Return of the Space Jockey (and Radio Boy)

Last week I watched Alien: Covenant, which was an entertaining and completely pointless film. It had some excellent scenes (especially the one in the sick bay) and a lot of pretentious waffle in between them. It seems that no explanation of the question "Where does the Alien come from?" can be as awe-inspiring at the question itself. I ended up with the sneaking suspicion that Ridley Scott had really wanted to make A.I.

But anyhow, the film inspired me to go back to the space jockey model I made ages ago out of half a tyranid, half a cap gun and a broken mouse. It was looking a bit worse-for-wear and rather unfinished. On closer examination of the Giger artwork, the jockey isn't just black/grey, as I'd thought: the pilot itself is a faded bone colour, while the rest of the machine looks grey/brown in places, as if bleached.

I had also left part of the "targeter" on the jockey: while my model is nowhere near an exact copy of the original, it was quite a large part of the Alien model, so I added one of my own. The end result (so far) looks like this:

Here is a tour guide/genestealer magus for scale.

The pilot is a bit too brown, and I'll have to blend him down with some grey washes. But it's definitely an improvement. It does look as if he's grown out of the chair - which, in space jockey circles, is quite a compliment.

In other news, I've finished the sixth member of the ork commando squad. This guy is exceptionally dangerous, because he has the radio set and can order in airstrikes. Unfortunately, there is always the risk that either he or mission control will get excited and mix up the present position for the one they want bombed, but such is the price of success. Or stupidity.

I ended up removing his spindly aerial, and replacing it for a suitably wonky-looking gun left over from a Skitarri kit. I think it worked quite well.