THE MINIATURES -

Most of these minis were purpose gathered for this diorama, except for the drummer, who I already had on hand. I tried to come up with some cool color schemes to make each band member stand out on his own, while not drawing too much attention away from Ziggy, but didn't realize I'd unconsciously created a selection of clothes to reflect the last few decades of rock and roll music!

I wound up with a guitarist in tie-dye, representing the late 60's-early 70's psychedelic era. Ziggy for the mid-70's Glam era. The New Wave drummer of the 80's. The Glam Rock/Metal guitarist for the late 80's. And finally the Grunge Rock bassist from the 90's. All I can say is the brain does wacky things under extreme stress! ;^)

It also unconsciously go with my "theme" for the concert - "Clonus Tour 2047" This is actually a tour of David Bowie's clone in 2047! Inthat future time, cloning celebrities of the past and implanting the original's memories will be in vogue, causing people who weren't even from the same era to tour together...

(I can't claim this was an original idea, though - my friend Mike came up with it for the "Star Trek: Generation S" tv show in his CyberHero game. The casts from all 7 Star Trek tv shows - yes there were 7 by 2045 ;^) - had been cloned and combined in one big cast!)

He's the spitting image of David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust". Well, maybe not exactly - the hair is a little more voluminous and the outfit not quite as wild, but the spirit is there!

All I had to do modification-wise was cut off a little "antenna" the microphone had and drill the mike for the thin jewelry wire I used for stage wiring.

I tried to base the paint job on a Ziggy-esque look, rather than any one particular outfit he wore. Red was big for Bowie at the time, so the wild red hair, vest and boots worked. I added the purple pants for some contrast, and the black pattern to make him stand out from his band (some of which are pretty wild themselves...)

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PSYCHEDELIC ROCKER

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This is one of two minis from the Grenadier Future Warriors "Heavy Metal Madmen" blister I picked up. He was pretty much good to go out of the package, with just a little drilling to the bass for the cable.

I wanted the 60's-70's look, so he got old blue jeans and a tie-dye shirt. This was my first effort at tie-dye and it came out so-so. It looks good, but I spent way too much time reworking it, and the end result is a bit chalky in person...

NEW WAVE DRUMMER

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Another Grenadier Future Warrior. She made a perfect drummer because of that outstretched hand. All I had to do was drill a hole, add a piece of brass with some glue at the end, and voila! The drum stage and kit itself were scratch-built. I ended up cutting the hexagonal synthetic drums from some thin styrene - I wanted the look for an homage to the short-lived 80's synthetic instrument craze.

Her colors are typical New Wave - loud flourescent pink ;^) I added the Red Sun Rising t-shirt for interest (similar to the one I did for Silk Fury- what can I say? I was rushed and it was a sure thing... ;^).

GLAM ROCKER

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An older Grenadier Cyberpunk figure. Unlike the later Future Warrior minis, he didn't have a slottabase that was removed easily: I had to cut him off his solid base.

Color scheme was somewhat random, but works with the "overblown" nature of late 80's Glam Rock (remember Ratt or Poison?!? I try to forget...)

GRUNGE ROCKER

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The other Grenadier "Heavy Metal Madman" from the blister. Again, only had to drill for the cable.

With his knee-length "shorts", he looked like the typical skate-rat/grunge band member, with the tip of the hat to Grunge, due to his long hair. This was the quickest paint job of the bunch, and it shows it. One thing I may have gone too subtle on, though, were the eyes - I wanted him look like a cyborg, but the glowing red eyes don't really show up well in person, especially when he's lit by the spotlight... Oh well!

THE SPIDERS

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"So where were the spiders, while the fly tried to break our balls?" - Ziggy Stardust

Like I said, finding these little beauties was a pain, but well worth the effort. The only remotely-similar mini was the Reaper DOOM spider-demon, which really wasn't what I was after. Following an internet search, I lucked upon two blisters of the spider and picked up both.

The only dumb thing about these spiders is that they have *6* legs, whereas all schoolkids know spiders are arachnids, with 8 legs. Oh well... I tried half-heartedly to convert the one spider which was fully visible to 8 legs, but there wasn't much of an area to add two more tabs w/legs on the mini's body, so I left well enough alone. (If anybody asks, Martian spiders *are* aliens, after all ;^)

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Their color scheme was adapted from an actual species of spider, which has a bright yellow/blue body with black and blue bands.

I didn't use the exact pattern, just viewed it as a suggestion for how to treat the elements on the minis (joints, etc).