Making my own Headcrab Zombie figure

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Geosurface

Geosurface

Diamond Member
Mar 22, 2012
5,776
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So, I assume you're all huge Half-Life fans. If not, wtf?

I've loved the series since 1998, I still remember watching all the screenshots of the two big "Quake-Killers" trickling out... Half-Life and Unreal. I loved both.

A few days ago I was at the mall (unusual for me) and had to kill time while my gf was looking at clothes, walked into this geek haven, a toy shop with all sorts of awesome toys like Predator, Robocop, He-Man, GI Joe, Star Wars, Robotech, Freddy Kruger, you name it. Some vintage, some new. Lots of the McFarlane stuff, etc.

I saw they had a Gordon Freeman figure and purchasing it was almost not even a choice... I had to have it.

Here's that figure if you haven't seen it:

9sOIy.jpg


and if you want one here it is on Amazon for about $20: http://www.amazon.com/NECA-Gordon-Freeman-Deluxe-Action/dp/B008BCPEH8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355961498&sr=8-1&keywords=gordon+freeman

Well as you can see, it comes with a headcrab. It has a hole in the bottom, and you'd THINK it would fit on Gordon's head. It does not.

I set the headcrab down under my monitor, and was happy with it like that... Gordon was up on my action figure platform:

http://i.imgur.com/DXmN8.jpg

And I was happy with him up there... but I couldn't help but think, could I make my own Headcrab zombie figure?

So today I went back to the store, after searching Amazon for various zombie figures I thought might work... was looking at some Walking Dead figures and almost ordered one, really glad I didn't because today at the store I was able to see them in person and they are WAY too small.

So I looked through the whole store for a figure that could work well, with an eye particularly to something that was already a zombie or was a scientist... with the Half-Life 1 zombies in mind... I wasn't finding anything very conducive but then I saw a Peter Petrelli figure from Heroes, for a very cheap price... and it looked like he was about the right size. I think I can make this work! So I grabbed it... and I'm going to document my project in this thread :) Maybe nobody gives a shadow of a shit, or maybe this is the wrong forum... if so, sorry.

But here's what I've done so far, the head pops off and I was able to verify the headcrab looks pretty believable, the right size, etc on there:

JotOP.png


Next step is to buy some red paint for blood, and find a way to elongate his fingers... thankfully the Peter Petrelli figure came with 2 sets of hands, so I can experiment on the other set of hands a bit, see if I can maybe melt them a bit with a lighter and then stretch them out...

the other thought I had was trying to get some needles and push them down into his fingers, then cover them with something to give them some flesh... then paint them red.

I'm totally open to other suggestions on getting the long pointy fingers right.
 
Geosurface

Geosurface

Diamond Member
Mar 22, 2012
5,776
4
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UPDATE:

So after an evening's worth of work, here is how it stands now:

IU4jJ.jpg
mJEpZ.jpg

50KYD.jpg


I ended up clipping the fingers (except for thumb) off the spare hands that came with him, then clipping and bending 8 safety pins over to be the fingers, I wanted to give them some more substance so I put some fabric paint on them that worked pretty well (on some) for adding flesh so they didn't just look like safety pins.

Unfortunately, on one hand this worked not nearly so well as on the other, and one of the fingers even fell off right before these pics. The pins had the sharp end still and that helped a bit to fix them to the hand, but I had to use super glue because the plastic of the hand is so tough, it's hard to get the pin in very far. The glue didn't do the trick on that one finger.

I may have to start over from scratch on at least one of the hands, maybe both, but I learned a lot by doing the first set.

I may add the exploded guts bit with the ribs etc, or I may not.

But, I think it's coming along reasonably well.
 
AlexAL

AlexAL

Senior member
Jan 23, 2008
643
0
76
Lol, nice. Glad you didn't give up. I might try nail polish on the 'fingers' to see if I could thicken them up a bit.
 
Last edited:
Doppel

Doppel

Lifer
Feb 5, 2011
13,306
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Looks great. Any choice comments from the gf on your spending an evening on this?
 
Geosurface

Geosurface

Diamond Member
Mar 22, 2012
5,776
4
0
Doppel said:
Looks great. Any choice comments from the gf on your spending an evening on this?
Click to expand...

Haha, I actually asked her several times "now you're sure you're okay with me doing this? You don't feel neglected?" and she reassured me that she didn't. She even came along with me to Michael's for pins and paint.

Red Storm said:
"Well, at least somebody got head tonight."
Click to expand...

lol
 
T

tHa ShIzNiT

Platinum Member
Feb 15, 2000
2,321
8
81
I am in awe of how good that is. I mean, thats really good. When does production start? I'll throw in a preorder.
 
Geosurface

Geosurface

Diamond Member
Mar 22, 2012
5,776
4
0
tHa ShIzNiT said:
I am in awe of how good that is. I mean, thats really good. When does production start? I'll throw in a preorder.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

The fingers suck though. I'm redoing them and I think I have a better method.

I'm using clipped ends of zip ties and I think they're going to work much better. So far looking promising. I'll post when they're finished.
 
Geosurface

Geosurface

Diamond Member
Mar 22, 2012
5,776
4
0
Here are the new hands, which still need a lot of work and painting.

These use clipped ends of small zip ties, bent over to provide a knuckle point, super glued to fingers of other set of hands that came with figure (didn't clip the fingers off this time like I did before) and then painted with tan "fabric paint" to give them some flesh so they aren't just completely flat pieces of obvious plastic.

After the paint dries I may apply more of the fabric paint I've already reapplied some to try to make the transition from existing fingers to the zip ties less dramatic/obvious.

Eventually most of the fingers and a lot of the hands themselves will be covered with blood red paint.

I think these hands are turning out much better already than the safety pin hands, which looked really obviously like metal safety pins even after paint.

XKXlm.jpg
6cayl.png
 
Geosurface

Geosurface

Diamond Member
Mar 22, 2012
5,776
4
0
Okay I think it's finished. I don't think I'll be messing with trying to put the exploded stomach/ribs part in, but who knows? Maybe once this is all REALLY dry I will try to make something like that out of clay. Here's how it stands now:

1Xduy.jpg

XON9V.jpg

NzWl5.jpg
 
Geosurface

Geosurface

Diamond Member
Mar 22, 2012
5,776
4
0
FINAL UPDATE:

So in the end I felt guilty for neglecting the open stomach with guts falling out thing... looking at the $300 20" Headcrab Zombie from GamingHeads unboxing video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JoSaa9Gfz8 made me feel all the more guilty about it. The open stomach with intestines looked particularly cool on that statue. Of course, my little figure would never approach that statute... but I could at least TRY to do the guts thing right?

So I used my soldering iron outside, with a face mask on, to burn a large hole in his stomach plastic. It was rough... but I got it. Meanwhile I asked my gf to make me a long thing string of red clay that I could bunch up into intestines. She was kind enough to oblige :)

Here is the end result, and I do believe this figure is truly finished. He will go up on my figure shelf next to Gordon, which unfortunately means my Protoss figure will become less visible. These shots are done with flashlight to recreate the freaky look of seeing a headcrab zombie in Half-Life by the light of your flashlight. The stomach isn't super obvious, but you'll see it if you look:

0EgFv.jpg

YrNOS.jpg
 
E

EDUSAN

Golden Member
Apr 4, 2012
1,358
0
0
Nice Geo! your zombie looks great! well done...

now with the rest of the monsters!!! =D
 
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