so hey everyone it's norm from tested hope you're
all having a wonderful weekend and to wrap up this week on the site we have another model
making show-and-tell for you so as some of you who watch our channel may know one of my hobbies and
obsessions is collecting posing and photographing sixth scale action figures from companies like
sideshow collectibles and hot toys i have a bunch from the marvel cinematic universe a bunch from
star wars but something i realized recently was i actually don't have your classic stormtrooper
uh in my collection and so i went online searching for a bunch of options and there's a bunch out
there with all sorts of different styles from your classic original trilogy stormtrooper to
your death troopers from broke one to the new remnant stormtroopers uh from mandalorian but
i just wanted your classic original trilogy stormtrooper it turns out bandai actually has
in sixth scale a model kit for a stormtrooper and so that's why i picked up very reasonably
priced you can find them online for about 50 to 60 dollars and assembled in very much the
same way a snap fit no glue required all you need are some good nippers flush cutters uh and
a little bit of thyme and very easy to put together so that's why i did actually put this
kit together last weekend on about a two-hour live stream and very pleased with the result
although you can tell you know at this price point the kind of detail fidelity doesn't quite
get up to what you get on a hot toys figure but still very posable and something i also really
enjoyed was the process of putting it together and appreciating again bandai's just meticulous
injection molded parts just perfect press fit and all that engineering that goes into the
internal structure as well as the external details it's one of those things that you know
when i'm putting together a gundom for example i regret a lot of that detail never makes
it to the surface if you're putting together a master grade or a perfect grade condom
there's so much of that internal structure what allows for the articulation a lot of just
detail that's in universe but made to be covered up and again you're only appreciating it as part
of the fun of putting it together now there are a couple companies that sell some display kits
that allow for you to showcase the internal and external structures in fact if you google
infor studio and have a link in the description they sell really cool display for a pg gundam
where you can actually have the entire figure the armor on a separate plane as the internal
structure kind of hanging on these acrylic sheets a really neat system and looking
at that made me want to try something in that vein something inspired by that for this
stormtrooper character maybe not exactly the same as this kind of hanging armor look but something
kind of like an exploded diagram but in physical 3d form so this weekend that's what i set out
to do i actually took apart the stormtrooper model kit using some ifixit spudgers and actually
was a little difficult because of how well the pieces snap fit together to take it apart but
then not only to take it apart but look at where i could retain some of the assembly some of that
substructure assembly but then also have the exterior armored parts kind of separated distance
a little bit from that subframe and the result is well what you see here it's a little bit of a
modification a little bit of an art project almost but this is my exploded diagram view of a storm
trooper and i chose to have him in this falling pose it's actually kind of falling apart right
now down to the blaster split in half as well but you can see that the armor pieces are sticking
out from these the core armatured joint pieces uh and to do that it was super simple i just uh
bought some wire some straight wire actually this is floral wire at 22 gauge uh it's matte black and
with some standard wire snippers just cut them to maybe a centimeter two centimeter in length
and then just super glue them to the pieces here and use some super glue kicker with a small
eye dropper just so you can have some precision curing quick curing of those wired pieces and
then slowly reassembled this model kit but in this exploded diagram view and i'm really really
pleased with how this came out it's one of these things where the articulation still is maintained
so i can carefully still pose it in this but it has this wonderful attribute where
if i do a turnaround of it just every angle it's revealing something different and if i step back a little bit i can tell it looks like
a storm trooper it has the same silhouettes of the stormtrooper has the same form but as i get
closer then it starts looking a little bit weirder like it's not quite a robot what are these panels
that are coming off of it and the wire is actually really nicely hidden with the different angles so
it doesn't look um it looks a little bit more like they're floating in space it doesn't actually look
held together by the wire so this is again just my take on an exploded diagram physical view
of this model kit i'm really pleased with it and again this model kit not expensive at all
50 to 60 bucks it's fine as a a posable figure well recommended a lot of fun's put together but
i think this is how i'm going to be displaying this from now on and if you want to take a stab
at doing this i'd love to see your efforts and pictures please share them with us again all took
was a little bit of wire some super glue some snips uh and some super glue kicker to put this
together in just a couple hours i hope you enjoy this model we'll be doing more model making
projects more fun projects coming on the site this week thank you as always for watching thank you
for supporting us and i'll see you next time bye thank you guys so much for watching that entire
video if you would like to support tested even further well i'm here to tell you
that you could become a member if you follow the links below you'll see there
are several tiers of membership depending on how much you'd like to pay and how
much access you would like to me and the tested team and membership comes as
always with some excellent benefits including uh questions that i'll answer in live streams the
questions have been so amazing and exclusive videos and exclusive content follow the
links below and we will see you next time
