Head, legs: Resolute Firefly
Unmasked head: 25A Roadblock or ARAH Salvo?
Shawl, helmet: NS Swamp Rat
Torso, upper arms: Zombie Viper
Lower arms: Indiana Jones- Russian Soldier
Hands: NS Sand Viper
Chest armor: NS Shipwreck's Cobra Commander Spy Troops disguise armor
Feet: Star Wars The Clone Wars- Anakin Skywalker


Character:

Hasbro has created leaders for some of the specialized Cobra units. The Crimson Guard have Tomax & Xamot; the BATS have Overkill. Why shouldn't the Swamp Rats have their own commander? This is a "named" character. Rat Bite isn't a great name, but it fits the character.

Design:

It's hard to tell what the NS Swamp Rat uniform is exactly. Is it bodysuit? A wetsuit? Instead of going that route, Rat-Bite wears fatigues. The shawl and helmet are a given. The Spy Troops armor gives the stylized muscled chest armor look that the NS Swamp Rats had, if a bit more decorative, in keeping with Rat Bite's status as a commander.

The unmasked head is a Roablock one, despite its overall crapiness. It looks like a milk jug melting next to a fire, all lumpy and asymmetrical and such. The skull is too small. But it's bald. Something about the venomization process must've caused all of the NS Swamp Rats to be bald.

Colors & Painting:

I often mock up color schemes or have at least a general approach as to how a custom will look. Not here. I didn't try to match it up to any of the existing Swamp Rats. I went through my spray paint cans and found the almost-empty ones. Whatever colors the cans contained didn't really matter. They ended up being brown, dark green, medium green, and sky blue. If there are any Cobra specialists likely to have stained uniforms, it's the Swamp Rats. Once the various colors were on the figure, it was washed with a coat of mustard yellow and then another of pine green to even out the color range and dirty up the uniform.

The original NS Swamp Rats had lifeless skin and bald heads. Very reminiscent of Anakin Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi when his Darth Vader helmet top is removed. That's what I went for, with some darker circles around the eyes. Painting the fingers of the Sand Viper hands in the same dead flesh tone brings out the details, the talon-like fingernails in particular.

The NS Swamp Vipers each featured a mask portion that was differently colored than the helmet. By keeping them the same color, it creates a more locked-in feel, as if the head is encased in one solid object. Likewise, the shawls weren't the same color as the base uniform. I've kept the shawls and the fatigues the same color, mostly for simplicity.

Sculpting & Modifying:

The eyebrows and mustache were removed from the head. The ears were made larger by ringing them with wire at the outer edges. The eyes were also scooped out, to provide for a creepier look when used with the paints. It wasn't until I had the paints finished that the undersizedness of the skull really became noticeable, so I left it alone.

The mid-torso articulation joint didn't look bad on the Zombie Viper torso, but I epoxied it smooth to look better under the body armor. The body armor was cut to fit better under the shawl, and then glued to the torso.

Thanks for looking.

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