John Zizolfo’s Nostromo

From 1998

Another of my Alien kits is the Nostromo; reg. # 180924609, Weyland Yutani Corp. The Halcyon kit’s main body and engines are vinyl, while the assorted “spikes”, landing gear, nose details and larger flaps around the engines where they meet the body are injection molded plastic.

The major body parts were glued together with super glue, sprayed a darker grey (it was molded in more of a camouflage grey) and the front intakes were painted black with dark blue-gray frames. The smaller parts were painted the same darker grey as the rest of the ship and attached. The whole thing was then given a wash with flat black. Upon completion of that, I proceeded to do spot weathering with flat black through the airbrush. The rear engine nozzles got the majority of the airbrush’s attention.

The display base isn’t as complicated as it looks. Cardboard forms were masking taped to the corners of a 18″ x 27″ sheet of plywood. I grabbed a bucket of wallboard spackel and started glopping it on. Thick bent nails set into the wet spackel on the cardboard forms provided something for more spackel to “hang on” to create the “fingers” growing from the forms. Some rocks from the garden were also secured in place on the base. The entire base was then sprayed with a dark blue-gray and alternately highlighted and shadowed with lighter and darker grays. The frame is made of trimmed down spare pieces of window molding, and a friend who runs an engraving business made the nameplate.

I plan on someday building a clear enclosure for the entire piece, as dusting it without breaking the assorted spine detail parts is a bit of a challenge.

John Zizolfo