‘Dark Star’ crew

Sergeant Pinback is my favourite character of the film. He provides most of the comic relief in the film. He’s constantly whining, tries to improve moral with pitiful joke shop props, he has an epic battle with the ship’s alien and he reveals in his vlog that he was a cleaner who took the real Pinback’s place just prior to the mission beginning. 

Googly eyes are a must. Fortunately one of the heads had spectacles. I scoured eBay for tiny, tiny springs and found this. That’s the googly part sorted.

Now where to find the eyes? I considered making them from milliput, but then I remembered that my basing mix has them in abundance. I made it myself after opening a used water filter cartridge: I liked the shape of the top and used it to make a piece of scatter terrain. I added some tiny pebbles to the filter mix inside and use that as my basing material. 

Next we need a squeaky mouse, which was supplied by the Frostgrave Wizards sprue. Finally I made a broom from a pitchfork from a Renedra set (“ramshackle barn” I think) and some brush bristles.
So the final model is primed and ready to paint.

I’ve had this idea in my notebook for a while, but as this summer seems to have been ‘retro sci-fi summer’ with releases from (off the top of my head) Crooked Dice, Artisan Design and Westfalia that all have a 1970s aesthetic I thought it was time to get the ball rolling with this.

I’ve had the ‘Valley Forge Crew’ set of miniatures for a good while, I bought them from Ainsty Castings but I see that they’re also available from Forlorn Hope now.

Now, I do love ‘Silent Running’, so I’ll have to get myself another set to paint up without messing with them first. ‘Dark Star’ unbelievably doesn’t have it’s own miniatures line, so I’ll have to make do and kitbash.

 The most obvious thing that’s ‘wrong’ with the Valley Forge Crew is their heads : the crew of the Dark Star are far more hirsute. Luckily I spotted that Crooked Dice have a number of heads that have better suited hairstyles, so I bought a bunch of them.

In the end only one of those heads could be used without modification, so I broke out the green stuff and added a bit of a fringe here and a beard there. I’m going to have to add some extra bits and pieces to each miniature. I’ll do a separate post for each.