Friday 24 September 2021

Olleystronauts Part 1 - Building the Crew

It was back in 2020 when the seed of this project was planted. I had a pair of Bob Olley's Iron Claw Jump Troopers, and I fancied making a third variant. If you're not familiar with the figures, check out the pics below (sourced from the excellent Stuff of Legends):




My approach was to take the upper torso of Trooper Yael and mate it with the legs from another Bob Olley sculpt, an Ork madboy. I added some extra gear to hide the join, sculpted some kneepads, and left it there. In 2020, I didn't paint the original jump troopers, or the new converted addition.



Then in 2021, Stargrave was released. I thought it would be cool to make a 10-strong Stargrave crew comprising exclusively Bob Olley jump troopers. So I made them!


Troopers

My first step was to look at some basic repositioning. In addition to the converted figure above, and the jump trooper in flight, I had 3 copies of Trooper Worf. With a little repositioning, I avoided having 3 identical troopers in the crew:


L: I used wire to pin the trooper as if he's taking off. M: unmodified. R: legs repositioned to give a hunched / advancing stance.

Captain

With 5 basic jump troopers sorted, I knew I wanted to add some more interesting characters. For my captain I selected Attitude Gorman from the Iron Claw Space Pirates range as the basis of a conversion as he was wearing a similar outfit.


The source material for my captain

I removed Attitude Gorman's head, and the head/backpack from the trooper

Then it was a case of splicing the two parts, filling gaps and sculpting the kneepads




The Alien Trooper

With my captain sorted, I wanted to add another trooper, this time using the alien Iron Claw Space Pirate Ooglorg the Cruel. I very nearly added him to the crew unmodified, but I couldn't bear for him not to be wearing a jump pack like the rest of the crew.



I carefully cut away a jump pack from a spare trooper in flight, then added some details to integrate it onto Ooglorg's body (straps, cables etc). I figured he doesn't need a helmet because he's an alien!




The Heavy Weapons Sled

My last conversion was to add a heavy weapon to the crew. I'd spent a little time trying to work out how to make a trooper carry one, but the solution was something a little more Flash Gordon!


Original concept before I had worked out any components

The heavy weapons sled came together from my bits box. The platform is make from the back of a squat trike with an Eldar grav platform base mounted at the front. I made some thrusters from some scifi guns, then added the multi-melta and a jump trooper to finish it off. It's a little bit retro, possibly a bit silly, but I think it really fits nicely with the vibe of the jump troopers.




The Assembled Crew

To round out the crew to 10-strong, I added an Iron Claw squat who just happens to be wearing a similar outfit to the jump troopers, and a robot also sculpted by Bob Olley for the now defunct 40mm Dick Garrison range.


Part 2 with the painted crew to follow in the next post!


13 comments:

  1. Excellent and inspiring, as always.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you like them! Quite a lot of hacking and filing on these, but they turned out OK!

      Delete
  2. Loving that hover sled for the heavy weapon trooper. Can't wait to see what you go with colour wise on this squad

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers Jimmy! The hover sled makes me giggle every time I look at it! Next post will have the painted pics 🙂

      Delete
  3. Phenomenal, that's smart conversion job.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks JB! Really worth the effort I hope!

      Delete
  4. I'm always amazed how you can take two models, build it into a crew of 10, and yet each looks unique. Fantastic work! I particularly love the sled. It looks like it was sold that way!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Hobbs! I probably spend too much time going through the exercise of matching models by their gear, aesthetics or sculptor!! It does pay off for projects like this one though.

      Glad you like the sled - it's my favourite model in the group.

      Delete
  5. Fantastic. The step by step with pictures is especially appreciated. I always had a bit of a love/hate for the jump trooper. His uninspiring camera sized weapon was a weak point. Very cool to see some proper level of firepower added.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks very much! I'm with you on the flying trooper - he really could have done with the same gun as his squad mate. That's why I've only got the one unmodified in the squad 😉

      Delete
  6. Oh man, now I wish had picked up several packs of these back in the day!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They're fun figures. Pretty common though - they come up regularly on ebay 🙂

      Delete