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.
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…