Skif Marvel Customs: X-Com : the squad arrived devastated !!

Dear followers, obviously I never thought of leaving the three alien characters (Thin Man, Sectoid and the Floater) alone without a counterpart.

But I wanted to make a surprise.

Instead the surprise came for me.

The Amazon package that was supposed to contain the team of 6 characters that I carefully chose to make the X-Com strike team arrived on Saturday.

Of the 6 characters I had chosen, only 2 are what I expected. Two arrived in 1:44 scale and therefore unusable, and two never arrived.

It's as if the team returned from a mission with two dead and two seriously wounded.

This is intolerable.

I had planned to finish the whole team by July, however this unexpected delay upsets my plans a bit...

To make it up to you, I'm giving you a preview of the first two women on the team.

But I know that you are unsatisfied until you can't see any progress, so... here we go:

Here above you can see how the Floater is progressing, and I was wondering how to give the idea that he's floating in the air and not on the ground. The best idea I had was to do a support made of crystal resin.

I choose a mold that I could later adapt to the scope... se again above. Of course to calculate the quantity of resin to use was a mess and I obtained a extra earring, the base (support).. acat! And last but not least a face scale 1:24 by filling a Supersculpey made negative of a famale figurine (yellow in the picture.

Then it was time to create the bases, as I since I took out a very old box of Supersculpey... The first was colored gold metal,

a second one was a typical rural terrain....

and the third I made (above) was inspired to typical urban warfare terrain.

In the meantime the Floater was complaining that he doesn't have a proper flight thruster, so above and below you can see how I shaped the figure.

I had the unfortunate idea of putting an antenna on the back, needless to say that while I was sculpting, finishing, gluing and photographing, the antenna broke at least four times and in the end the choice was to eliminate it completely or at least to shorten it....

while I was giving attention to the Floater, the Sectoid started to complain that he doesn't have any progress.... and here we go too:

Needless to say that the Thin Man asked for the same attention...

Uh!? He doesn't have the glasses yet!

Ok, here we go. Believe me: these are really microscopic ones !!!!

Better to use a good glue (Attak from Loctite) and to leave extra lenght on glasses stems and after the glue is dry I'll remove the extra lenght and model the final part of the stems.

Let me check how the three aliens are running...

But the Sectoid is bloody dark to be appreciated....

Better give a first base paint to see him appropriately.

Much better this way, now.

At this pont I could close the day of sculpting, but.... what can I still do with this old Supersculpey material I found in one of my drawers???

I still have to make up for the fact that I will hardly finish the Xcom team before July, as anticipated.

Ok, let's make some calculations: 6 humans for the X-Com Team, and 3 aliens... Mmmhh...

This manifest numerical inferiority of the aliens can be corrected. We see...

I think you can see above what was my choice...

I don't know if my decision was a lucky one. The Chryssalid can be really challenging to sculpt and define.

Specially when we think that a Chrissalyd needs a speciale base, that I do not have!

Okay, I still had some drops of resin, about 50ml, and a lot of Superscupley residues and flakes, but I need a casting box. Then first thing is to create a casting box.

Ingredients:

-strips of rubber more or less 4cm wide, 50cm lenght

-glue (internal) and silicon (external) to seal the casting box

-lot of Supersculpey flakes and wastes (or everythingelse to fill as much is possible the volume!)

-water

-50 ml of crystal resin (eventually to be colored with half a drop of alchool color for polyurethane resin (who doesn't have at his home at leaste a copuple of drops of this stuff dear fellows?)

How to prepare:

This is the most difficult part: cut the lenght you need according the dimension of the base you want to obtain. I told youi, this was the most though part! 😁😁😁

from the other part of the rubber, engrave the 4 letters X C O M using a cutter.

Alternatively you can carve whatever the hell you want if you're not making a base for Xcom!

But think about it, if you engrave the word "baker's house" it becomes a muuuuuuch longer, mooooore complicated job and then you'll have to explain to your followers what the hell a Chryssalid is doing in the baker's house.

Then glue the letters on the rubber strip, as a mirror image (basically from right to left, otherwise you will tragically fail).

Gentlemen, I'm already telling you now that I'm writing on the blog and I haven't baked this base from the mold yet... I don't know, I don't have the faintest idea of how this stuff of the letters XCOM will come!!!!

Now make a ring with the rubber, please use your brain to understand that the type XCOM must be in the inside. Glue the two ends of the ring very well. There must be no gaps between them otherwise the resin will leak out.

Paste the created ring on a rubber base of the same material (I used three strips sealing the joints).

Again: no gap.

Now since luck is blind but bad luck can see very well, reseal the whole exterior well with silicone and let it dry for a few hours.

Fill with water to make a leak test: the water level must remain constant, no leaks are allowed otherwise the resin will leak out. Take it filled with water at least 30 minutes, then, if it was succesfull, empty the water and leave it to dry well: water is not friend of resin!

Put all those Supersculpey or whatever stuff into your new casting box, add half a drop of color to the resin (I used half drop of orange color into 50 ml of transparent resin, if you use more you risk that the resin becomes opaque (colored) and is no longer transparent.

Leave it a day to dry completely.

Don't eat it, even if it reminds you a good mixed grilled meat and pork ribs. Please.