January 2025 UFO Sightings in the Workshop

I've been posting somewhat regularly about the Genestealer build.  It helps to have the head hanging on the wall above one of my printers to serve as a reminder that it needs more work:

But that's not all I'm working on.  We also have a handful of things on the bench that I'm not allowed to talk about (yet).  But I still feel compelled to post an update about something other than the genestealer build.  The good news is that with my industrial strength case of undiagnosed ADHD, I always have at least fifteen other projects going on at any given time.  Some are getting a lot of my attention.  Others less so.  All of them are in the shop, in the way, and in progress.

So here's the current roundup of UnFinished Objects orbiting around the shop...

First up, a while back I made a handful of Mobile Infantry costumes from Starship Troopers:

While it's okay if you have a fire team running around all armed with the same model of assault rifle, if I'm going to outfit a whole squad (or maybe a platoon) I need to make a wider range of armaments.  So for starters, I hacked up a cast of the Morita assault rifle to make the Morita carbine.  It weighed a ton though and I'm probably going to want to make more than one, so we pulled a mold.  Here's the first casting when we were demolding it:


Since I'm on a roll with Starship Troopers builds, I decided I also needed to make a replica of Lieutenant Rasczak's prosthetic hand:

The hard parts are all printed and painted.  I just need to mount them onto a glove and call it done.

I'm also in the process of making the masters for the M55 Tactical Nuke Launcher:


Somewhere in the shop I have a stack of the grenades piling up too, so I'm almost done making Starship Troopers props.

On another front, while we're making the Genestealer happen, we're also working on a host of other Warhammer projects.  First off, there's this stack of scenery parts:


To go along with them, I have the beginnings of some servo skulls:

These were made from a mold we just pulled off of a human skull I've had kicking around the shop for years now waiting for me to do something with it.

I also took advantage of some down time on the 3D printers to turn out this amazing Chaplain helmet from Space Marine 2:


A while back I also printed and assembled the Saviour of the Free helmet from Helldivers 2:


Soon I'll finish masking it and painting the gold details on the way to making the rest of the costume to go with it.

On an unrelated note, a couple of years ago I picked up a Captain Cardinal helmet: LINK

If you're not familiar with the character, I wouldn't be at all surprised.  He first appeared in the novel Phasma where he turns out to be a rival of Captain Phasma within the First Order.  While she wears a custom suit of chrome armor, his is bright red:

So, while I was in the middle of laying up a new set of Phasma parts, I decided to also mix up some red gelcoat and make a batch of First Order stormtrooper armor in red:


I've got the boots already and the cape is on the way, so once I trim, prep, and paint these parts, I'll have that full suit ready to wear.  For the past couple or three years, it's been a running joke whenever we're about a week away from an event and I'm in the middle of crunch time I'll say to the crew, "you know, we can probably get Cardinal done in time for this thing..."

They scoff.  We laugh.  It's a good bit.

But now, the next time I say it out loud, it won't be a joke.

On the subject of insanely niche Star Wars costumes, I've also decided to build a cosplay of the First Order AT-AT driver. I'm almost done with that build, so there will be a more detailed blog article forthcoming, but for now, here's a picture of the shiny white helmets: 

I'm also making me a new set of Halo armor.  I started making Locus from Red vs. Blue a few years back and every time the printers have nothing to do I add another part to the stack.  At this point, the printing is done, the helmet is painted, and with a bit more prep work, the armor will be ready for paint as well:

Then all I need is to sew up the very involved undersuit and it's done.  Finally.

On a completely unrelated note, I decided to add a sexy one-sixth scale statue of Disney's Evil Queen from Snow White to my collection of things I don't need.  Here's a shot of the statue parts shortly after printing them:


So that's going to be a thing.

There's a lot of things in the shop seeing genuine progress every single day.

Then there's the "someday" stack of projects.  These are the ones that have gathered a bit more dust than most.  Chief among them is the War Machine from Ironman 2 which I really need to knock out and get together:

It's close, but it'll need a couple or four weeks worth of work I haven't managed to set aside yet.

Also on the someday list are these Massiff Taxidermy mounts:


And tucked away a little deeper in storage is the Super Battle Droid that I started making molds for:

I still need to mold the thighs and the arms, but it's only a matter of time.  Then I can create my own army...

For now, I'm just glad to be maintaining a steady flow of things getting finished.

Stay tuned.  Much to come.