Saturday 28 February 2015

Cherno Alpha

"That tank, last of the T-90s, Cherno Alpha. First generation Mark 1. Heaviest, oldest Jaeger in the service. But make no mistake Mr. Becket, its a brutal war machine. And those two, Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky."

"Yeah, I've heard of them, perimiter patrol, siberian wall." 

"On their watch it stayed unbreached for six years. Six. years."

***

 photo Team Russia_zpsxqyi0muc.jpg

Hey Internet,

As some of you might have noticed, I am a real sucker for modelling things that I see in films or games or books. Never has this been more so than with Cherno Alpha from Pacific Rim.

I can very clearly remember sitting in the cinema and letting out an audible "gwwah!" as Idris Elba's character introduces the machine.

My Cherno is a fairly simple re-paint of a Japanese Gashapon ("collectable candy toy") that I picked up on Ebay for a few quid.

The detail is pretty good, considering that it was never designed to be a display piece. My only major criticism would be that it was made out of some kind of god-awful rubbery substance that flaked off when it was filed, which made taking off the mold lines a right old pain.

 photo ChernoCherno2_zps4dd7pcaf.jpg
The only photo I took of the figure before painting. It's being held by a 7" action figure, for gauging scale.
I went for 'washed out green colour' to better match the figure to some of the fantastic concept art - and to tie it in with my other 6mm Soviet Armour.

 photo Cherno_Alpha_Concept_01_zpsfpqnnwwp.png
Concept Art.
 photo pacific_rim_cherno_alpha_by_flyyz-d6k0lbe_zpsdvdpxoih.jpg
Concept Art.
A few of the details have been brought up with a nice contrasting red, but fewer than I would have liked. Ideally he'd have some red lines on the head and arms, like he does in the film, but freehand really isn't my thing, and I was too happy with how the figure turned out to risk ruining it with wiggly lines all over the place.

 photo 0c06d7d8-aefa-4b4e-a661-830ccc3f037f_zpseblj6src.jpg


In the end it took far longer than I had expected to get this one painted up. Although it was mostly a single colour, the edge highlights still took ages simply due to the seer size of the piece.

Like him?

MM.

***


The Lead Tally - 2015

Acquired: +12       Painted: +2          Total: -10

8 comments:

  1. Damn I love what you're doing. Cracking stuff.

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  2. Great looking piece and nice paint work too.

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  3. A great paint job! Nice and clean; I think any obvious "weathering" would look horribly out of scale.

    The head design is hilariously reminiscent of a nuclear cooling tower - with the name "Cherno" it's about as subtle as a brick. Still a very pleasing design on its own merits though.

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    Replies
    1. I had the same feelings on the weathering front - neither the scale nor the genre really give over to it. That said, the weathering in Pacific Rim is rather fantastic, particularly on Cherno' - particularly the rain effects and the 'Kaiju Blue'.

      And the 'nuclear bucket hat' is strange, but I'm rather fond of the look myself. Very silly. Very Russia.

      MM.

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  4. It looks fantastic, and now I must go watch Pacific Rim again!

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