Got an opportunity to get this figure for about $140 shipped, so couldn't pass it up. The proportions on the fig felt pretty off, so I built a new body. The fig overall seemed too tall (making the helmet seem proportionately too small) and the body shape created a bit of a Mom-jeans fit to the lower body suit - kind of wide hips and skinny waist.
The fig is now about 12" to the top of the helmet (the TIE pilots always seemed a bit shorter to me, especially next to Vader,) but the helmet now reads as proportionately bigger.
I'm not a huge fan of the sculpt or finish on the included Sideshow gloved hands (actually, not a fan of any Sideshow gloved hands for years - unconvincing sculpts often finished in an almost stone-like finish) so decided to use the Marmit hands for now. Just need to do a slight semi-gloss wash over them.
The included pilot hands are better than the ATAT driver hands so I'll be using them for other figs, they just didn't look like TIE pilot gloves with their blocky sculpt, matte finish and lack of gauntlet flaring.
The helmet sculpt is more accurate than the SSC ATAT driver, with only a few nitpicks on the mohawk front, chin curve (above grate) and "ear" nibs. The nibs are actually accurate to the only helmets filmed for ROTJ (and seen in several visual guide books), though not accurate to any of the pilots seen "in action" in ANH or ROTJ, which all have the Imperial officer's belt greeblie as "ears" not the pointed nib. Though no TIE pilots were filmed in action for ROTJ, only in the DS reception for the Emperor - all running/piloting pilot footage was shot at the time of ANH and re-used.
Still have a few things to do - like painting the chestbox squares to make them larger. Sideshow's paint only reached the face of the squares, not the edges/sides, making them look too small and far apart.
And I'm considering painting the "teeth" and chin grate metallic grey, even though the ROTJ helmets didn't have those details and though the ANH helmets did, they also had other painted details I don't want to add, like painted stripes, mohawk or side tubes. I'm just wanting to subtly add a bit of contrast to the all-black gloss look without going overboard, which I think they did with the ANH screen helmets, which would look a bit busy in 1/6 I think.
