Tag: xenomorph

Alien – Predator Thermal Vision ver

One last xeno before we break from the the xenos…

image

This very green grid alien. Yes, he does glow in the dark, but no… I didn’t take any photos of the glowing. So for this one, we’re mostly judging it by the sculpt – and I think it looks good. 

As far as the thermal vision goes, the green does match, and I like the way the base is a solid black, to match the lack of thermal signature ti would have. Also makes for a good, strong contrast to the figure. 

Left:

I like the way the tail is posed, going around the alien. Here we also have some super-long back pipes goin’ on too. Head is nicely detailed in the sculpt, and we have the grid pattern of the “grid alien”. 

Right:

Here we see the Alien doing some stalking, unbeknownst it is being watched. Sculpt on this side is also fully-detailed, with sculpting on its limbs, and I like the shape of its body. 

Back:

The body transitions nicely into the tail, and the pose works from the back too. 

Upper shot:

Some of the tail spines probably lack a little definition, but not too bothered about that. Here we can see where the pipes are joined to the body, but I don’t find it overly noticeable. 

Overall, I really like this figure, and was glad to get it for a decent price. Originally he was a bit more than the other figures in the “basic” set, but got him for the same price. He glows decently well, and seems to have some variation in his glow, so looks good at night too. 

‘Alien’ Bobblehead

So this one… I bought this from a local-ish action figure shop, he had no idea where it came from originally…. and neither do I. The figure itself has no markings, is made from resin, and is numbered but not signed, so I assume this some rando-artist item. 

So here is this piece:

image

From the front, we have something that seems to be a xeno crossed with H R Giger’s original art. The base appears to be based on an Alien egg, though this is where the bulk of the damage is on the figure – I plan to paint these in a similar colour at some point (maybe even try and get some putty out and reshape the missing bits…). The centre of its chest deviates from both the original and film designs, as it has two ribs instead of one central one. Also the shoulderblades are longer and larger. We have some strange posing with the arms, but I suspect that was to simplify the moulding process for the resin, giving this alien a stylised look of its own.

Left:

image

Here we see the head is more penisy, which follows Giger’s design more than the films. The shoulders seem to be a less-shaped version of the film version. The mould is nicely detailed though, and the shading on the figure is nice. The red and silver of its lips and teeth has been nicely done. If you look near the neck, you’ll see a little of the resin has been chipped off due to the bobblehead feature. I guess this was made when bobbleheads were in! With the egg part, the veins on it have been highlighted with paint, which I like. Whilst the eggs themselves don’t have veins, they’re usually on the ground below, which I assume where the inspiration for this came from. 

Right:

image

This side has fared better, and isn’t chipped by its neck. Here we can see the alien is a bit tubby – I feel the body needs to be a bit thinner and a bit more shaped to give off a full “Alien” vibe. 

Top of head:

image

The details are nicely rendered, and feel like a simplified version of the Alien Warrior head design. 

Back:

image

Here we don’t have protrusions, which again, was likely to simplify the moulding process… or to make the mould smaller. I suspect the artist didn’t want to cast and glue/pin the extra pieces on, so they’ve come up with their own back design. which works decently well. With Giger’s originals, they did (tend) have protrusions, but from lower down and flatter on the back. Again, the tail is flattened against the body to make it an easier mould to deal with. 

Inside the ‘egg’:

image

I like the way the tail curls around and sits in the bottom of the egg. We have some liquid detail in the egg, which I like. 

Bottom:

image

Apparently there are 1199 others out there… do you own one? Know anything about this? If so, please comment below! Water is from rinsing the dust off this fellah – he was very dusty when I got him and in need of a clean. 

Overall, I like this unusual piece – I feel it’s a more “inspired by” piece, as it doesn’t follow one particular Alien design, as far as I can tell. There are shortcuts the artist has taken to make it easier to cast, but overall, these mostly work, and make it its own piece. Don’t think I’ll get much use of the bobblehead functionality though, lol. 

(Also what’s it with amateur artists not signing their stuff?)

Chestburster Victim & Facehugger Keyring – Aliens

Now for a bit of an interesting figure… one that’s part of the scenery…

image

This wasn’t a figure I was planning on getting, but saw it for a reasonable price, and decided to go for it. Thinking of posing this with one the xenomorphs in the same Eaglemoss series. 

The sculpt is surprisingly detailed, and the paint is mostly good, which is a surprise for an Eaglemoss figure. There are some parts where the clothing paint does go onto the fines, but most strands are OK. The clothes are well done, and are shaded well, and the blood isn’t half-bad. My biggest complaint with the figure is the skin colour feels a little too ashen, and could’ve possibly done with a splash of skin-coloured paint. 

Chestburster close-up:

image

A chestburster’s head… in full, gruesome detail. I think this has been done well, and we have the t-shirt pushing back from the wound. I feel there’s some inaccuracy in how this would look irl, but I think the artistic liberty does help the chestburster stand out. I feel a little more detail in texture could’ve gone into the hair, but I don’t think this is a big thing, and the paint is nice on the hair, with the strands on the victim’s forehead. 

Sides:

image
image

The sides of the figure look nice, with the alien wall texture continuing around the figure. 

Back:

image

Was quite impressed with this – they’ve actually textured the back, so if you have this at an angle where the back shows, it will still look “the part”. The paint here is also nicely and subtly shaded. 

Due to the subject, I don’t think this figure will be especially popular, but it is nicely done, and would look nice in a diorama. 

As a small added bonus, here’s a keyring by Tsudaka Hobby that I picked up in a Suruga-ya order:

image
image

It did come with the key loop, but I removed this to more easily place it in an ita bag (featuring all my favourite things). The legs and tail are very flexible, so they’ll bend if caught on anything. The black wash is OK, but I wish they left a little more on to soften the effect. The bottom of the facehugger is also sculpted decently well. I like this keyring, and glad I got it. 

Aliens x M.U.S.C.L.E – Series 2 – Part 2

Now for some alien warriors and their main nemesis…

First up, this dude:

Why, hello there! This one, um, has a normal hair. That’s mine. Sorry. Overall, he looks OK, pretty similar to the ones in the other set. Only this one is waving. 

Top of his head:

I do like the sculpting on the top of these alien warrior’s heads. That part did come out well, though here we can see the arm joint is a bit “eh”. 

Xeno number 2:

This guy… likes to lounge around. This guy I’d say is the weakest of the three warriors in this set – his pose isn’t overly exciting, and he doesn’t stand up on his own either… 

Lastly for the xenos:

With his arms up, this feels more like a xeno pose, crossed with a M.U.S.C.L.E one. He’s also in attack mode, with his inner mouth poking out. He also isn’t super at balancing, but his tail does more to support him, so he doesn’t look like he’s lazing out. 

Now for their natural enemy… the Ripley!

The sculpting feels more detailed than series 1, and she has something that almost passes as an expression. 

Ripley with Newt:

Another iconic “pose”. However, I’m not too much of a fan of the sculpt on this one, no matter how hard I try to not see it. From the front, Newt looks like she’s melting into Ripley a bit, and the faces look odd. From the back, Newt’s leg looks like it has been flattened, which doesn’t look good. The hair sculpts look good, if a little merged. Rifle looks the part though. 

Again, a mixed bag. The sculpts seem to have more detail in this set, but there’s more balance issues with this set, or other moulding weirdnesses. 

Aliens x M.U.S.C.L.E – Series 1 – Red ver. – Part 1

Saw Ashens on Youtube review some of these, and decided to get some for myself. Found this red “trash can” of them cheap-ish on a UK site and went ahead and ordered them.

They come in a nicely designed tub, based on the old MUSCLE figure packaging:

And it has this really cool lid design:

D’aww, look at that cute chestburster, busting out of the lid. The artwork is nicely done on the packaging, and mix the two properties well.

So let’s look at some figures! Today, we’ll mostly focus on the aliens. Let’s start with a facehugger:

These things are not easy to photograph… The translucent plastic works OK, and the sculpting is good on the facehugger itself – we have joints on the legs, the sucker on the bottom, and the spine markings along its back. The egg feels less detailed, as there is no indentation in the top and it doesn’t seem to have much texturing on the outside. 

First xeno:

Again, the translucent plastic does make the details hard to see, but they are there. He definitely has the MUSCLE proportions, with the large hands and stretched pose. He does have a pretty noticeable seam on his head, though. 

Wanna hug?

Fairly similar to the first, but with a different pose. I do like this one’s pose more than the other. With these, I like the sculpting on the tail and the “pipes” and shoulder blades look good. The round parts on the front of the legs I find a little weird-looking. 

Last one for today, Ripley:

She seems OK, for what I can see of her. I recognised her, so that’s a good sign for the sculpting. There’s a decent amount of detail here – her hair has texture, we can see her boiler suit collar, and the details on her shoes. 

Overall, I’m happy with these four. 

Alien – Clear ver – Alien Resurrection

Saw this dude on Mandarake and decided to add him to an order. Was on the fence as I don’t always go in for clear versions of things, but the coloured version of this figure I have is in poor condition, and, well, it’s a Xeno. 

Front:

I was pleasantly surprised by this figure – the details are reasonably visible, thanks to the figure size and the yellowish tint. Not sure if the yellow tint is intentional or something that’s developed over time, but it works for me, lol. 

And yeah… I still had the Demogorgon on the table… He will balance without a stand, but he’s much easier to balance with one. 

Left:

I like the tail on these figures – works well to counterbalance the figure, and looks good. I like the details in the sculpt on the legs and his chest.

Head close-up:

He doesn’t have any detail on his dome, but the side moulding makes up for it. Plenty of tendony things going on here. 

Right:

His “pipes” have a nice texture sculpted onto then. His splayed feet do help significantly in balancing him too.

Arm close-up:

I like the flange detail, and they’ve also captures the round markings. His arms also rotate at the shoulder, which gives you some customisability to his pose. His hips also rotate, which is mostly useful for balancing purposes, and you can rotate his head a bit, but I don’t find that too useful. His tail can also rotate at the base, if you want it pointing sideways.

Back:

Here we can see his spine is sculpted, and some of the details on his legs. The tail works well with the pose.

Overall, I’m happy I got this. I wouldn’t pay a huge amount for him, but for the bargain price I paid, I’m certainly happy with him. 

Predalien – Eaglemoss

This is the third of three figures… and the reason the blogs about these figures got delayed.

Here’s the reason why:

Yeah, how did this pass QA?! The figure was pretty recessed in the box, so not convinced this happened during shipping. 

So a grumbly email and another wait… and we have:

This dude, who hasn’t been headbutting stuff lately! However, I think his paint job is slightly dodgier in places – note the unpainted bit on her hand, but that’s far less annoying than a scratch. 

So let’s look at the entire front of him:

They’ve chosen a very dynamic pose, which adds to the figure. There’s a good amount of contrast in the dark and light areas of his body. 

Left side:

He’s quite dark on  this size. Here you can see the dreads that are part of the signs he’s a predalien, along with his feet and colouring. 

Right side:

Here you can see his tail – which is definitely one of the selling points of this figure. Almost looks like he’s holding it from this angle! The painting has been nicely done on his tail, and the leg sculpts look very nice from this angle. Can see a couple of places where the dark overpainting didn’t quite get into the gaps, which is a bit of a shame. Guess the person who painted this one didn’t quite have enough paint on their brush or poke him enough. 

Back:

Some nice details back here, but not so easy to photograph them from this angle. Love the alien backpieces. Horns? Spikes? Protrusions?

Close-up of the base of his tail:

The moulding and paint transition from his back to his tail is very nice. And ridges have been replicated well.

The end of the tail:

Mmm, wouldn’t want to get hit with that! A suitably vicious tail!

Close-up of the base:

The mould of the broken mask is nice, but there is some silver slop at the top of the mask on the base, which can show from some angles and look a little odd if you’re looking close. At this angle though, it looks nice. Base is painted well – love the rust details on the grate. 

This one is my second favourite. If it wasn’t for the dark overpainting paint flaws, he’d be vying for the top spot, but he just isn’t quite up to the swimming alien for me. 

Swimming Alien – Eaglemoss

This is the second of the three Eaglemoss figures I bought. 

Swimming Xeno! I really like this figure, and is probably my favourite of the three. 

Here he is swimming the other way round on his base:

Not sure which display option looks best. His tail is impressively moulded and painted, and I love the way it sticks out. His head is shiny, which is a nice touch. He also looks like he’s swimming, so that’s a definite bonus!

Here is his other side:

Not much in between the two sides. Both look fine.

Here is a close-up on his back end:

Looks nice :).

And the front end:

Here you can see the shiny effect on his head, and his back “spikes” reaching up above him.

From above:

Head so shiny, you can see me! His pose does look kind of flat from the top, but that’s no biggie to me. 

And his belly:

He has a hole for the post that holds him above the base, but the paint shading has been done well on him. With the glossy finish on his legs, he could almost be wet. 

Close-up of the base:

A nice range of props, coloured green to match the film and look underwatery. See? They can blend paint! 

I love this dude – he will take up a decent amount of space, being so long, but with the rod, he can stand above other small figures, so he shouldn’t be too bad to display. 

Deacon Alien – Eaglemoss

This is the first of three figures I recently ordered from the Eaglemoss store, as I noticed them having a sale on. Unfortunately, the Eaglemoss store is still rubbish – no order status, takes ages to dispatch and aren’t quite up to speed with this new-fangled technology called bubblewrap:

image

Deacon’s box got crushed, but fortunately they now use HUGE boxes, so the figure survived just fine. Not so nice for more dedicated collectors, getting a crushed box though. 

So here’s the Deacon himself:

image

Full-body shot, focused on the body:

image

He’s… OK. Bit of a disappointment tbh – the paint job isn’t blended at all, so he looks like he’s had paint slopped on him. Mould is pretty nice though, and I like the scenery they’ve given on his tile:

image

Mmm, some ‘lovely’ entrails… 

Left side:

image

That dark green paint… it almost works in a couple of spots, but meh. Looks like I painted it! Also a paint slop I didn’t notice until I did this photographs, sigh. Maybe I could repaint this…? 

Right side:

image

I love the pose they chose for the mouth – nice to see them showing off his proto-jaw. The detail put into the neck and leg muscles is nice too. Still a shame about that damn paint! The base was painted nicely though. 

Back:

image

Lovely mould work on the spine. The green lines almost work on his butt. 

The two things that disappoint me about this figure are the green paint blobs and his size. Due to his pose, he looks really tiny compared to the other figures in this range. I think it would’ve been nicer if they did him at a bit of a bigger scale, but then he wouldn’t be proportionally accurate to the others in this series and his diminutive size. 

Powerloader & Alien

So this was a figure that came with a game… OK, it was Colonial Marines: Collector’s Edition. I decided to look up how much the game itself is worth out of morbid curiosity – you can buy it for £2.49, and get it posted to your door. Yeah.. 

(For those who are not in the know, Colonial Marines is notoriously terrible). 

So here’s the figure:

image

Maybe they should have produced this figure, and just shelved the whole game idea. I bought this for £19.50, though most of the auctions tend to run at £25-30 at time of writing. 

The paintwork on the powerloader is especially impressive – the alien is mostly done with a blue wash type of thing, which looks a little odd in places, but works from a distance. 

Let’s get a little closer to the action:

image

That’s one desperate xeno trying to get in there! The alien has nicely wedged itself up there, without clipping or anything. 

Let’s see how the marine feels about this:

image

He doesn’t look too happy about it, and also his teeth have turned to flesh! Bit sad they missed his mouth, when it looks like everything else was painted. 

Let’s see how the alien is getting along:

image

Bit hard to get a shot of his face, but it is nicely sculpted. Still looking hungry, I see. 

Back of the diorama:

image

Amazingly, they’ve even textured the back of the diorama stand! Also a lot of attention to detail in the paintwork on this side of the powerloader. Love the dirty weathering effects.

Back of the powerloader:

image

All the wiring and gubbins you’d expect. Plus the cute little light on the top, and the aerials. 

Now for the alien’s backside… is it as pretty?

image

I would say… not quite. From this angle, the blue wash looks a little blobby in places. You can see him prepairing to grab onto the powerloader’s arm for more stability, though. 

From the top:

image

Bit of a random shot, but came out better than expected. The detail on the alien’s head looks good, and it emphasises the alien’s pose. 

All in all, I really like this figure, and can see why it has held its value, more so than some of the other game collectables I’ve picked up over the years. The game also came with some iron-on patches and a map of the ship on tracing paper. The other touchy-feely bits were crap. I do feel I got a good figure for my money, and hey, I also have a joke present for anyone with a PS3… 

Eaglemoss Alien Queen

Suddenly…. a wild super-large box appears! Wasn’t quite prepared for the size of this one. Thought they must have padded the box for the figure, but nope, it was taking up the whole of the box sent!

For a metal-based figure, this thing is large. It came as three separate pieces – the tail, her body and the base. Once assembled, it’s rigid, and I’m not worried about it disassembling itself, so that’s good. The detailing and paintwork are both nice. Due to my shit lighting, the base looks a bit arse in the post-editing, but Eaglemoss has some high-quality photos.

And here’s more of my derpy ones:

This last picture has less editing, so the base looks much more like it does irl. Went hunting for a discount code (which I found!) as I thought I might be slightly disappointed by it but nope… totally happy I got this one. With the code, I’d say it was worth it.