so.

Terminator Exo-skeleton

In 2013, I bought this as an unfinished kit, and after I got it I realized why the original owner probably didn't want to finsh it ? I was expecting all of the parts to be vinyl, with maybe the tubing, pistons and cylinders being cast resin parts. Well, I was quite surprised to find that those "mechanical parts" were actually made out of brass !! If you look at the photo of the unprimed kit, you can see those parts with a gold color.

Those brass parts were difficult to install, esp the tubing around the neck, and into the shoulders. I never could get the completed model to stand "perfectly straight". Per the photo of the completed kit, you can see that he leans slightly to his right, and he also tends to fall backwards, so I had to put two clear round discs under his heel.Because of the tubing the arms can not be positioned as I had hoped. In general a pretty boring pose.

Predators

I had always wanted to build a Predator model, since in recent years they, along with the Aliens, have become Horror / Sci-Fi movie-franchises. Billiken was the first to make kits for the Predators, but vintage ones are pricey.

In 2013, I found this company Argonauts which made a series of Predators, including the one from the second movie, 'Predator 2'. Argonauts made kits for two versions of Predator 2, with helmet on (holding spear and skull), and without the helmet (holding his throwing disc). I decided to build one of each. If you know Predator lore, the Predators, are similar but as with humans, can vary in height, skin color, etc. So I built the helmeted one per the movie, gave him brown scales, and silver-toned armor. I built the helmet-less one with green scales, different chest markings, copper-toned armor, etc. The idea is that they are not the same Predator, but two different Predators. In fact at the end of that movie, there are several Predators on-screen .

For the helmeted one, I updated the skull to also contain the spinal cord, as per the rooftop scene in the movie. I made this spinal cord so that it would "float", so when the left arm is positioned higher, the spinal cord still dangles downward. Also, the fact that the spear, although relatively thick, was made of vinyl causes it to be warped, so it isn't "perfectly straight" .

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch Schaefer (from Predator)

To my Predators above, I wanted to add a model of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch Schaefer from the 1987 'Predator' movie. In 2015, I bought a resin model kit of Arnold as John Matrix from the 1985 movie 'Commando' that I found on eBay (top photo). I got it with the intention of converting it to Dutch Schaefer, in time for the 30th anniversary of the 'Predator' movie. I started it in early 2017, but never completed it until 2018.

For detailed info on how I made this model of Dutch (bottom photo), and more photos of it, click on the link below:
Dutch Schaefer Conversion

Tardis (from Dr. Who)

This past winter, I watched every episode of the British TV show Dr. Who, with the ninth - eleventh Doctors. I liked how you could see the wood grain in the prop used for the show, so I thought it would be fun to build my own scale model out of Balsa wood. The version I built is based on the 2010-2013 episodes where the Doctor is played by Matt Smith. Note the white windows, and St. John's Ambulance signs.

I found a set of detailed plans online, and was planning to build a 1/10 scale one, but locally I couldn't find balsa wood sheets any wider than 4" (needed for the base), so I decided to "keep it simple" and build a 1/15 scale one. I was able to buy some doll house hinges, so both doors will open inward. Also, my buddy Tom Sosenko made me the lantern and door handles, which I needed to complete the model. I didn't prime the balsa wood before painting, which allowed the wood to absorb the thinned-down acrylic paint; this gives the model a stained look, rather than a painted look. In fact after doing the base coat of 'Cobalt Blue', I then brushed on a very thin wash of greyish blue ... not sure you can see that effect in the photos.

Tom and I are planning on building a 1/10 scale one later, that will include lights !!

Larger Tardis (from Dr. Who)

As mentioned in the paragraphs directly above, a year later I built a 1/10 scale version. It is essentially the same as the 1/15 scale one, except that Tom Sosenko and I included lights. There are two lights ... a white LED embedded into the lantern that Tom made me, and two white LED's embedded into the ceiling of the interior. These lights are timed to flash 1/2 second on, and 1/2 second off. The electronics and battery is embedded into hollowed-out areas in the stacked roof sections.

The top photo on the left shows the TARDIS next to a soda can, so you can see how much larger it is than the 1/15 scale one (in the photos above). The second set of photos I took in a darkened room, so you could see the effects of the lights when they are on.