More Figure Conversions

I needed some special figures for a lost world adventure game. The game was set just after WWII with an American civilian team using war surplus weapons and equipment. No one makes these kinds of figures in 1/72nd scale plastic, so I made my own. These green guys are a mixture of Revell WWII US Army and Esci / Italeri US Army figures. I cut off their heads with a sharp X-Acto knife and cut the heads off of a few Revell Australian Infantry. I drilled a tiny hole in the neck part of the torso and the bottom of the head. I then inserted a 6mm long bit of guitar string into the hole in the body. I added a bit of gap filling superglue and pressed the head onto the body. A bit of bending and tweaking made the head sit properly. The gap filling glue made the join look right.















The two orange color figures are American Indians. I cut a kneeling one in half and a standing one in half and bonded the upper half of the kneeling guy to the lower half of the other figure. This gave me the standing bow and arrow figure in buckskin. The original standing figure was bare chested. I also removed a canteen from a Revell US Army soldier and using the pin and glue system stuck it to his waist. The other Indian figure was a standing rifleman with a lever action rifle, which I cut off. I cut the M-1 Garand off a Esci / Italeri US Army soldier and then bonded it to the firing Indian. This gives me an Indian with an M-1 Garand rifle. By adding the canteen and M-1 I update the two Indian figures to WWII era civilians.

Making figure conversions is pretty simple and fast. One of the key elements is to try and match up the sizes and shapes of the two poses you plan on grafting together. New heads make a big difference, you can change unit types, time frame, and season just by swapping heads. These conversions were done using the old non-glueable plastics, the new glueable plastics make things even easier.