Customized 6” Black Series Captain Phasma

Captain Phasma’s name is derived from the 1979 horror film Phantasm; Phasma’s chrome armor reminded J.J. Abrams of the film’s antagonist, a murderous silver sphere. Phasma was first revealed in the second teaser trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens on April 16, 2015. On May 4, 2015, it was confirmed that Phasma will be portrayed by Gwendoline Christie.

Phasma I named because of the amazing chrome design that came from Michael Kaplan’s wardrobe team. It reminded me of the ball in Phantasm, and I just thought, Phasma sounds really cool.
―J.J. Abrams, on naming Phasma

With all the Star Wars Episode VII The Force Awakens hype, I thought it was nice to share a basic conversion on an already popular-yet-mysterious character. This is the 6” Black Series Captain Phasma from Hasbro. I had a very hard time to track one down up here in MN. Luckily during my recent vacation in Puerto Rico I was able to score this one in a nearby K-Mart (out of all places).

After getting back home I did place the figure in boiling water for around 1 minute -I have done this plenty of times-. This softens the plastic and make the removal of limbs easier. In this case, I removed only the head of the figure.  That way I had a place to hold the figure steadily with a metal clip.  As seen on the picture below, I used Alclad2 Chrome. I always use Alclad’s native enamel Glos Black base. Because I wanted make this as quick as possible plus the temperature up here in Minnesota is dropping fast requiring longer curing time for enamels, I decided to use Tamiya’s synthetic lacquer instead. After the lacquer cured, I proceeded to give the figure a coat of Alclad2’s Chrome at around 25 PSI in a very fine mist manner using my Aztek A470.

ALCLAD2 TIP

ALCLAD 2 TIP: Many folks complain about having issues with Alclad2 ”crisping up” (for the lack of a better word) on certain areas when using their colors especially ”Chrome or Polished Aluminum”. That’s the reason why I use higher PSI’s and spray fine mists instead of heavy coats. The reason why your Alclad2 coat ‘crisp up’ or orange peel is because Alclad2 is Lacquer based thus very ”hot” for your base color. Ad the fact that your spraying a heavy coat on an enamel or Acrylic base and you have a recipe for disaster.

Now, Alclad2 is a very strong media but personally I don’t like to over handle it. I sanded off some seam lines on the legs armor and also did cut the head ball joint in three different places with an exacto knife. It ended up basically as a triangle with round edges. This made the refit of the helmet a lot easier without loosing articulation or overall integrity on the figure. Because I had ”chrome” over-spray all over the figure, I repainted the whole body glove suit with a regular brush using Vallejo 70.950 Black.

That’s all for now and hope you like it. I clocked around 2.5 hours doing this.
May the force be with you, always…