Official Sideshow 1/6 ANH Darth Vader PHOTO Thread

Man, that really does look excellent.

Nice job, that looks great.

Chris, that's the only time I've seen the movie cape that tight at the neck. Yours looks perfect!

Oh dear, my Vader turned out more fragile than I expected. I had done the neck mod previously, shortening down the neck post then pinning and gluing it back together.

Pulling the head off to adjust his cape proved just how fragile.



I'll need to try something stronger, probably epoxy. Superglue just doesn't cut it. It's that bit trickier since those ball joints are now firmly in those sockets. There's no way they're coming out!

Vader's neck brace made it hard to see where the two pieces joined together. This was going to hinder my efforts at a repair so I cracked open his noggin to reveal this black pillar thing.



Let' see how this turns out.

You did "the neck mod"?

1) I have never heard of a neck mod.
2) Why would you want to modify the neck?

TheFiend said:

Man, that really does look excellent.

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Chakaman said:

Nice job, that looks great.

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(sorry)

Sorry to see you've run into some trouble, Rory.

I recommend getting a screw and screwing it into the stuck ball. That will give you something to hold on to (with pliers, perhaps) in order to yank it out.

Nah it wasn't me. I was just having a laugh at omegas expense!

cking said:

I was looking through my reference pics and found this great shot of ANH Vader. Just for fun, I put a photo of my KP02 modded Vader next to it to see how it compares. VERY happy with the results.

Looking at the cape though, it does look like it should be tighter together at the front of the neck. I think I may ask LForigno to do one like that for me.

Chris

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Very nice dude!

Rorywan said:

Nah it wasn't me. I was just having a laugh at omegas expense!

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Dude, that stings. Wait until I get my epoxy, then we'll see who's laughing!

Seriously though, the screw and pliers trick sounds good. I've brought out the neck ball joint from the original SS body, which is a bit thicker and so hopefully not as fragile. I want to do the neck mod again, but will use epoxy instead of superglue and use extra metal pins this time.

pixletwin said:

You did "the neck mod"?

1) I have never heard of a neck mod.
2) Why would you want to modify the neck?

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Yeah, never heard of it either. Before I saw the pics, for a split second I thought he was in the wrong thread and he was talking about the DX12 or something.

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TheFiend said:

Yeah, never heard of it either. Before I saw the pics, for a split second I thought he was in the wrong thread and he was talking about the DX12 or something.

Sent from my LG-E739 using Tapatalk 2

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The idea was posted by Tabula Rasa some time ago on this thread. It involved taking out the neck post, cutting in half and shaving down by a few mm, then rejoining using glue and metal pins. As well as shortening down the figure a little, it made Vader' head rest more naturally and less bobble headed.

Hm, I never thought of the neck being a problem. It looks fine to me.

But hey, if you feel it needs it, more power to you.

Note: The neck mod was for the KP-02 body swap.

Yeah, Vader's head looks more bobble headed on the KP body. The other option was to put padding under the shoulder armour, which gave the illusion of a shorter neck.

Ah! Now I understand.

So anyway, I had to remove those ball joints from the sockets somehow. I took a dremel to it, but afterwards it turned out ball joints would no longer fit snugly into the socket (too much plastic left over?).



So I did two things:

1) Removed the piece inside the KP body's neck (which no longer provided a snug fit) and replaced it with a home made one, which I made by taking old sockets I had from HT bodies I used in another project.

2) Found the old ball joint from the SS body, cut it in half and shortened it. Then I drilled three holes into each end using a pin vice and inserted copper wire for added strength. Finally I glued it together with devcon epoxy and left to dry overnight.



This was the perfect opportunity to adjust my Iforigno tunic, repair the peeling velcro on the belt and fix the straps on the chest piece which were beginning to loosen. Last thing to do was to tweak the dome one more time, so that it would sit slightly lower. All done! He was a lot of work to make perfect and I had the misfortune of having to make these repairs, but at least it gave me a chance to create a much stronger neck joint. 3 copper pins and 2 ton epoxy should do it!

Just starting Waller's Vader so I took a comparison pic:

Great comparison pic flosi.

Crazy how much shorter it is!