Miscellaneous Gallery - Final Faction
Last Updated: 10/10/22
Colonel Chondrite, Meteor Empire group shot added.
Back to Kitbashes.
Final Faction (link may
decay) is a Dollar Tree exclusive action figure line, which does quite
well given their budget. One place the budget is skimpy is on paints, and since
the figures are held together by screws and only have five points of articulation,
they're easy to repaint. The line is meant to evoke 1980s action figure lines,
with clear Good Military versus Evil Aliens sides, like G.I. Joe versus the
Tyrannids or something. There's a cartoon a comic, so a lot of people are
repainting their figures to match the canon. I prefer to be inspired by the
canon and diverge in places.
Alpha Team is the multinational Earth defense force, your basic G.I.Joe team of
specialists, but they flesh out their numbers with bots instead of nameless Grunts.
The Kharn are aliens whose ship crashed on the Moon some time ago and they went
into stasis sleep until a cometary impact reactivated their ship systems. They seek
to steal Earth's resources for vague Alien Invader sort of reasons. They're heavy
into biotech, and in addition to bipedal drones they also have insectile swarmers.
Most of the kitbashes are random themes, but you can skip down to the
FinalRangers AlphaTeam "Power Rangers" theme.
- Krepitus Repaint: An alien bounty hunter who works for the evil
Kharn, I dunno if he was frozen with them or showed up recently. One of the
problems with the figure is that his "Flea" companion won't stay on his shoulder.
I considered just doing a simple fix, but ended up going whole hog with magnetizing
Flea and repainting everything. I went high gloss on the grounds that he's a slimy
customer. I used a lot of Color Shift paint on the metallic bits, and noticed while
painting that a lot of ornaments on the figure were molded but not painted, so I fixed
that deficiency. April 2022.
- Amari Repaint: One of the second "season" of Alpha Team
recruits. In addition to fully repainting this, I reshaped the hands with a
hair dryer in the hopes that she could continue holding her weapon (I also did
this with the stock version, but it slowly opened back up...maybe the paint will help
hold it in shape on this one?). While I mostly made the colors a little more
realistic (her father's Air Force jacket would probably not have been gold lame
unless the Air Force changes a LOT in the future), I deliberately added in the
Barn Red to be a little toyetic, especially on her weapon. I quite like how I
got a Samuel L. Jackson Glare expression. May 2022.
- Just the head - I finished this first, although after
taking this picture I did do a little tweaking, such as putting gloss seal on her
eyes and lips.
- Front View - As with Krepitus, I decided to get two and
keep one more or less stock. They're standing on old GIJoe stands (I got a bag full
of 'em in the 90s and still have most of the bag unused).
- a href=Amari2.JPG>Right Side - You can really see how badly the stock figure
holds her weapon. You can also see here how I used a Sharpie to add the molded hair
detail on her scalp, it looks better under low lighting...Sharpie ink gets an off-color
glare.
- Rear View
- Left Side - I decided against trying to add the white stripes
to the flag.
- No-Mohawk Amari - A friend asked for a no-hawk Amari, and
I sanded off most of the hair before finding that a Dremel polishing head really works
well to polish the soft plastic used on her head.
- A.C.R.M. as RM-79 GM - The card art on the ACRM reminded me of
a GM's head, and the general design is very Gundam-influenced, so I got a spare to
paint up as GM. I decided to keep it toyetic with minimal shading, just using dark
gray wash on the various (and extensive!) battle damage bits. The rifle came from
my old bag of random guns, and the shield came from a RM-79 GM model kit that had
a choice of two shields (but I repainted the spare, which was in desert color,
perhaps a 008th Mobile Suit Team thing). The backpack is from the ACRM's own
accessory pack, but along with the gun dyed black. The result is pretty paintlocked,
especially in the legs. May 2022.
- Killface (Frisky Dingo) from Final Faction
Kharn Drone: Mostly just white primer and white gloss with a little detail work for
the eyes. Scale-wise, the Kharn leader would be better, but he has a lot of bone
accessories on him. May 2022.
- Shift repaint: Like Amari, I mainly took the official
art as inspiration but also tried to pay attention to the molded detail. I considered
bobbing her hair (which was poorly glued on and popped off easily) but the sculpt does
not favor that sort of modification. So I just bent it back while heated to give a
little more room. I used a Dremel polishing head to make her face a little more
angular. Note, while Amari can stand on a GIJoe peg-stand, Shift has smaller sockets
in her toes and can't. I decided against trying to paint the swords, because the way
the sheaths work would strip the paint off anyway. May 2022.
- Master Sergeant Steadfast: This cyborg leads Alpha Team and bakes
a mean plate of cookies. I initially thought the molded detail on his throat was supposed
to be his shirt under the armor vest, but now I think it's more likely more cybernetic
replacement (he has a perfectly normal voice in the cartoon, though). I dyed the cyborg
arm black before painting, so that if the paint scraped off the palm of the hand it would
still be dark. And, of course, I made him a tray of fresh out of the oven cookies as an
extra accessory. May 2022.
- Dye test on Turret missiles -
A local friend dislikes safety orange, so asked me to try dyeing the missiles. I used
this as an excuse to try out Rit Dyemore again, and even adding the accelerant from iPoly
(which probably includes acetone) it wasn't as good as iPoly. I did try Dyemore on a
Shapeways basic white piece, and did get better results
after adding a little acetone as suggested by people on the Final Faction facebook page.
May 2022.
- Sergeant Ruck: Heavy weapons expert and apparently minefield tapdancing
enthusiast to judge by all the pockmarks in his armored boots. Nothing too fancy on this
one, mostly kept the intended stock colors from the card art, but got rid of all the
Transformers Siege style silver splatter battle damage. May 2022.
- Paint flex test on Dragonfliy wings -
One concern with the new rubbery accessory packs was that paint might flake off, so I decided
to test some paints. At least these colors worked fine, no cracking or flaking, even though
I didn't prime or even wash off the wings before painting (a.k.a. worst possible conditions).
A second test run with what I considered the paints most
likely to crack still turned out fine. May 2022.
- P-131 as Robotech Destroid or Battletech Warhammer - Sure, the Mech isn't digitigrade, but
with the head removed the P-131 is definitely evocative of the old design. After deciding that
the box cover of my 3e Battletech rules wasn't a good enough reference, I dug out an old
Matchbox Robotech Destroid (to which I may have somewhat randomly added decals). May 2022.
- P-131 as Robotech Destroid/Battletech Rifleman - I went into a little
more detail with freehanding to match the decals this time, with mixed results. The central
bump was made from three counting blocks and a lot of shaping work. The radar antenna is a
piece of styrene slat curved with a file, plus part of a Lego piece for the shaft. It's
just pegged in, so it can be rotated. I did try bringing the dark gray farther down onto the
"shoulderpads," but I didn't like how it looked, so repainted in light gray. I did have to
mix a light gray to better match the Matchbox toy I was using for reference. July 2022.
- "Mikey-gusari" - One of the complaints about
"The Mikey" in Shift's blade weapon pack is that the "chain" has only three links, all of them
awkwardly large. I could have made a proper set of nunchucks out of this, but I decided to
go with a longer chain and make the weapon into a manriki-gusari instead. Jewelry crafting
bits were left over from another project. May 2022.
- Kat Anders - A character who started as a Legion of Net.Heroes character who
could turn into a robot, and whose basic look I've reused sooooo many times in MMOs on top of
how many variants of her showed up in LNH and Superguy fiction. For this version, I decided to
keep a variant of the "comes from a future where robots run a world with very few humans left" but
make it more Terminator-type sinister. I built her from a first run Shift (with the hair and head
a single piece, it made modifying the hair easier) and painted the pistols and rocket pack a bit.
While I kept Shift above close to her comics model, it's pretty clear that the mold intended for
there to be a cleavage window there, so I kept that for Kat to further distinguish the two. In
addition to giving the figure a new hair style, I carved the knife off the right forearm.
May 2022.
- Various views
- File Card - I made the template in Excel and pasted in a picture
after making sure it had the right proportions (197 pixels wide by 224 pixels high). I got the
official-looking background by the simple trick of holding a weapon set card behind the figure
to get the appropriate pattern. Unfortunately, up close under strong lights the somewhat mottled
nature of the paint job became REALLY obvious, so I used a blur tool on her face to reduce the effect
a little. (Excel template posted to the Final Faction facebook group, can be emailed on request.)
- Glued Steel Dragonfly Pack - Not only does
glue keep the pack from falling apart, it makes it a lot easier to get the rubbery peg into
Steel's back socket. This picture shows where to glue (and where not to glue). June 2022.
- Magma Diabol - Sure, I could've tried repainting the torso and head to match the color of
the limbs and then touched things up, but if I'm gonna paint this big guy, I'm going all out.
After priming and basing in white, I went over the figure in a mix of apricot orange and
red-orange paint just randomly swirled together, then put bright yellow (slightly watered down)
in the recesses and dark red on the high points. I surrounded the non-magma bits with
purple outlines to simulate the "visual purple" effect one gets from looking at actual magma.
June 2022.
- Churro and FD-0 Mechsuit - I was originally going to go with a more comics/cartoon accurate
color scheme, but I liked the 1970s-ish faux antique effect I got with the base layer. June 2022.
- X4 Turret mods - Like FD-0, the turret is glued together rather than screwed together, but
there's enough space around the "hip" joints to allow for painting without needing to break the
glued pegs holding the quadpod base together. I dyed the entire thing black so that joints would
be less obvious, at least, and dyed the missiles black in the same way as shown above. The plug-in
cannons were taken from the Cyborg Pack, cut apart and with 3mm rods inserted (others have done
3D printed cannons that look even better, but I wanted to see how far I could get with just Final
Faction pieces and basic connections). The missiles can still be fired. June 2022.
- Sea Brute - The Kharn Brute has a sort of sea creature vibe to it, so I decided that to go
along with Magma Diabol I'd make a Sea Brute, with the spiny bits being coral. To make it look
even more watery in person, I used an acrylic water medium (for dioramas) as a sealant.
June 2022.
- Ruck Rampage joins GUARD - In large part to test out Bondo as a replacement for the defunct
Squadron Putty (it did not really pass), I permanently attached the arms and legs of the Rampage
Armor to Ruck. I also modded the rotary cannon to give it a simple 3mm peg that would let it
attach more securely to more places, plus I drilled out the barrels. The paint scheme is based
on GUARD, one of the factions in the Monsterpocalypse miniatures game. July 2022.
FinalRangers AlphaTeam
An AU (Alternate Universe) in which Alpha Team is a full on Power Rangers sort of team, and the
Kharn are even more over the top rubber-monster enemies. (Click on image to see at full size.)
- FinalRanger AlphaGreen, Battlizer Mode - Finally getting around to making a Power Rangers
riff from Alpha Team. Red doesn't always lead, and in this case AlphaGreen is the leader,
seen here in Battlizer gear made from a combination of Cyborg accessories, the ACRM flight
gear wings, and some putty. July 2022.
- FinalRanger AlphaYellow - Amari with a spare Sarge helmet, an ACRM boot jet as a backpack
jetpack, and a gun made from a Dragonfly tail. I cut off her hair and attached it to the top
of the helmet, then built up an opening for it with Apoxie Clay. Getting a bit of an X-Men or
Sinestro vibe off the final result. Unlike AlphaGreen, the non-energy accent color is a darker
yellow, with the middle yellow being the main color. Anyway, the rest will follow this basic
color pattern: dark gray, light silver, then three shades of their role color, the lightest
being for energy accents. July 2022.
- View 1
- Other views
- With Hammer - I decided the pistol didn't really fit, and dug
a hammer out of my bits bin (it was from the Xevoz skeleton, although I got an extra in a bag
of random bits long ago and did not raid my Xevoz), dyed it yellow, and painted the black parts
silver.
- FinalRanger AlphaPink - Shift with a spare Dragonfly helmet, the other ACRM boot jet (peg
thickened to go into the screw hole in her lower back), Cassie Lang's hair, and some cocktail
swords. I initially planned to go with no hair, since that's standard for super sentai helmets,
but then I figured if Amari gets her hair visible, Shift should get some too. Her own hair
proved too awkward, so I got the hair from a giant sized Cassie Lang HeroClix (I'd used the
rest of the figure in a different project) and carved it to fit, filling in the gaps with
liquid green stuff. Under normal room lighting the neon pink of the helmet visor is a lot
more obviously different from the bright magenta of the helmet, but the lighting in my photo
booth combined with my phone's camera range kinda flattened the difference. August 2022.
- FinalRanger AlphaBlue - Steel with his own Dragonfly helmet (sealed on with putty), his
stock flight pack, a modified cocktail sword katana, and AlphaYellow's pistol repainted with
blue, it works better for him. Annoyingly, his shoulder joints are not circular and lifting
his arms spreads his torso halves apart slightly, even after I tried shaving them down to
proper shape. August 2022.
- FinalRanger AlphaRed - Scope with a Dragonfly helmet fused on. To give him the ACRM flight
pack, I needed to change how it attached. So I took Shift's sheath piece and trimmed it down to
glue inside the flight pack, and removed the pack's original pegs. I also drilled a hole in
the side so that his rifle can stow on it as it does on his stock pack, but the hole ended up
a bit too big, so the fit is loose. As happened with Pink, the neon color on the helmet looks
very distinct from the regular red to the Mk1 eyeball, but my phone makes them look almost the
same. I put tuscan red on the cheeks so there'd at least be some contrast in pics. August 2022.
- FinalRanger AlphaPurple - The mysterious Sixth Ranger with dubious loyalties, as played by
Torn. I covered his human face with Apoxie Clay an sculpted an approximation of the
Dragonfly helmet used by most of the team. There's not a lot of clearance under the chin when
rotating the head, in retrospect I probably should've shaved down the rear collar a bit. I
did, however, keep the shoulder joints clear so there's no problem of scraping when the arms
are moved. August 2022.
- FinalRanger AlphaOrange (Arf-a-Orange?) - Churro wants in on the act as the team mascot.
F-D0 Mech with the ACRM Razor gun and a swappable tail that uses Amari's bat as his melee
weapon. Orange is a real pain to work with. August 2022.
- Alpha SpectroMech - This is mostly made from mix and match of parts from the three "Robot"
toys at Dollar Tree (the new 2022 ones). Since it's shorter than Final Faction figures, I
initially planned to make this their mascot/sidekick bot, but I ended up going with MegaZord
instead. I do not recomment this particular combo, the blue thighs do not fit well on the
red pelvis. I did not paint any of the red, blue, or green you can see, and sometimes not
painting is harder than painting. September 2022.
The Meteor Empire
- Diabolide the Meteor Emperor - Well, the FinalRangers need appropriate villains, and the
Kharn as-is aren't quite over the top enough. So they fight the Meteor Empire, which arrived
on the Moon in a meteor, natch. Diabolide (Diabol merged with "bolide," another term for a
space rock) is made from Diabol with ACRM Razor parts permanently attached and puttied around,
a crown made from pieces of Shift's weapon set, the hammer and shield (well, pet) from the
Brute weapons pack, and the cloak from Andra (Masters of the Universe: Revelation). I dyed
everything black before painting so that seams would be less obvious, but the hard plastic
of the torso didn't take dye very well. I also discovered that the soft plastics don't like
superglue. August 2022.
- Meteor Men - Drones painted up in a rock scheme, minions for Diabolide. They get Shift's
leftover swords. No physical mods, this was a quick "black primer, dark gray base, medium gray
drybrush, light gray highlights, purple eyes" job. August 2022.
- General Tektite - Riptide with some modifications to be a human turned into a Meteor Man
general, a sort of Dark Ranger character. I added snow effect putty to the head and filed it
once cured to give the sort of pitted look of a tektite (a bit of molten Earth material kicked
up by a meteor strike) and modded the mask to be just on the head. I used some spikes from
the Shift weapon pack's chakram as horns, and took the Brute backpack to give him some more
firepower. Both his own harpoons and the bolts from the Brute pack can be removed. Using the
same basic color concepts as the FinalRangers, gloss black is his "color" and I replaced the
silver with Color Shift Black, which looks a lot like "tin bitz" paint. His accent color is
metallic yellow-green, to kinda match the thermal color change bits, and I filled in the chest
socket a little so that I could glue that stud in directly. September 2022.
- Various views
- Under UV light - Turns out that the color changing bits
also glow nicely under UV. This picture also shows how the backpack bolts can be removed.
- Major Fireball - Second of the Dark Rangers, Major Fireball shows that when you recruit
people willing to betray their world, you maybe shouldn't expect much loyalty from them
either. He's the Starscream of the group, albeit clever enough to never OBVIOUSLY sabotage
Diabolide's plans for his own advantage. Steel with flames on his head made from Apoxie
Clay, then painted silver with Tamiya clear paints over that to give as close as I can get
to a clear plastic effect with opaque materials. I went for a sort of charcoal face, and
dark red and copper as his signature colors. The flight pack is bodged together from two
Drone pistols, the Shift weapon backpack, some Dragonfly missiles and a leftover strut from
a Rampage armor. September 2022.
- Commander Crater - Crater will never betray Diabolide, but often disappoints him, because
Commander Crater is a brute who simply likes having an excuse to hurt people and destroy
things. This makes him a useful blunt object, but he's not a whole lot better than the Meteor
Men when it comes to tactics. He's only sent off in solo command when it's meant to be a
distraction. Built from Ruck with the Assault helmet and arm cannons, plus one of the
backpacks from the Shock Arms set. I filled in the back of the chest with Apoxie Clay so it
wouldn't collapse when I carved out the crater, then built up the rim with some kind of dried
out Liquid Green Stuff. The hole of the crater is painted with Stuart Semple's Black 3.0,
Anish Kapoor is not allowed to fight Commander Crater. October 2022.
- Various Views
- Without helmet or backpack - Since gluing the helmet on
would make it nearly impossible to assemble the figure, I dyed the head black while dyeing
the limbs and accessories, and painted the eyes metallic orange. Just enough so that if I
remove the helmet it doesn't look out of place, but nothing's going to scrape off.
- With Assault Boots - I dyed the Assault boot pieces
black and then painted them up to match the general color scheme. I left the gear surfaces
unpainted so they could roll freely.
- Colonel Chondrite - Diabolide kept at it, and in Colonel Chondrite he found a Dark Ranger
who balanced loyalty and ingenuity, as well as someone suspicious enough to keep an eye on
Major Fireball (as General Tektite was too focused on the Plan and Commander Crater is an
idiot). Somewhat more fully transformed into a Meteorite than the others, she has no hope
of passing as human...but seems unworried about this. Amari with Drone arms and a lot of
putty work to give stone-like surfaces, plus a new hairdo. I used Apoxie Clay for the hair
and some of the structural work on the boots (plus cut out styrene sheet to define her
footprints), and then DecoArt snow putty filed down for the rocky and pitted surfaces.
October 2022.
