Gino Dykstra’s War of the Worlds Alien

Here’s an interesting one – the creature from Steven Spielberg’s excellent remake of the War of the Worlds, featuring scary machines and scary critters.  This is the Pegasus model of the creature (never directly referred to as a “Martian”) from the movie.  This was an odd build, as I bought this on E-Bay and they sent the pre-built version by mistake rather than the kit I’d ordered.  Consequently, it was mostly a matter of cleaning seams, filling gaps and repainting the whole thing, made somewhat more difficult because I was obliged to work around the factory build.  However, the end result looks fine and I have to admit it was an interesting challenge.

Since you never really see the aliens very clearly in the movie, coloring them was partially guesswork, partially examining pictures on the internet and partially using the pre-painted version of the model as a guide.  There is a distinct “froginess” about the musculature of the arms, so I decided to go in that direction, including spots and a semi-glossy skin effect.  The eyes seemed lifeless in the movie, which added to their creepiness, so I tried to emulate that as well.  I detailed the base out using the factory build as a guideline again, and now you have it – the critter from War of the Worlds.  Next stop – the alien tripod itself!

Gino Dykstra