Monday 8 August 2011

A new Martian

First up, aplogies for no posts in such a long, long while - other hobbies have sure got in the way.
Anyway, back now so, if youre, still with me, lets go:
As i've said before, am not a fan AT ALL of the Spielberg version of WOTW. The Tripods are okay i guess, but the rest is horribly, horribly wrong.
Biggest horrible wrong, after the fact that they're not from Mars, are the Martians themselves - a horrible sub-standard Independance Day ripoff. Did'nt they read the book????
Anyway, i'd got the kit of this abortion of a Martian as (A) i'd been swayed by Dave Daines' excellent paintjob at this years Dronearama, (B) it was 1/8th scale - the same as the George Pal version Moebious had also produced.
So, that got me to thinking: What if i did a truely accurate book version the same scale to go alongside them?
Finally pulled me finger out and the project is a go.
First up, i had to decided just how big this new one should be alongside the others. Mr Wells has them as being "A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear...".
So, going by the figures and, more importantly, the cup on the base of the Speilberg one, i could roughly figure out how big it should be.
Pretty darn big was the answer.
"Rounded bulk" eh? No way was i going to make something that size out of solid clay, so the first thing i did was blow up a balloon to the right size and cover it with a couple of layers of paper mache;

After that, i've cut the bottom off to leave a teardrop shape bulk to which i'll be adding the air drying clay.