EXCAL Han and Chewie (inspired by prince de Lu)
I’ve brought Han solo over to EXCAL previously, but what started out as an attempt to make him more contemporary ended up as a pretty faithful Joe-ticulated version of Bespin Han:
My original goal had been more of a real militaristic version, as suggested in this thread back in the day:
If Han Solo were a Joe…
In fact, I even bought the True Heroes C-130 based largely on the combined thoughts of pluv and Mysterious Stranger in that thread, then tabled the project when I kept drawing blanks on how to interpret a contemporary human Chewie. In fact, I had mostly given up on the concept, and had put my Bespin Han into my box of one shot customs, to one day display in a BMF with the best Chewie figure out there, and call it a day.
Then prince de lu started posting some SW/Joe cross-over projects, and the approach for Chewie – which had been sitting there in front of me the whole time, exploded in my mind. It’s not a direct copy of Ian’s work, but I’d be lying if I said I’d have come up with this without him. I used different parts, and went for a different theme (focusing largely on the idea of Air America type pilots who might have military backgrounds but are now mostly smuggler types) but the inspiration flows directly from his customs.
My goals were to make him big (check), hairy (check) so that he is intimidating when he needs to be (check), but also to have him be very likeable (hopefully check?) . Anyway, meet the long time pal of the discharged Army pilot Captain Solitaire – Charles Edward Wojkowski (I figure his dad was Polish, his mother Armenian, lol) aka The Wookie, or Chewie to his close friends:
I used some artistic license in shooting for that theme, putting him in khakis to fit the place in the verse, giving him a Hawaiian shirt underneath the OD green shirt/coat to give him a bit of a loveable goofball (laugh it up fuzzball) kind of feel. The high-tops were a bit of a compromise. They weren’t intended, but it’s the best I could so with the sculpt of the feet, and given his size, I decided he probably has a background playing hoops in his youth. Kind of fits with the “The Dude” vibe he carries into the character I guess. Lastly, while I loved the head prince de lu used for his Chewie, I already had that head in use in my collection, and didn’t want to change it (incidentally, I’m using that head as a Dwarf, and I’m not thinking said Dwarf should be an EXCAL Ewok… lol, but I’m not going there…). It was just good luck that I had this head nearby, and I like how his hair flowed, almost wookie like.
And, since this Chewie doesn’t really go with my authentic Bespin Han custom, and since I needed Han to look a bit more the part described above, I made a new custom of him as well. Just waiting til I move into a permanent home to begin customizing the C-130 into something a bit more recognizable for them to fly…
Thoughts or comments? All are welcome. Even if it’s just to say stop trying to steal prince de lu’s idea!
), I actually painted the tops black to go for the black sock look.