HALF LIFE 2 - HUNTER

Something big with lights in!

From the beginning I wanted this one to stand on its own with no visible wires or armature (unlike some of my figures....)

There's nothing particularly special about the process here, but here are a few pictures anyway.

An embarrassingly formless blob of tin foil is plonked ontop of a basic armature and the form is sculpted from Super Sculpey. The tin foil will be scooped out after baking to allow space for wires and LED's

Vauge forms are roughed out - I'm not too bothered about even surfaces at this point (these are sanded and perfected later).

Baked and sanded, sanded, sanded.

One leg was sculpted and molds were taken, all 3 legs are the same - so making copies of one saves a bunch of time and makes all the legs identical. The leg was sculpted in 3 separate pieces so I could be a bit looser with the finished pose and alleviate any fitting problems I may encounter later.

The molds for the legs is a two part silcone mold and parts are cast from Easyflo 60 polyurethane.

Painty time. The legs were sprayed with a 'double' acrylic spray paint (which may be marketing speak for half a can)

To give it a sheen, a pearlescent paint was used. The hunter has a blue-ish green appearance (and sometimes blue/grey depending on the light) so it took me a while to work out how to get the slightly two tone finish I wanted - though my particular hunter is a bit more on the blue side.

I eventually just lightly airbrushed a green colour over the finished legs to get a different tone in - The key was to do it subtly enough so that it only really shows up in the light and doesn't appear as green spots or stripes.

greeeeeeeeeeeeeen

  Bit of a test fit to see how he's looking...

In an effort to hide all elements of armature and wires, the rear leg is hollow - so that a wire can be fed through. This was achieved by sculpting the leg with the the armature wire poking at the top and bottom of each of the 3 pieces of leg. After baking, the armature wire can be pulled out from one end leaving a hollow space large enough to fit the wire.

Threading the wire through the curvy lower leg was a bit tricky, but nonetheless - success.

Painty painty masky masky.

 The legs are stuck on and the wire is fed through the body, ready to trip the light fantastic. I'm holding it up here -  it did stand up alone but I didn't want to chance it too much.

Also, little claws have been added to the 'feet' These were made from Milliput.

(Milliput, if you don't know is a two part epoxy you can use like a clay - it hardens after a few hours and can fill small holes, big holes and anything in between... It can be mixed with water to fill the finest of stuff and sands really well. You can sculpt with it but I personally don't think it's that good for anything complex as it can be a bit sticky and cling to tools too readily... I use it for everything.)

A quick base from the shop down the road, (a cooking board I covered in sand) and it's finally done! To get an idea or size, he/she/it stands at about 11.5 inches tall (12 if you include the antenna at the back)

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Thanks for looking.