Project Sulaco: Part 3

Part 3: the sequel! Thinking about it, isn't Alien 3 where it all went wrong? I mention it for reasons. 

 

 

As I was no-longer on holiday, my progress was a little bit patchy, but things moved forward regardless. The use of size 11 & 13 beads proved to be a good call, and having tried a few styles of head, I found one I was happy to upgrade to paint prototype. The style was a gasmask and goggles with a radio antenna. This put me in mind of both an insect and the somewhat obscure AD Police uniforms from the original Bubblegum Crisis anime. Although once I had an undercoat on it, it was more of a hippo. Not great that... The body meanwhile was simplified, going for proportionally smaller shoulder pads, a backpack made from a cable tie, and gun receiving a barrel extension.I also started experimenting with Caucasian skin tone again, and around this point I had something of a realisation. I wasn't good enough yet to get a look I was happy with, and I'd been putting this project off as it was less fun than certain other things I was working on. The Stargrave Mercenaries are perfect if you want to do some Imperial Guard or Heavy Infantry on the cheap, but not for my purposes. They are too slight for my green stuff modifications to look right, hence the scaling back of my ideas, and aren't especially uniform. And because it's not going smoothly, it's not especially therapeutic either. So, I decided to pause, and sleep on it. I ended up falling back on something I mentioned in part 1, the secondary market. I’d been reminded of Infernus Squads, a newly-introduced unit specialising in flamethrowers. And, just to get it out of my system:

Hey Beakies! The Burnaboyz called, and they want their zoggin’ gimmick back! That’s a really nuanced and tactical flexible unit you have there too! Does Big Papa Smurf know about that? Maybe don’t tell him, he’s depressed enough already!

<cough>

Anyways, I’d passed on these in the first place as they were too specific a unit and monopose. With the Stargrave minis being an immaculate square peg in a round hole though, I reconsidered these pyromaniacs. Then a had a really silly idea for a chapter. Then I remembered that flamethrowers are a thing in Aliens. Actually, didn’t Ripely basically invent the combi-weapon with a role of duct tape? I digress. So I went for ten of them, and pencilled in some ideas for what to do next. 

 

I’m going to call it there. The Stargrave prototypes did allow for useful practice, but I need to mull things over some more, while I await delivery.