The Last Jedi Custom: Captain Canady

Even though he was on screen for a scant few minutes, Captain Moden Canady made an impressive entrance in The Last Jedi.  Commanding the Siege Dreadnought Fulminatrix, Canady proved himself to be a component and highly capable leader. 

His scenes in the film present him as a dedicated officer concerned only with accomplishing his mission.  His ship is also pretty badass.  

Canady even stands up to the simpering General Hux, whose grand gestures and pompous rhetoric seemed geared towards playing to a galactic audience rather than decisively eradicating the Resistance.  

The novelization of the film gives further detail to the character's backstory as one of the survivors of the Galactic Empire who escaped into the Unknown Regions and helped forge the First Order.  

Rather than stand content to risk his ship and the pilots under his command to theatrics, Canady got the job done.  In this, he is very much like General Veers.  I won't outline the obvious parallels to The Empire Strikes Back except to state that both Veers and Canady know their roles and perform them well.   

Unlike General Veers, Captain Canady does not survive the battle. After all but destroying the Resistance fleet, Canady and the Fulminatrix fell victim to the suicidal run of the last surviving Resistance bomber.  

To construct this figure, I used Grand Moff Tarkin's head painted to resemble Canady's graying orange hair and placed it atop a General Hix figure.  I then added the singular black band indicative of all First Order ranks.  Finally, I removed the code cylinders from the First Order Finn figure with an exacto knife and glued them in the appropriate spot on the figure.  

My first inclination was to paint the First Order Finn figure black and place the modified head atop it but when I attempted this I was unhappy with the results.  Despite locating the appropriate paint, I was less than thrilled with the end result. The figure looked too rough and tacky.  This was mostly due to the imperfections in the figure itself.  

The uniform on the Hux figure looks much better despite the greatcoat he wears. While this is inaccurate for Canady I am much more pleased with the results.  

Gen. Maximilian Veers Custom Pop

He was the straight-backed, competent Imperial who crushed the rebels at the Battle of Hoth.  A fan favorite, he has yet to be presented as part of the Funko Line.  Well, Veera fans here he is. 

General Veers was not the typical Imperial officer.  He was smart enough to follow his orders and skilled enough to carry them out successfully. 

Intensely loyal to the Empire, Veers is also unconcerned with grandstanding.  He does his job.  Fans can like a character such as Veers because he is not evil.  He is a military leader fighting a war...nothing more.

To make the venerable general, I took a Tarkin body and painted in the gray of the Galactic Empire's line officer corps.  I then took a General Hux head and painted the hat to match.  This required me to paint over the First Order emblem in order to paint the silver officer disk. 

For the rank insignia, I used the image on the Tarkin box. 

Luke Skywalker with X-Wing

This will be a short post as there was very little by way of creativity in the construction of this figure.

While Funko Pop has recently offered a figure of Luke Skywalker with his X-Wing, I noticed that due to the purposeful undersupply of the product its market price has increased. This is simple manipulation of the supply chain to increase demand and raise profits. Economics 101. 

To create my own version, I used the already existing Galactic Heroes X-Wing and slid the Funko Luke Skywalker into the cockpit.  Easy.

I'm back. Been a while since I posted anything but I recently got back into making some custom designs.  For my first offering, I elected to create something within the sphere of Funko Pop's "Delux" line of vehicles with characters. 

As is always the case, Funko seems to keep it's own counsel when considering which characters to design and offer rather than listen to the fabase.  Despite this, they have managed to produce several hits while also missing out on golden opportunities.  Example: Wedge Antilles with Rebel Snowspeeder yet no General Veers with Imperial AT-AT...WTF.

Above we have the First Order TIE Silencer, used by Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi.  I took the current Kylo Ren Pop and removed the head.  I then removed the head of a common First Order TIE Pilot (as the Special Forces one seems to be stupidly expensive) and affixed it to the neck.  This required some elbow grease.

The Kylo Ren neck piece is slightly larger than the spring for the pilot.  I filed the neck to make it smaller and twisted the head on.

To affix the chest plate, I detached the oxygen hose and glued the control box to the chest.  I then constructed a new hose using sculpy.

The look is almost as if it were an offering from Funko itself. 

Custom Pop Rae Sloane

The Galactic Empire is dead.  It was not the sanctimonious rebellion and subsequent New Republic that brought the empire down.  It was a long buried contingency plan by the man who spawned the regime in the first place that would undermine its continued existence.    

The Galactic Empire had to die for something new to rise from its ashes.  As part of Emperor Palpatine's posthumous "screw you" to the regime he created, the contingency took the form of a purge of the weakest links that corrupted the galactic chain.  In its place, a new vision--the First Order.  The First Order is more than an imperial remnant.  Populated by only the best and the brightest, the First Order operates at the edge of known space and waits for a time when the galaxy once more stands on the brink of chaos as it had under the Old Republic.

The architect of this powerful regime is Rae Sloane, the last Grand Admiral,

For my project, I chose to create Grand Admiral Sloane.  Based on the cannon description, Sloane is in her early 50s, dark skinned, with long black hair that carries a streak of white in it.  She has been depicted as such in the WWII-style poster that comes as part of the novel, Star Wars, Aftermath: Empire's End.  

Dressed in the traditional white uniform of an Imperial Grand Admiral, Sloane presents a formidable presence.

To create Sloane, I used a duplicate Grand Admiral Thrawn figure and removed the head.  For the head, I used a Firefly Zoe Washburne figure.  I painted Thrawn's blue hands black t give the appearance of gloves.   

It should be noted that the Firefly series of Pop figures does not come with a spring neck like the Star Wars figures.  To affix the head, I had to widen the neck hole at the base of her head to stick the head in the neck of Thrawn.  Some white paint was used to add the white streak.

In the display, I placed Sloane in front of the novel detailing her rise to power and a small model of her flagship, the Super Star Destroyer Eclipse.  If you read the novel, you will know why she is positioned so close to General Hux.

Coming Soon: A New Custom Star Wars Figure

After reading Aftermath: Empire's End I came up with a great idea to create a new custom figure.  The novel is the last in a trilogy covering the fall of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the First Order.  All the action centers around the last Grand Admiral--Rae Sloane.  Sloane is a kick-ass woman who endures an ordeal by fire to emerge as the undisputed leader of the Imperial Fleet.  With no one to stand in her way, she can now re-make the Empire to fit her vision.  

Switching Gears: Star Wars

Yes, I know--I usually dedicate my posts to creating custom Star Trek Minifigures.  To be honest, I have made all the characters I could think of and have drawn a blank for inspiration of late.  I have moved away from the trek nation for now.  Instead, I have been busying myself with other concerns, but recently returned to the workshop with an idea.  As a Christmas present, my husband procured for me several of the Star Wars books created for the "new cannon" and a bobble head figure of my favorite character--Grand Moff Tarkin.

On my own, I procured a few of the other figures and use them as bookends.  While watching Return of the Jedi, I was inspired to make the fastidious, toadying technocrat Moff Tian Jerjerrod--referred to only as "commander" in the film.  Unlike Tarkin, Jerjerrod was a newly minted sector Governor tasked with creating a second ultimate weapon that would spell certain doom for the Rebel Alliance.  Of coarse, we know it was the Galactic Empire that would go on to face its doom.  The new cannon makes it clear that the Galactic Empire would cease to exist one year and one month after the Battle of Endor.  The surviving members of the Imperial Fleet would rally around the last Grand Admiral (Rae Sloane) and jump into the Unknown Regions to form the First Order.  There is reference to a few small remnants but that seems to be lip service to the fans who loved the idea of characters like Thrawn and Daala...and the like.    

Moff Jerjerrod represents the Empire at its end.  Devoid of brilliant figures like Tarkin and left with the sycophants possessing a sense of invincibility.  
     

To make this figure, I took the Pop Vynil head of General Hux and placed it on the body of Grand Moff Tarkin.

I used flat Grey paint to make the uniform and the cap to appear more screen accurate.

I painted over the Grand Moff rank insignia and used a cardboard representation of a simple Imperial rank plague for screen accuracy.  It should be noted that due to a costuming mistake, all the Imperials wore the same rank insignia--three red squares over three blue squares.  Since Jerjerrod was a Moff, his rank insignia would be five blue squares over three red squares and two gold squares.

I repainted the book to shine and also painted the hands to look like the black gloves Jerjerrod wore.  I thought of adding a small firing control button, since the last time Jerjerrod is mentioned in the novelization of Return of the Jedi he was the only one left in the command center and was about to push the button. I might add this later.

At present, I don't have any plans for other custom star wars figures but I might come up with some ideas in future.  

"I tell you, this station will be operational as planned"