Hi all,

I'm converting this Young Miniatures' 1/10 USAAF Fighter Pilot 1944 into an 8th Air Force heavy bomber co-pilot using a 3D printed head combined with some scratchbuilding of the pilot's garrison cap and headphones. Wish me luck (cuz I'm gonna need it!)

Here's the original kit (YM1856):



Plan is to produce something like this:

Here's the bust with the new head trial fitted. The head is from the new range being produced by Mark Brooks of Scale Collectables - he generously resized and 3D printed a head from his "Maverick" bust at 1/10 for me. As you can see, the detail is amazing and it fit the bust beautifully.



I had to (gulp!) remove some of that beautifully-sculpted hair detail to give me a base on which to start sculpting the garrison cap:

Good luck!
I an following.

RJ

First layer of the cap. I'm using Apoxie Sculpt:




Once that was dry, I added the flaps that wrap around the sides of the cap:








Head attached to the bust:

that looks very nice already,gonna follow this one how you do that,great job

On to the HS 23 headset. I used slices of sprue to form the basic shape of the receivers and trial fitted them to the head with Blu-Tac. Looks a little goofy at this point:



Covered the sprue with more Apoxie Sculpt and shaped it into the rounded, foam earpieces pressing against his head:

Started scratchbuilding the supports for the earpieces; using steel wire, styrene, and sheet aluminum (from a pie plate!)




Straps for the headset also from strips of aluminum, gently rolled to shape with a paintbrush handle - fiddly work, hoping that the superglued ends hold while shaping the straps!



A few bits of .015 lead fly-tying wire for the electric leads:




Finished headset:

Primered the bust to see how things work together:








I think we're ready for paint.

Great work!
some feedback: you could sharpen up the edges of the cap for more depth. A little carving would make sculpt much sharper and will make painting easier. See the picture where I have draw some lines on the areas that can use some sharpening.



greets
RJ

Good observations - thanks. I'll see what I can do.

Cheers

looking superb

great work!

This is looking very nice Brian! A fantastic conversion.

Cheers,
Ken

Looking good.

Malc

A bit more work over the past week (actually, over the last 2 hours; the rest of the week has been a wash out!):

On the head, the initial highlight and shadow blocks were laid in. I used oils (W&N Burnt Sienna and Burnt Sienna +White), blending with a frayed-out Size 0 brush barely dampened with white spirit. The right side has been blended, the left side not:



Step 2 of the face is adding Mars Brown (Old Holland)) to some of the deeper shadows as well as adding higher highlights with a lightened mix of my basic highlight colour:



Where things sit currently - much more tweaking will ensue:

Nice

Hey, that face is looking great, Brian. Exellent blending, love it!

Looking Good

Malc