Figure Era: ROTS
Year: 2006
Primary Appearance: Star Wars: Clone Wars animated miniseries
Difficulty: Intermediate to Advanced
Tarr Seirr is the Cerean Jedi from the Clone Wars cartoon (see his databank entry here). This figure started out as what I thought would be simple, but became very difficult very quicklky. Oh well, the challenge makes it fun. My initial thought was to put a Ki-Adi-Mundi head on an Agen Kolar body (minus robes), do a repaint of the beard and clothing, and we’d be done!
Then I realized that Tarr Seirr’s left arm is bare.
I quickly realized that finding a figure with bare arms to use as fodder is not as easy as it sounds. There’s the POTF2 Luke Dagobah, but his arms look like a WWF wrestler’s and were way too big for poor Agen Kolar’s body. There is a Darth Maul (Sith Training) out there with bare arms, but it was too expensive for me to buy just for the left arm. So I went with a POTF2 Princess Leia arm. Not because it is the best choice, but because I had a couple laying around in my fodder bag. So if you find something better, by all means use it (and let me know, too!). Even though it isn’t really bare, it looks fairly skintight in the upper arm. Cut off the sleeves that are hanging down, smooth it out, and it looks fairly good for a bare arm. And the “thickness” of the arm fits pretty well, too. However, this arm was about 1/4″ shorter than the Agen Kolar right arm I was planning on using. This was remedied by extending the Leia arm (see the recipe below for details).
Recipe
Parts
1 ROTS Ki-Adi-Mundi (head, skirt, torso, upper right arm)
1 ROTS Agen Kolar (hips, legs, lower right arm, skirt, lightsaber)
1 POTF2 Princess Leia (left arm)
Paint
2:1 ratio
Polly Scale Soviet Sand (505362)
Polly Scale US Tan Special (505386)
tan tunic parts, flaps on skirt, right arm
4:1:6 ratio
Polly Scale US Tan Special (505386)
Polly Scale Soviet Sand (505362)
Water
wash for: tan tunic parts, flaps on skirt, right arm
Polly Scale Fr. Earth Brown (F505240)
brown tunic parts, skirt
12:1:8 ratio
Polly Scale Fr. Earth Brown (F505240)
Polly Scale Night Black (RLM 22)
Water
wash for: brown tunic parts, skirt
Model Master Acrylic Leather (4674)
belt, boots
Polly Scale Flesh (F505212)
head, left arm, right hand
1:2:4 ratio
Polly Scale US Tan Special (505386)
Polly Scale Flesh (F505212)
Water
wash for: head, left arm, right hand
25:1 ratio
Polly Scale White (RLM 21, F505011)
Polly Scale US Tan Special (505386)
whites of eyes
Directions
The Head
Remove the heads from both Agen Kolar and Ki-Adi-Mundi. You’ll notice they both attach differently, so we’ll have to do some work here. Cut off the neck stump, at the very base, from the Ki-Adi-Mundi figure. To get that onto the Agen Kolar torso, here’s what I did. Drill a small hole at the bottom of the neck peg and insert a small piece of paper clip (about 1/2″ long). Insert it 1/2 way in. If you don’t have a drillbit small enough, just drop the neck in boiling water for 30 seconds or so then push in a needle to make the hole. The paper clip piece should go in after that. Once you’re sure it fits, pull it out, put a little bit of super glue on it, and insert it back in. Let it dry. You should still have half of the paper clip piece sticking out the base of the neck.
Fill the neck hole with epoxy clay (Milliput will do) and smooth and level the top. After it dries about half-way (still soft, but not very sticky), carefully place the neck in position, letting the paper clip piece puncture a whole in the clay. Remove and let the clay fully harden with the hole in it. Sand the clay to make it completely flat. Put some super glue on the clay surface, a little more on the paper clip piece sticking out of the neck, and stick the neck in (make sure it is oriented in the right direction!). Let this dry.
Agen Kolar’s body with the Ki-Adi-Mundi neck stump attached.NOTE: After constructing the figure, it didn’t look quite right so I replaced Agen Kolar’s torso with Ki-Adi-Mundi’s torso. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of the steps with that torso.
For the actual Ki-Adi-Mundi head, I reshaped the beard with a Dremel grinding bit (use a small one that comes to a point for precision work). Also grind away the moustache, since Tarr Seirr doesn’t have one. Once you have this the way you like it, fill in the wrinkles on Ki-Adi-Mundi’s head with putty (the kind meant for plastic models). Filling in the wrinkles and smoothing out the head will make him look younger, like Tarr Seirr.
Front view of the head (in progress).
Side view of the head (in progress).
The head, after sanding and painting.The Left Arm
Remove Leia’s left arm by heating in boiling water for 30-60 seconds, then pulling out as far as you can and cutting it. Make sure you have a good arm peg left to work with later. Cut off the excess sleeve pieces to make the arm look bare. Now we need to lengthen it: cut the arm off just below the elbow. Make a cylindrical piece out of Milliput and stick a piece of paper clip through it, so it sticks out on both ends. Use the same method as on the neck to make a hole on each arm piece and superglue the extension in place. Once it is dried, sand to shape it. Now fill in the clothing wrinkles on the arm with putty. You may also want to “bulk up” the arm a little with Milliput – it’s up to you. If you do that, be aware that a very thin layer of Milliput like that will tend to crack easily. I got around this by spreading a thin layer of super glue as a coating over it.
Now to work on the arm peg. I used the smallest Dremel engraving bit to carve into the arm peg at the base to make it more recessed. Then I filed the end to make it more pointed. It should have the general shape of the arm peg on Agen Kolar’s arm, although it doesn’t have to look pretty – nobody will see it.
Agen Kolar’s unmodified right arm.NOTE: After constructing the figure, it didn’t look quite right so I replaced Agen Kolar’s upper arm with Ki-Adi-Mundi’s upper arm. The lower arm is still Agen Kolar’s. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of the steps for this.
Princess Leia’s arm, after being extended, filed, and filled with putty.
Comparison of the modified Leia arm to an unmodified Leia arm (although it has the sleeves trimmed off).That’s all I’ve done so far – I’ll post more along with pictures as work progresses.
References
The Droid Factory 