As part of last year's painting challenge I completed an assortment of retro Star Wars miniatures that were sculpted by Nevile Stocken
of Archive Miniatures within weeks of the first Star Wars movie hitting
the theatres. Alas, Stocken couldn't get a licensing agreement, and the
line was modified to become 'Star Rovers' with enough changes made to
circumvent copyright. These were a gift from a friend who got them from
the estate of a mutual friend who had passed away. A total of sixteen
figures consisting of Obi-wan Kenobi, Greedo, R2-D2, a Tusken raider,
four Jawas, and eight Stormtroopers. With the exception of the Jawas, the figures stand 32-34mm tall. Obi-wan's light saber, and the
gaffi stick of the Tusken raider had broken off at some point. I
rebuilt them using lengths of florist wire.
I
was initially going to build the structure in the background as a Gondorian tower for Minas Tirith, but
the materials I had weren't giving off the right vibe. I decided to add
another building to my Tatooine collection instead. It stands 8" tall
and the base is 8" on a side.
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| Somewhere in Mos Eisley |
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| Stormtroopers |
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| Tusken, Kenobi, Jawas, Greedo, and R2-D2 |
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| More Stormtroopers | |
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The last of the Stocken figures is a Bunny Stormtrooper, one of a variety of modifications to the original sculpts made to avoid copyright infringement. It could easily be converted back to a normal Stormtrooper by snipping off the ears, tail, rabbit teeth and toes. Unfortunately there was only one of these in the bag of minis my friend gave me.
In addition to the Archive miniatures, I also painted up two old-school 25mm Star Wars
miniatures of Han Solo and Leia Organa from West End Games. They were
painted with Vallejo acrylics, with a wash of Citadel Reikland
Fleshshade on the skin areas. In the background is a plastic model kit
released by MPC for 'The Return of the Jedi' which is approximately 1/78
scale. A bit small for the figures, but it works well on the game
table.
Keeping with the Science Fiction genre are two female troopers from the
Eurasian Solar Union by Ground Zero Games. I picked these up off eBay
years ago with plans to add them to the mix of various manufactures that
I painted up as my planetary militia. I had done a few of these for a
previous challenge, and I used the same colour scheme using Vallejo acrylics and Citadel washes.
Lastly I painted up five resin cast vehicles from Scotia Grendel,
consisting of two of their tracked Sci-Fi APCs and three of their
wheeled A.T.A.C. APCs. I had purchased these at least fifteen years ago
when I was still running an after-school wargames club, and I needed
more vehicles for the large number of students who attended. In the end,
I never found time to paint them and, after I retired, there was little
incentive until now. Once again, the Painting Challenge has provided
the necessary motivation to paint up items that have resided in a
storage box for over a decade. The
wolf's head on the back of the tracked APC is actually detail that is
cast on the model in slight relief. I painted them white on both
vehicles.
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| A group shot of all five vehicles |
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| 6-wheeled APC, right side and front |
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| 6-wheeled APC, back and left side |
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| Tracked APC, front and left side |
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| Tracked APC, right side and back |
All of the figures and vehicles in this post were done for various themed challenges associated with the Challenge Library - Children's Books, Manga and Graphic Novels, Romance, Science-Fiction, and Lady Sarah's Library Cart. It will be interesting to see what themed tasks will be presented in this year's 'Divine Comedy'.
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