Action Figure UPDATED:Custom Nostromo Kane : FINISHED!!!

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Very impressive. I like your can-do approach to the problem.

Thanks Gruff. I didn't want the awesome HT gear and helmet to go to waste.

BTW: I plan to make a completely white Ripley version at some point.

 

[Jmek]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Oh dear, that's a bit worrying. I bought Kane when he first came out and I've never taken him out of the box. I think I'll check on him tonight.

Dallas is my only HT fig that I display and he's still as good as new.

Fantastic work on the suit Tinister, can't wait to see it finished.

 

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Just realized from this pic that I need to make a fabric collar too. The HT suit had a molded plastic collar that looks about three times too thick height-wise and too wide on the shoulders too. they pushed the shoulder pieces out to far.

A padded fabric collar would actually allow the helmet to sit more flushed to the shoulders (and more stable) - and look more accurate to the screen suit.

 

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Oh dear, that's a bit worrying. I bought Kane when he first came out and I've never taken him out of the box. I think I'll check on him tonight.

Dallas is my only HT fig that I display and he's still as good as new.

Fantastic work on the suit Tinister, can't wait to see it finished.

Thanks Jmek. Definitely take Kane out and display him. I think mine got screwed from being in the box so long.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Awesome work! This is the way it should have been done from the get-go.

I think your theory about the HT plastic try is true -- I also live in Cali, and have Dallas and Kane out of the box on the shelf. So far, no deterioration. Figure's are about what they were when I got them. I don't expect them to last forever though. But then I don't expect to be a collector forever.

 

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Awesome work! This is the way it should have been done from the get-go.

I think your theory about the HT plastic try is true -- I also live in Cali, and have Dallas and Kane out of the box on the shelf. So far, no deterioration. Figure's are about what they were when I got them. I don't expect them to last forever though. But then I don't expect to be a collector forever.

Thanks Wor-Gar! I think if HT had gone this route with the suit - the figure would have cost much more $$$. It's super tedious to cut out and sew together the patchwork of quilt and different colored fabrics. The stitching detail on the legs you see took me forever to figur out - and they're still not exactly how I wanted them to look. They looked fine when the suit was off - but once on and stuffed with wool- they threads shifted and the "X" pattern is unrecognizable.

If I did it over again - I'd figure out a way to add that stitching after the suit has been fitted to the body. Oh well.

 

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

And definitely - if you guys have one of these sitting in a box - I recommend taking them out to breathe for a little bit so the same thing doesn't happen to yours.

 

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Great work Tinister! Always wished HT would have gone the extra mile and created a fabric suit. The rubber suits look pretty good, but feel a bit cheap.

Really hope mine don't rot away... they've been displayed for a couple years now with no obvious issues. But seems like with some of these figures (like the ED-2009) its only a matter of time

Thanks Galactiboy! I'd keep them displayed if I were you. I had mine on display for about a year or so with no issues. Put it in the box about 2 years ago and bam!

No wonder I see 3rd party replacement domes for ED on ebay. Was the dome rubber?

 

[Grosby]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Two bad I didn't do a little research when I chose the orange fabric for the suit. I followed the HT suit and it was completely wrong. Kane had light colored - almost yellow patches as seen in these pics.

Maybe you've seen this too but if not it might be helpful, someone who went to some lengths to make their figures more accurate, there's a pretty lengthy list of changes:

https://www.sideshowcollectors.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42229

 

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Maybe you've seen this too but if not it might be helpful, someone who went to some lengths to make their figures more accurate, there's a pretty lengthy list of changes:

https://www.sideshowcollectors.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42229

Thanks Grosby. I was told about that thread, but most of his pics are gone and the few that were still there - my Kaspersky Anti-virus goes bonkers when I try to view them.

I looked at the list and alot of his fixes are cosmetic - adding weathering and scratches and so forth. Which I'll likely do in a fashion that looks good- not necessarily accurate to the movie.

With implemenation of the fabric suit, fabric collar, and fabric shin/arm guards - in conjunction with the use of a shorter base body; I'm discovering that most if not all of the scale issues will be addressed.

- I think he mention the body needed to be 5 inches shorter; my base body is about an 1/2 inch shorter. I think he was measuring using the rubber suit. The leggs on the rubber suit were too long because the suit was molded without the "low-riding" waistline that you see in the movie suits. The crotch area in the movie suits hung pretty low from the actual crotch - giving the appeareance of the legs being both shorter and fatter. That's partly the reason I made my suit in two pieces; so I can more accurately judge how low I wanted the waist to ride.

- The fabric collar will allow the modified helmet to sit more flushed to the body's shoulder; reducing the height by about 1/2 inch. And the figure being about 1/2 inch shorter will put the scale of the equipment to body just about right. The fabric collar also allows the shoulder pieces to be harness closer to the sides of the helmet and also meet the chest plate in the middle. On the rubber suit - it was impossible to do this - further magnifying the wrong scale of the gear to the body.

- The boots and gloves were all too big so I will rescuplt those from scratch and in the process match them closer to the movie pieces.

- I'm resculpting the Kane face. To be honest - his resculpt looked more like Kane than HT (of course), but it didn't really com close enough. It looked too "rough".

- I may add more weathering to the armored pieces; I actually disagree with him that the HT had too much weathering. Ref pics I've seen - the gear is pretty weathered out.

- And as I mentioned; I followed the color scheme of the HT and it resulted in the wrong shade of orange patches, but I will use watered down bleach spray to lighten everything before I apply weathering to the fabric. Should be pretty neat. The suit is already getting grimey from my handling it and looking very realistic in places.

I'm not really going for absolute screen accuracy. I'm basically doing this so that I don't have a box of cool gear sitting there with no figure.

 

[Minimodel]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Shame John Hurt had to be such a ****** about his likeness.

Do the actual suits still exist anywhere?

 

[Jmek]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Thanks Jmek. Definitely take Kane out and display him. I think mine got screwed from being in the box so long.

I checked him last night and fortunately he seems fine, although the suit is a bit "tacky".

I think I might take your advice on that one though. It's too cool a figure to keep boxed up.

 

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

I checked him last night and fortunately he seems fine, although the suit is a bit "tacky".

I think I might take your advice on that one though. It's too cool a figure to keep boxed up.

Phew! Good for you! Sucks cause I usually check my boxed figures regularly, but got lazy in the past year when I stopped collecting for a while.

Glad yours is okay Jmek

 

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Replacement spacesuit (Sneak Preview)

Just finished the shin guards for the legs. Came out much better than I anticipated.

I ended up using two thin sheets of thin construction foam (the kind with adhesive sides). On one sheet I cut out the shape of the shin. On the other sheet I traced the same shape but made it a little smaller than the first. When the two adhesive sides of the two cut out pieces together - it left a thin edge around the border where the larger piece overlapped the smaller. This thin exposed edge is adhesive - allowing me to attach the brown trim (the brown elastic cord) along this edge of the guard.

Then I used the edge of a butter knife heated slightly to carefully press in the vertical crease lines on the front surface of the shin guard. I went over the lines a few times to give them uneven perforations.

The end result looks almost identical to the movie shins. Once these are weathered - should look awesome.

Here are some pics (held in place temporarily by elastic cord):

 

[tinister]

Re: HT Nostromo Kane : Custom fabric spacesuit (Shin Guards added)

Just finished the sculpt of the new boots. The HT boots were HUGE and not screen accurate in any way. I looked through the dvd and it looks like HT based their design on a close-up shot of a pair of boots that has alien blood/acid dripped on it in the movie. But that boot wasn't the same boots Kane wore on the trek to the derelict ship.

And reference pics seem to show that there were two types of boots used in the spacesuit scenes. A pair worn during the trekking scenes. These had very flat almost worn looking soles. Then a different pair worn as the trio are examining the Space Jockey. These boots were very similar, but had thicker soles with treads. I'm thinking maybe these boots were difficult to walk in so they used the flat soled ones in the trek scene.

I sculpted my boots based on these two versions.

Once I calculated the right size for these new boots - you can see how out of scale the HT boots are. And for some reason - they made the foot part of the boot way too long.

Here is a pic of my new boot sculpts (still not cured enough to put on the figure):

 

[tinister]

Re: Updated: HT Nostromo Kane : Custom fabric spacesuit (New Boot Sculpts)

The right scale boots really pull the whole design of the legs together. Those brown dress shoes I used before as placeholder just wasn't doing it

 

[tinister]

Re: Updated: HT Nostromo Kane : Custom fabric spacesuit (New Boot Sculpts)

I forgot to mention. With a much lighter fabric suit replacing the much heavier rubber suit - the figure (with helmet and shoulder pads on) became top heavy. I had a hard time getting him to stay upright without using a stand.

So when I sculpted the boots - I embedded two pieces of lead in the sole of each boot. This made the boots heavy and now the figure stands pretty easily. Which is cool because the boots in the movie were custom designed with weights in the soles to simulate low gravity walking.

With the boots now - I can see the body proportions even out much better than with the original rubber suit.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Re: Updated: HT Nostromo Kane : Custom fabric spacesuit (New Boot Sculpts)

That's awesome!!

I'm so glad you're building me one too. Thanks, man!

 

[tinister]

Re: Updated: HT Nostromo Kane : Custom fabric spacesuit (New Boot Sculpts)

That's awesome!!

I'm so glad you're building me one too. Thanks, man!

Thanks Wor-Gar. It's coming along. I just ran out of magicsculpt so I have to order more to sculpt the gloves. I want those to be the most screen accurate - I was disappointed that the HT gloves left off the distinctive lobster thumb design.

 

[Jmek]

Re: Updated: HT Nostromo Kane : Custom fabric spacesuit (New Boot Sculpts)

Tinister you're a goddmaned genius!

That's simply jaw dropping work.