Darran, how do you remove the fedora without damaging it? I would greatly appreciate any information.
honestly it was a pain in the backside. It was a mixture of pulling with my fingers, using thin, sharp scalpel blades to cut through the join where the glue is, wedging screwdrivers, blunt spoon handles and anything eles I thought might work in there and levering..... but it took AGES.
And my hands were sore like hell afterwards, and I almost stabbed my hand a few times...but for me it was worth it as it was much easier to paint.
Congrats Darren on making everyone else's Indys look like crap.
Nooooo don't say that Everybody elses look great!!! (and you'll make me feel bad lol)
ok... latest update on my figure. I wanted to be able to 'pose' the leather collars, so I had the idea or adding wire somehow... so I took these small twisty tie things that you get with sandwich bags
I cut a piece to the right length, and glued it under the collar, using a glue that stays flexible and rubber-like when it's set.
Annoyingly this didn't work as the glue wouldnt stick to the jacket. It just kept peeling off. So i wanted to figure out a way to get wire
into the collar... but didn't think i'd be able to as I'd already glued my collar closed along the edges where i'd cut and reshaped it.
Then I figured somewhere it might work, if only the wire would be able to be fed in. So I stripped a piece of the thin wire out of the plastic of the twisty tie, and woohoo... it could (just about!) be fed into the very leading edge of the collar, behind the stitching.
This lets me pose the collar in any shape I like. (a small detail I know, but for me it's the kind of thing that lets me get closer to how something looks on screen)
Then I glued the collar down to the jacket, giving the shape I wanted.
I cut the corner off part of the shirt near the collars that was too big and square (it's in fact completely the wrong shape, the same with the collar on the jacket... but doing this would give the impression that it was a bit closer to the right shape and size) and glued the edge to stop it from fraying
Because the paint on the neck kept being scraped off by the edges of the neck socket, I had to dremel away the inside of the socket, and make the size of the rim larger... so I could pose the head at angles (a little more) and not worry so much about the paint. Although I still have to be careful. But I have a bit more play now.
The shirt was glued to the shoulders, in order to stop the shirt riding up too high on the neck, which makes his shoulders look more slope-y and slim than they already are
Also this would mean I wouldn't have to faff around with the shirt so much getting it to look right.
Finally I put it all together. (I havent weathered the jacket yet... I'll get around to that when I have some time, but at least the figure is in one piece again, and I can weather and dust up the jacket while it's on him)