The "Predator" work: Vinyl recast 1/6.

Another Sci-Fi saga I love. The creature designed by Stan Winston is one of the aliens with the most personality in modern science fiction. The figure is a recast vinyl kit that I made years ago for a commission diorama with a bunch of Predators. It´s an old mould based in the Predator 2 movie; I never knew the name of the brand that originally produced it but you still can find the recast kit in some online shops, I think it could be an SFX release. 

This was the central figure of the scene so I made some transformation to get a fierce pose by rising arms and head, and adding the skinned skull and the ritual machete. The Predator’s skin was entirely painted with airbrush and Tamiya paints, including the spotted zones. Everything else is hand painted with Vallejo acrylics.

Is healthy to feel like the prey from time to time...

Diego Quijano.

The "Winter Storch" work: Academy-Heller 1/72.

Another fast build, a winter scene with a tiny 1/72 Fi156 Storch. I used two kits to make this model, the Academy kit for the main work and the Heller kit to get the control surfaces, front piece of the nose and propeller; the skis are from scratch. Painted with Tamiya paints. The quick weathering effects were made with oil paints and colour pencils. Finally I applied a Tamiya Smoke shading to enforce the light effect. The satin-matt finish is done with Model Air satin varnish.

Diego Quijano.

The "Captured X-Wing" work: Fine Molds 1/72.

Another Star Wars work. Yep, I love this saga. The Fine Molds kit is excellent, so easy to assemble that I felt the necessity to add some detailing. The scratch job is mostly made with styrene pieces, as usual. Painted with Model Air acrylics, I pre-shaded before the white paint. The red markings were painted using masks instead of using the decals, I think paint them is easier. The panel lines were marked with a sliding pencil. I think that the trick for a nice finish of this kind of ships is to make a sharp profiling of the raised elements, this is especially important on the panel behind the R-2 unit, I used black oil paint diluted with enamel thinner for this task. I wanted to display the ship with the wings in attack position so I needed to build some jacks to support the ship. Probably the Rebels would have a better system to do the maintenance of the ships so this gave me the idea that this subject might be a captured fighter being examined in some imperial facility. I add an imperial pilot in the cockpit to enhance that idea though in some picture you may notice that he is kind of distracted.

If you want to know how to detail the damaged panels and electronic bays you can see a wonderful step by step guide of a similar model made by Volkan Emekli here.

Diego Quijano.