At the end of the last series of Doctor Who, a new revamped Supreme Dalek was introduced. I thought I'd try my hand at making one. I thought I'd also try my hand at writing my first ever tutorial. Here's the design brief:
The things to note are the gold brackets on the sides, and that it has three 'ears' rather than the standard two (although that's not really clear in this pic). It also has a little added height over a regular Dalek by having an extra layer (in red) just below the gold neck rings.
For the base model, I used a Microuniverse Dalek. These have the advantage over the BTD Daleks in that they match the remodelled Daleks from the new Who, can cheaply be bought on eBay, and are made of a soft plastic that's easy to manipulate.
First things first: off with its head!
I glued a piece of plastic onto the body to give it some added height, and drilled out new holes for the 'ears'. These I'll make with plastic rod. The gun and sucker will be the same, so were sliced off at the same time, and new holes drilled to take the replacements. I've also rebased: the integral Microuniverse base can be sliced off relatively easily. Before fixing it to a slotta, I stuck a 1mm thickness of tin foil to the base - to give the final model an extra little bit of height and allow it to dominate the other Daleks.
Onto the brackets:
These sit on gold panels, which I made quickly from green stuff, after cutting away at some of the existing moulding. Extra rings were also modelled here for the added height. To give model a bit of strength after re-attaching the head, some plastic rod was also added at this point.
Head now attached. Before doing this I cut away four gaps in the neck rings to take the brackets. I'd actually recommend doing this after fixing the head, as it will be easier to cut the gaps to align with the green stuff mouldings on the main body. I discovered this after the glue had set!
Now for the brackets:
Cut from some more plastic I had in my tool box. Each was done in two pieces and then glued on. I made a bit of a mistake here as the source picture I was working on implied that the thin top bracket wasn't as thick as the bottom piece - in fact, they should really be the same depth, giving the Dalek a slightly more imposing profile. Another lesson: work from more than one source photo!
Now the 'ears':
These might look a bit long, but they'll have mouldings added at the next stage:
The final bit of modelling was to add the sucker and gun. More plastic, plus green stuff for the 'sink plunger'. It took me a while to work out the best way to shape this. In the end I wrapped a sausage of green stuff to the end of the rod, then pressed it onto the rounded end of a paint brush (after wetting to make sure it didn't stick). I then turned the rod a few times, pressing in the green stuff until I was happy. Pretty easy, and it makes a suitably good concave shape.
The gun looked a bit bland with just plastic road, so I thickened part of the barrel with a length of tape, and then cut it to length. The exposed end of the tape was then sealed with a smear of glue. I made both gun and sucker separately before attaching them to the mini.
And that's it! All I had to do now was paint the thing...
And for scale, here it is facing off the Doctor himself:
All in all, it was a fun little project. It not perfect - I made a few mistakes, but in general I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Now I just need to finish painting the rest of the Daleks who are going to back up this bad boy. Davros also needs a final few touches with the brush, then I can get on with the next mini conversion - the mad oracle that is Dalek Caan!
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January 10, 2010, 10:16:22 AM
