One thing I love about Star Wars is all the neat background characters. They are such nicely realized designs that it was easy as a kid to pour your imagination into their back stories and adventures. Prune Face is one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-him characters that I loved playing with in the vintage line, but have little hope of seeing in my preferred 6-inch scale. Fortunately for me, talented sculptor and customizer Ibentmyman-thing sculpted, cast and made a Prune Face head sculpt available for sale. Let’s take a look!
Prune face was a background character in Return of the Jedi, seen briefly in the Rebel briefing room and later boarding the shuttle with Han Solo’s Endor invasion team. He later got the name Orrimaarko and a cool commando back story in the West End Games roleplaying Galaxy Guide 12.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Prune Face, but as soon as I saw Ibentmyman-thing’s sculpt I had to have it. Here’s some pics of Benty’s paint job on the head sculpt.
He sometimes sells painted head sculpts at a very reasonable price on ebay here. Even if you aren’t a Prune Face guy, there are some super cool repaints there all the time worth checking out.
I bought an unpainted version by PM’ing him on the Fwoosh forums here. I was a little over-excited, so it didn’t occur to me at the time that I probably could have bought an expertly painted version of the head sculpt when I ordered the blank one.
I took a look at some reference photos to try and figure out a base body and decided that the Resistance Trooper was most fitting from the figures I had. I chose him because of the baggy pants and longer shirt that was belted at the waist. I’ve seen people use a Cassian Andor and that also works really well. I think Poe Dameron would probably work fairly well too.
I decided to remove the web gear from the Resistance Trooper to better match Prune Face’s outfit. It is glued on there pretty good at the shoulders, so I just sliced it carefully away and sanded down the excess.
The final shirt isn’t as smooth as I would normally like, but since it was going to be covered by the cloak, I decided not to any more smoothing or sculpting and laid down some base coats or paint.
This was my first time painting camo, so I wasn’t really sure how to do it. I basically used a dry brushing technique to build up some white and browns to the green pants. The orange skin was given a heavy wash. After I was mostly done with paint, I glued a couple of fodder pouches to the belt.
A cloak from Rickhor409 I already had in mind for another project completed the look. This started life as a white cloak, but I used watered down paint to try and match the rough camo I saw in the reference photos. I considered going for a straight brown to match the old toy, but I fell in love with the camo in the costume book and went for that look.
All in all, it was a really fun little custom project that took up a lazy Sunday afternoon. Now I have this really neat little prune-faced Rebel Commando to display with my ROTJ figures.
I initially gave him a fodder rifle I had lying around that was closest to the rather plain rifle that came with the original toy. I didn’t love that look and decided to give him a spare Cassian Andor rifle instead.
If you had told me at the beginning of the year that the happiest I would be with any custom project completed this year would be a Black Series Prune Face, I would have laughed in your face. I really can’t recommend this sculpt enough.
It’s super detailed and looks perfectly on-model. My paint work is not as nice as Benty’s, but I think it looks pretty good even with my amateur abilities.
If you want a Prune Face head sculpt, be sure to hit up Benty here at Fwoosh or on Ebay. Thanks for reading!
