Plasma Gun Cyberman conversion

Having once again decided to be easily distracted, I decided now was the right time to crack on with work on some Cybermen for Doctor Who. Flipping through my copy of 'The Battle for Canary Wharf', I saw that I'd need at least 8 cybermen, 1 cyber-leader, and a cyberman with a plasma gun. Well, that just won't do, I'll want a couple of cyber-leaders, a cyber controller, and enough bits left over to convert Lumic in his chair, the damaged cyberman under stonehenge, and a cybershade (but more on those in later posts). I set to cutting various rubbery Micro Universe cybermen off of their chunky bases and scraping at mouldlines, pondering all the while what I should do about the cyberman with the plasma gun.

Should it be built into his arm? Should it be separate? This is where research comes in handy folks, rather than just racking your brain (which is my usual approach) - cue a quick rewatch of the relevant episodes:

In the episode Doomsday, we see them wielding what basically looks to be Mickey's blaster:

Cheap as chips prop recycling it may be, but it's handy for me as that means I have the perfect donor, the Micro Universe Mickey figure - a few careful cuts and a bit of shaving and we have one plasma gun, with the hand left in place (we'll be attaching it to it's new owner later - and don't worry, Mickey's body won't go to waste, he'll eventually become zombie terrain):

[apologies for the iPhone photos, it was to hand and I didn't want to lose momentum getting out the proper camera]
Two quick jabs with a pin and the gun has a barrel. Now, for the cyberman itself, I used a cyber-controller, as I seem to have more of those than basic cybermen - a few quick snips and some light filing gets rid of the ports on his chest and shoulders and voila, he's been downgraded to a normal cyberman.
As things stand, he'd look a bit silly holding a rifle with his arm outstretched, so boom, off comes his arm:

The newly separated arm gets chopped at the elbow so that we can reposition it, and since we've already got a hand moulded onto the gun, we don't need that any more either. In order to get the arm to fit onto the gun better, a little bit of material is shaved off the inside forearm, and it is then glued into place:

Once that hand's painted silver it'll fit right in.
Unfortunately there aren't any pictures of the next few steps, as most of my time was taken up with holding bits together, having a look, then moving something and trying again. But basically, what I did was this:

Remove some material from the gun wielding arm at the elbow (from both pieces potentially) so that it can be positioned against the body (cue lots of fiddling and general having a play). Only remove a little bit at a time - you can always go back and shave off a little more, but it's a lot harder to stick back on if you cut off too much!

After a lot of fiddling and swearing at pots of superglue that kept falling over, I had this:

Huzzah, he's holding a plasma gun like in the episode! Anything more than a fleeting glance though, and you realise he looks a bit silly, and thus cut off his head so that it can be repositioned to look in the direction his gun is pointing...

At this point I was on a bit of a roll, and as you can see I cut a V-shaped wedge out of the inner elbow of his other arm, so that I could bring it up to look less like it's just hanging there...

And with that, we have one cyberman with a plasma gun. Just the rest to do now... and Lumic in his control chair (I'm envisioning lots of guitar string)... and the cybershade...

Also, the tally has changed since the last post:

111 vs 286 = -175 - I finally got me a Mighty Zug, who's currently having a nice bath in the stripping pot...