Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Cobra Snow Serpents (Polar Assault Troops)

This is the second Cobra Trooper "female conversion" I've done (the first one was the Tele-Viper).

Parts: Head (Star Wars TFU Juno Eclipse), Entire figure (25th Anniversary Snow Serpent)

Supplies: Dremel, X-acto knife, Super glue, paintbrushes, Testors paint, Testors Dull-Cote.

Reference: None.

This figure was much easier than most female trooper conversions, mostly because the character is wearing a bulky snow suit. This meant that I needed to make the figure a bit smaller in stature as compare to most male figures, but I didn't really need to worry much about making it look overly feminine (if you can see curves through a snow-suit, it's too darn tight). So what I did to accomplish this is basically a shortening of the limbs. The legs were easiest. I cut the boots off at the point where they met the snow-suit leg and then used the Dremel to hollow almost half of the lower leg. When I was finished, the boots could be inserted into the lower leg. The new head also lent to the appearance of a shorter person. Assuming that an unaltered Snow Serpent would stand around 6 feet tall, this dropped the female trooper's height about 3 inches or so compared to the unaltered figure. I started to look into shortening the arms, too. I had planned to do this in a similar manner - Dremeling out the gloved forearm so that the arm would fit into it. But I found that when you put all the gear on her, the look was pretty good without risking the potential screw-up in modding the arms. So I left them alone. I used a clear plastic band to attach the helmet to her webgear, as if she had taken it off and hung it there during a break. Should I decide to put the helmet back on, I can always switch them out again. The hair was painted a dark brown and the entire figure was given a light application of Dull-Cote. When the two figures are placed side by side on a flat surface, the top of the female Snow Serpent's head is now approximately flush with where the male's nose would be. In truth, I wanted her to be just a bit shorter, but I didn't want to overdo it and have the body end up looking disproportionate. So I theorized that realistically a taller, longer legged trooper would be more likely to keep up with his or her squad as they snow-shoed across the polar ice and decided that I was happy with it.

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