Making your HT Pred 1 Perfect!

[prefused]

Cool. Would you mind sharing how long it took and how much it cost? I'm getting tired of the hot water and rubber band myself.

really, the best thing to do is send a pm to a customizer (mine was done by Alice) and just ask.
it isn't my place to go around advertising what they charge for their work since that can change for any number of reasons.
and it isn't fair to anyone to give you expectations.


edit - i will say it's definitely more than worth it and my experience was very fair and professional.

 

[sixxshooter]

Can someone please tell me what color paint and what type to use on my open mandibles for predator 1. I want to make it look more like the cinemaquette mandibles. Hot are red inside and it's not screen acurate.

 

[dano669]

these mods sound pretty cool,but then again the predator looks pretty cool as is.Im moding my marines from aliens like crazy but presonally Id take the "If it aint broke dont fix it" approach.

 

[dedguy]

Here's a few much better pics. I was on quite a bad run of photos when I was taking pics of him the first time.

From top left to bottom right:

Leather chest strap and shoulder strap (I cut the tab holding the shoulder armor to the chest strap and added a more accurate leather armpit strap)
Much more accurate three strapped leather pouch to replace the plastic one.
Leather belt which lacks the embossing on the plastic Hot Toys belt but does have more accurate holes along the outside edges of the belt
Leather knee wraps, totally absent on the original figure.

 

[a-dev]

Many of the changes some of you are making are too minor for me to be worried about doing myself but fair play to you for trying to create the ultimate P1 collectible. Pity nothing can be done about how small he is.

 

[Alice]

Pity nothing can be done about how small he is.

Not true. ALL of the height loss is due to the headsculpt. A bit of the loss is due to the head itself not being sculpted quite as long/tall as previous preds, but the majority of the inch or so loss is due to the new neck joint. The way the head connects to the ball joint to be precise. Where the old pred heads just popped onto the neck and sat flush the P1 sculpt is actually the same height in the neck area, but it's concave and kind of envelopes a bit of the neck post. HT sacrificed a bit of height for more neck articulation. A fix would be simple, and it wouldn't leave P1 looking disproportioned afterwards.

I took both my Elder P2 and P1 apart as I'm doing mods to both, and I examined both bodies extremely closely. Both bodies are exactly the same save for a few things. Here's an excerpt from a PM I sent to Silent Surfer:

I took both my P1 and EP2 apart to see if my suspicions were correct and they were. For the P1 they sculpted completely new shoulder balls, the the top of the biceps were altered a bit to accommodate the new shoulders (they no longer need the lip to wrap around the bulbous, old shoulders), the chest is exactly the same as the old chests aside from some added texture and quills sculpted onto the pecs, and the obvious new double ball jointed neck. I checked out every single piece of the body to check for similarities, and every single piece has the same destinct markings, so I'm certain HT only made minor changes. Also, my beliefs that all of the height loss was due to the head were founded as well. Not only is the P1 head sculpted smaller overall (the head's not nearly as tall as the other preds), but the neck connector is also deeper than the other preds to accommodate the new ball joint style neck.

That said, I currently have the Elder P2's head sitting on a P1 body and P1's sitting on Elder P2's body (flush with the neck post like previous preds, not pushed down so it wraps around the neck like it does on the P1 neck post, and they're both almost the same height. With a small bit of minor surgery P1's neck problems can be fixed, he can be regular height and still look proportionate AND any surgery is easily covered by the neck collar. I'll be doing this eventually, so I'll post some pics for all to see.

 

[Devil_666]

i cant seem to find the post on here where it's shown how to do it

Here you go man.

HT Predator 2 Mods (Dreads + Left Hand)

 

[dedguy]

I did some additional internal sanding out and overall remolding of my Predator mask. I think the fit and shape is much better even than my original stab at it. It sits closer to the face now and I think follows the shape of the head better. The chin is also less pointy. You can see from this oft-used screencap how flat the mask is to the face. I really think that as depicted in the film the mask isn't even possible. It doesn't leave enough room for the mandibles.

I do think it's a CRAZY improvement over the original mask which is simply unacceptable. I don't know why they made it so thick for one, the shape is all wrong, and it hangs way off the face. It often looks okay in pics because you can't tell how much is sticks forward off the face.

 

[dedguy]

Did a neck mod.

I just cut out a washer the side of the neck hole out of polystyrene. You can see the white of it sticking out when the head is at an angle. I plan on painting it black now so it's not so conspicuous.

 

[dedguy]

I just had to take height difference photos. It seems like it's added about a quarter inch. These photos where taken from about the same angle and at the same zoom.

Before:

After:

I think it looks better too. Less like e's all hunched up.

 

[SilentSurfer]

Looks good. How does he look next to other Preds now?

 

[robbiethepainter]

Look fantastic. Is there any way to elongate the torso?

 

[SilentSurfer]

Probably not without breaking it first, and then the netting probably wouldn't fit anymore.

 

[dedguy]

Yeah and I'm fine with the torso. I do want to switch the upper arms though as it was pointed out to me that they're on backwards. If anyone has any easy way to get them off that would be awesome.

I don't know how he looks with the other Preds as I only have the one.

I also painted the lenses on my mask black, which I think looks a lot better and makes a lens swap kinda unnecessary (at least for now).

 

[robbiethepainter]

I just had to take height difference photos. It seems like it's added about a quarter inch. These photos where taken from about the same angle and at the same zoom.

Before:

After:

I think it looks better too. Less like e's all hunched up.

Dedguy your killing me over her. I had officially passed on this and your pictures are driving me to get it. I had a Billiken USA's model back when I was in high school and it was the best model I had ever built. I did a lot of mods to it and it just looked great. Some one offered me money and like an ass I took it. I have regretted selling that thing ever since. That was in 91 and still bugs me. I just may pull the trigger on this one.

 

[Cajunsith]

I just had to take height difference photos. It seems like it's added about a quarter inch. These photos where taken from about the same angle and at the same zoom.

Before:

After:

I think it looks better too. Less like e's all hunched up.

Any detailed pics of this neck mod? P1 looks 100 times better IMO, I always thought he looked a little short necked.

 

[dedguy]

Any detailed pics of this neck mod? P1 looks 100 times better IMO, I always thought he looked a little short necked.

yeah I'll take some pics tonight

 

[SilentSurfer]

Hey dedguy,

If you push the shoulders forward, you can access the screws behind the inner socket assembly. If you get those apart, you may be able to simply put the left arm on the right, right arm left, and problem solved. I haven't done it myself yet. Let me know if that works.

 

[Cajunsith]

Hey dedguy,

If you push the shoulders forward, you can access the screws behind the inner socket assembly. If you get those apart, you may be able to simply put the left arm on the right, right arm left, and problem solved. I haven't done it myself yet. Let me know if that works.

There was a mod on this SS, & if my memory serves me right it worked just fine. There is a certain way to do it, you have to unscrew a particular screw to get easy access to the others.

First check your predator body if the biceps are reversed. By the way, if you've already assembled your predator, take time to remove the armor and netting first if it's getting in the way.

Once it's all clear, you'll see 3 screws on the part where the bicep is connected. Carefully remove the first 2 screws on the back then remove the last one on the front. That will separate the plastic parts which are holding the bicep in place.

Swap the biceps and screw the 2 screws at the back first then do the last screw at the back when you're ready to connect the bicep to the body.

Voila! Fixed!

Hope this helps.

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Last edited by toyrewind; 09-08-2009 at 09:32 PM.

 

[JacktheRipper]

ded, how can you tell that they are on the wrong sides? On the older predator I can see that the lighter side should be towards the body because of how the darker and lighter colors are applied. On the P1 they look balanced. What exactly should I be looking at?