I've recently revisited the first two Alien films, and I'm interested in building some models from those first two films. I've never built a model of a figure before, but I'm thinking of tackling an Alien warrior. Anyone on the board have any experience with the Alien kits from any manufacturer?
GSaum
The most common was the OOP Halcyon "Alien Warrior with Egg". I think MRC also sold it (along with a Predator). It's ok but nothing to sing about. I liked the kit because it was styrene and not vinyl or resin (reasonable price)... but the level of detail is pretty basic. The characteristic head is molded solid too. Halcyon did some other Alien kits in vinyl. I always had trouble with some of those bending or warping since the arms and legs were thin. The old Halcyon kit would be a decent starter figure. It builds up "okay" and its super simple to paint. There are, of course, all sorts of various other resin garage kits, etc. MPC did a pretty crude little plastic kit back in the 70s too. It was reissued once or twice.
Wow! Very impressive research! Thanks for all of the info. It sounds like the quality of the models made for the series was a mixed bag. I don't know how serious I'll be about finding one of them considering I have tons of Trek, SW, and WWII models still in boxes waiting to be built. But it's nice to know what to be on the look out for!
allow me to add my two cents. You say you never have done a figure before. Vinyl kits are nice but take alot of prep work that a novice may not want to invest. So the vinyl medium may turn you off to figures totally.
I have alot of Alien kits and just painfully sold my Flying Gung Bros. Warrior. That kit is resin and there are many wonderfully detailed kits in resin. Again something a new builder may not want to tackle. Also if vinyl is expensive then resin even more so.
So here are my recommendations.
The Grandaddy of all Alien kits the MPC Alien. This kit was repopped by AMT around 1999. They do not fetch big dollars on Ebay. You interested in one contact me offboard. Anyway as stated it is horrible but only fitwise as it is a very good sculpt of the original Alien creature. Can you fill and sand seams? If you have done AMT Trek or Star Wars kits I bet you can! I say every Alien model builder needs this one.
Halcyon kits of the Creature itself. There was a Warrior and attacking Warrior. Pretty much same kit except the Attacking Warrior has an open mouth with tongue. These are Aliens version of the monster. Dave said they were basic. I think they are pretty nice but I aint crazy about the pose. I have one I started years ago where I took Aves and made his head smooth to represent a 1st movie version. Fit was good on this kit.
Now if you want the finest styrene Alien kit ever made imho. You need the Halcyon Alien3 Creature. This bad boy has a dynamic pose kind of looking like he is hunched forward about to sprint. The only fit problem I had was the small add on piece that represents the stomach muscles. However a little blending in with good ol Elmers and it was fine!
I hope this helps in some way.
Cheers
Max Bryant
I have alot of Alien kits and just painfully sold my Flying Gung Bros. Warrior. That kit is resin and there are many wonderfully detailed kits in resin. Again something a new builder may not want to tackle. Also if vinyl is expensive then resin even more so.
So here are my recommendations.
The Grandaddy of all Alien kits the MPC Alien. This kit was repopped by AMT around 1999. They do not fetch big dollars on Ebay. You interested in one contact me offboard. Anyway as stated it is horrible but only fitwise as it is a very good sculpt of the original Alien creature. Can you fill and sand seams? If you have done AMT Trek or Star Wars kits I bet you can! I say every Alien model builder needs this one.
Halcyon kits of the Creature itself. There was a Warrior and attacking Warrior. Pretty much same kit except the Attacking Warrior has an open mouth with tongue. These are Aliens version of the monster. Dave said they were basic. I think they are pretty nice but I aint crazy about the pose. I have one I started years ago where I took Aves and made his head smooth to represent a 1st movie version. Fit was good on this kit.
Now if you want the finest styrene Alien kit ever made imho. You need the Halcyon Alien3 Creature. This bad boy has a dynamic pose kind of looking like he is hunched forward about to sprint. The only fit problem I had was the small add on piece that represents the stomach muscles. However a little blending in with good ol Elmers and it was fine!
I hope this helps in some way.
Cheers
Max Bryant
I can't disagree more about the MPC/AMT "Alien kit." MightyMax says that it's an "accurate sculpt" of the original first-movie creature. It is not. It's a TERRIBLE sculpt. The actual "big chap" of the first movie is tall, slender, lanky. Please take a close look at the link I provided, above, to the one "picture rich" page I was able to find re: this kit. It has short limbs, a barrel chest, and the head is shaped entirely wrong. It's like an Ewok version of the Alien. And besides that, the pose is about as "lifeless" as I've ever seen.
He's very right about the extra work which goes into vinyl kits, but to do a styrene kit, there's also a lot of extra work which goes into it.
For a vinyl kit, they basically pour hot vinyl into a cool mold, then tip the mold back over to drain out the molten vinyl. The result is that a "skin" of vinyl forms on the inside surface of the mold.
The vinyl is still very soft at that point, and the entire "pour" is pulled out of the mold. If the skin is sufficiently solidified before this is done, it will spring back into the shape from the mold. If not, the part may need to be heated and "reshaped" slightly by the builder later on.
It is then hung and usually dipped in a cooling bath in order to allow it to properly "solidify." It's then dropped into a baggie, which goes into a box.
To do a vinyl kit, the first step is to trim away the excess vinyl around the "pour opening." This is easy if done right, but challenging if done wrong. The trick to doing this is to have a big pot of nearly boiling water (i use a big pot, literally on top of the stove, to do this). You dip the "pour opening" into the water, let it heat up, and then, using a sharp knife, carefully trim away the excess material. If you don't heat the material, trimming this is fairly difficult and can make a mess, as your blade may tend to "wander" in the fully-solid material. If the material is nice and hot, it's like cutting a tender bit of ham, though!
Once trimmed, the majority of your work is done, but you'll want to test-fit the parts. If they're not fully properly shaped, the fit may not be perfect. Trying to glue these together this way is very, very difficult. The trick, again, is heat. Heat up both mating parts, as described above, and then put them together. Since they'll both be soft, the parts should conform to each other very easily. Put the mated parts under cool water for a few moments, and they'll "lock" into the right shape. If done properly, in a well-designed kit (like the Geometric "Star Trek" kits from above, for example) where the seams are at "real seams" in the figure, you won't even need putty. But if you do, the amount of putty work required will be very, very minimal.
If you DO use putty, realize that the same techniques you usually use on a styrene kit won't necessarily work. Specifically, sanding vinyl is a fairly bad idea. I usually apply a
'thinned" putty, with a dental tool, and wipe with a solvent-damp rag or cloth. The trick is to never need to sand away excess. This may take one or two application cycles. as the first cycle in particular may not fully fill the seam using this technique, but it works very nicely.
The trick with styrene kits is that the parts cannot ever truly match the detail of the original sculpt, due to the nature of the "rigid part in a rigid tool" molding process. Every part must be made by injecting a solid plastic into a solid mold, then pulling the two apart. This means that the features in the part must have "draft" (that is, all features in the molded part must have a positive "slant" relative to the plane in which the part pulls away from the tool). Otherwise, you could never remove the molded part from the tool! You'll usually not notice draft issues on well-designed "mechanical" kits, but on a figure kit, you will notice it. Look at any part sprue, and realist that the sprue itself represents the "parting plane. You can never have any "undercut" on any part... nor any true 90-degree-from-parting-line surfaces, for that matter. EVERYTHING is 3 degrees, or more, off from vertical (as seen from the parting plane). This becomes particularly noticeable on "organic" subject matters.
The Halcyon creature shown above is one of the better examples of working around this which you're likely to find... it's a really nice kit. But if you look carefully at the details in the arms, legs, etc... in the egg... and so forth, you can see that there are some areas which have soft, angled detail where the detail should be hard and clean. These are the places which they had to compromise on in order to be able to eject the part trees out of the mold.
So, molded "organics" have that issue... and they also have the issue of being pretty limited in terms of positioning. There are only a handful of arrangements of limbs, head, etc, which can effectively be molded in a two-part-separating tool. Halcyon did a very nice job on this figure, but the pose is a lot less... "dynamic"... than you're likely to find in a resin or, better still, vinyl figure.
Resin kits are done by using a flexible mold and rigid part. This allows the maker to create "undercut" areas which are identical to a sculpted pattern. But resin parts have a very long "cycle time" to make.... especially compared to injection-molded parts, which can be less than ten seconds per cycle, and are seldom more than thirty seconds, even for a very complex part, or vinyl parts, which are typically quite a bit less than a minute.
A resin part, ideally, should be left "in mold" for at least an hour (it depends a lot on what casting resin you're using, of course) before demolding. You can't achieve quick cycle times with cast parts. So... low production volume and high detail reproduction make "resin kits" the standard for the "garage kit" market.
Vinyl is something that either "garage kit" or "mass production" makers can use, but vinyl allows reproduction of more complex shapes in a single piece (likely why they used this on the Nostromo, which has all variety of surface details which, if done in styrene, would have needed to hav ebeen separate parts. The kit, which has a relatively small number of parts, would have then ended up having hundreds of parts to get the same level of detail! The problem with this is that the kit, detailed as it is, needs careful work to ensure that, say, the flat surfaces on the hull are truly FLAT... and that the kit stays in proper shape, long-term. as vinyl kit parts, especially if they become warm (say, due to sunlight, or just an overly warm house?) will tend to sag over time if not reinforced.
The trick to doing this sort of work is merely to recognize the advantages, and shortcomings, of each material. Pick the right material for the job. And accept that each material will also involve compromises.
The compromise, in terms of styrene figure kits, involve the lack of ability to handle anything but positive "draft angles" in a molded part, and the limitation of poses this brings about. It's possible to get around this, only by chopping the figure up tiny sub-elements... meaning it'll have a MASSIVE part count, and will likely require massive amounts of putty work.
I have a styrene "Joker" which looks pretty nice... but is broken down into a huge number of pieces. And I can still see the artifacts of molding. I also have a vinyl one, which is larger, and is is a perfect replica of the original sculpt. I far prefer the latter, because it has no "compromises" involved.
So... don't be scared of other materials besides injection-molded styrene.
And... do your research before buying a kit. I did buy the MPC figure (or rather, the AMT re-pop). The sculpt is terrible, and is utterly inaccurate to the subject matter... unless you're into those little "bobble head-ish, super-deformed" figures, I suppose.
There's not a lot of love for this kit out on the web, but I did find someone who did a particularly nice build-up of this kit. Check it out, in combination with the link I showed you earlier, and decide for yourself if you're willing to accept the shape issues with this kit.
In particular, the head is way too short, the neck flares in a way the real creature didn't, the body is wide and thick, and the limbs are almost stubby. Go look up some production images of the real "big chap" from the first film, which this is intended to represent, and you'll see that this kit take individual bits from that figure, but puts them together in the wrong proportion and wrong relationship. It seems that the sculptor had access to a series of close-ups, but none of the full creature?
He's very right about the extra work which goes into vinyl kits, but to do a styrene kit, there's also a lot of extra work which goes into it.
For a vinyl kit, they basically pour hot vinyl into a cool mold, then tip the mold back over to drain out the molten vinyl. The result is that a "skin" of vinyl forms on the inside surface of the mold.
The vinyl is still very soft at that point, and the entire "pour" is pulled out of the mold. If the skin is sufficiently solidified before this is done, it will spring back into the shape from the mold. If not, the part may need to be heated and "reshaped" slightly by the builder later on.
It is then hung and usually dipped in a cooling bath in order to allow it to properly "solidify." It's then dropped into a baggie, which goes into a box.
To do a vinyl kit, the first step is to trim away the excess vinyl around the "pour opening." This is easy if done right, but challenging if done wrong. The trick to doing this is to have a big pot of nearly boiling water (i use a big pot, literally on top of the stove, to do this). You dip the "pour opening" into the water, let it heat up, and then, using a sharp knife, carefully trim away the excess material. If you don't heat the material, trimming this is fairly difficult and can make a mess, as your blade may tend to "wander" in the fully-solid material. If the material is nice and hot, it's like cutting a tender bit of ham, though!
Once trimmed, the majority of your work is done, but you'll want to test-fit the parts. If they're not fully properly shaped, the fit may not be perfect. Trying to glue these together this way is very, very difficult. The trick, again, is heat. Heat up both mating parts, as described above, and then put them together. Since they'll both be soft, the parts should conform to each other very easily. Put the mated parts under cool water for a few moments, and they'll "lock" into the right shape. If done properly, in a well-designed kit (like the Geometric "Star Trek" kits from above, for example) where the seams are at "real seams" in the figure, you won't even need putty. But if you do, the amount of putty work required will be very, very minimal.
If you DO use putty, realize that the same techniques you usually use on a styrene kit won't necessarily work. Specifically, sanding vinyl is a fairly bad idea. I usually apply a
'thinned" putty, with a dental tool, and wipe with a solvent-damp rag or cloth. The trick is to never need to sand away excess. This may take one or two application cycles. as the first cycle in particular may not fully fill the seam using this technique, but it works very nicely.
The trick with styrene kits is that the parts cannot ever truly match the detail of the original sculpt, due to the nature of the "rigid part in a rigid tool" molding process. Every part must be made by injecting a solid plastic into a solid mold, then pulling the two apart. This means that the features in the part must have "draft" (that is, all features in the molded part must have a positive "slant" relative to the plane in which the part pulls away from the tool). Otherwise, you could never remove the molded part from the tool! You'll usually not notice draft issues on well-designed "mechanical" kits, but on a figure kit, you will notice it. Look at any part sprue, and realist that the sprue itself represents the "parting plane. You can never have any "undercut" on any part... nor any true 90-degree-from-parting-line surfaces, for that matter. EVERYTHING is 3 degrees, or more, off from vertical (as seen from the parting plane). This becomes particularly noticeable on "organic" subject matters.
The Halcyon creature shown above is one of the better examples of working around this which you're likely to find... it's a really nice kit. But if you look carefully at the details in the arms, legs, etc... in the egg... and so forth, you can see that there are some areas which have soft, angled detail where the detail should be hard and clean. These are the places which they had to compromise on in order to be able to eject the part trees out of the mold.
So, molded "organics" have that issue... and they also have the issue of being pretty limited in terms of positioning. There are only a handful of arrangements of limbs, head, etc, which can effectively be molded in a two-part-separating tool. Halcyon did a very nice job on this figure, but the pose is a lot less... "dynamic"... than you're likely to find in a resin or, better still, vinyl figure.
Resin kits are done by using a flexible mold and rigid part. This allows the maker to create "undercut" areas which are identical to a sculpted pattern. But resin parts have a very long "cycle time" to make.... especially compared to injection-molded parts, which can be less than ten seconds per cycle, and are seldom more than thirty seconds, even for a very complex part, or vinyl parts, which are typically quite a bit less than a minute.
A resin part, ideally, should be left "in mold" for at least an hour (it depends a lot on what casting resin you're using, of course) before demolding. You can't achieve quick cycle times with cast parts. So... low production volume and high detail reproduction make "resin kits" the standard for the "garage kit" market.
Vinyl is something that either "garage kit" or "mass production" makers can use, but vinyl allows reproduction of more complex shapes in a single piece (likely why they used this on the Nostromo, which has all variety of surface details which, if done in styrene, would have needed to hav ebeen separate parts. The kit, which has a relatively small number of parts, would have then ended up having hundreds of parts to get the same level of detail! The problem with this is that the kit, detailed as it is, needs careful work to ensure that, say, the flat surfaces on the hull are truly FLAT... and that the kit stays in proper shape, long-term. as vinyl kit parts, especially if they become warm (say, due to sunlight, or just an overly warm house?) will tend to sag over time if not reinforced.
The trick to doing this sort of work is merely to recognize the advantages, and shortcomings, of each material. Pick the right material for the job. And accept that each material will also involve compromises.
The compromise, in terms of styrene figure kits, involve the lack of ability to handle anything but positive "draft angles" in a molded part, and the limitation of poses this brings about. It's possible to get around this, only by chopping the figure up tiny sub-elements... meaning it'll have a MASSIVE part count, and will likely require massive amounts of putty work.
I have a styrene "Joker" which looks pretty nice... but is broken down into a huge number of pieces. And I can still see the artifacts of molding. I also have a vinyl one, which is larger, and is is a perfect replica of the original sculpt. I far prefer the latter, because it has no "compromises" involved.
So... don't be scared of other materials besides injection-molded styrene.
And... do your research before buying a kit. I did buy the MPC figure (or rather, the AMT re-pop). The sculpt is terrible, and is utterly inaccurate to the subject matter... unless you're into those little "bobble head-ish, super-deformed" figures, I suppose.
There's not a lot of love for this kit out on the web, but I did find someone who did a particularly nice build-up of this kit. Check it out, in combination with the link I showed you earlier, and decide for yourself if you're willing to accept the shape issues with this kit.
In particular, the head is way too short, the neck flares in a way the real creature didn't, the body is wide and thick, and the limbs are almost stubby. Go look up some production images of the real "big chap" from the first film, which this is intended to represent, and you'll see that this kit take individual bits from that figure, but puts them together in the wrong proportion and wrong relationship. It seems that the sculptor had access to a series of close-ups, but none of the full creature?
Actually styrene kits have improved dramatically since the days of the Halcyon aliens, partly through the use of computer aided design and cutting of the moulds and partly through the use of slide-mould technology allowing for more undercut detail.
Compare the recent Moebius Bride of Frankenstein kit with something produced even five years ago and you'll see a real difference.
I'd like to think that a current manufacturer might tackle the Alien series again.
Compare the recent Moebius Bride of Frankenstein kit with something produced even five years ago and you'll see a real difference.
I'd like to think that a current manufacturer might tackle the Alien series again.
Looks like there's a copy of what I still think is the best "Aliens Alien" figure kit out there... on Ebay. See here:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GEOMETRIC...IT-NEW-/230826532742?pt=UK_ToysGames_ModelKits_ModelKits_JN&hash=item35be555f86
Big, detailed, accurate, and an easy build.
On the other hand, if you want a "first movie" "big chap"... this is pretty awesome, though there's no "building" involved:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alien-18-...&algo=PW.CURRENT&ao=1&asc=29&meid=1327766492601763039&pid=100009&prg=1013&rk=5&
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GEOMETRIC...IT-NEW-/230826532742?pt=UK_ToysGames_ModelKits_ModelKits_JN&hash=item35be555f86
Big, detailed, accurate, and an easy build.
On the other hand, if you want a "first movie" "big chap"... this is pretty awesome, though there's no "building" involved:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alien-18-...&algo=PW.CURRENT&ao=1&asc=29&meid=1327766492601763039&pid=100009&prg=1013&rk=5&
Yes I agree about the MPC Alien but it is a nice rendition of the costume from Alien. It needs to be more slender to better represent the fact in reality some thin, 7 foot tall African (I forget his name and am too lazy to go look in a book) but it is what it is. The Grandaddy of all Alien kits. I stand by my comment that every Alien collector/model builder needs this kit.
Max
Max
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
-
?
