Model Builder International Pilot Issue Model Builder International Pilot Issue | Page 18

The Chopping Block
The major thing that I needed to modify was the
body positions of both figures. As I studied the
figures in the kit and the soldier in the photo, I
began to realize that this process wasn’t going to
be as hard as I initially thought. I simply ended up
swapping the legs of each figure. However, both
figures presented their own unique challenges for
further modification.
The original sniper is cast with the legs sculpted
in what I consider to be an uncomfortable sitting
position for a shooter. These legs were swapped
out for the spotter’s kneeling position. The torso and
arms were left alone except for the left arm. In the
original configuration, the arm was cast crossing
the chest in order to support the rifle by the buttstock. I wanted to have the sniper supporting the
rifle further down the stock as characteristic of a
more “normal” supported shooting position. To
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achieve this, I simply cut the arm at the elbow joint
with a razor saw, drilled holes into the two pieces
in order to add in a pin-joint and rotated the arm
into the desired position. The sniper’s boonie cap
was cut, drilled, and sanded off, replacing it with
hair sculpted from Milliput. Putty was also used to
help fill and shape the gaps created by switching
the legs of each figure.
The spotter’s pose was little easier to fix. Similar
to the sniper’s left arm, the spotter’s new set of
legs needed to be modified to the correct sitting
position. The right leg was cut at the knee, pinjointed, and rotated 90 degrees into the desired
pose. The binoculars were then cut and drilled
out in order to separate the hands. I tried to save
the binoculars for a later project, but in the end, I
just couldn’t salvage them. The arms and hands
were repositioned to hold a new scratch-built
spotter scope.