Guri
from Shadows of the Empire
 
Click here to view the Coruscant cityscape behind Guri.
Before beginning this figure (which I have been mulling over for about 2 years), I had to decide what I wanted Guri to look like. My main inspiration came from Steve Chester's version, which is one of the best I have seen. Below are the different "official" pictures of Guri I could find, each with a slightly different look.
  
Official Reference Pictures
While all these pictures are a little different, the basic design concept is the same in each case. For the details, I decided to pick my favorite elements from each one. After I had my concept, I began to actually make the figure.
The main pieces are Slave Leia legs, pelvis, skirt, lower torso, and arms, with the torso and head from the "Buff" 1995 Leia (I finally found a good use for it). The hair is from the Dragonheart Kara figure. Because of the thin-ness of the parts used in female figures, I've never actually used the boil and pop method on one. All the pieces for Guri were separated by cutting.
I began by cutting the Buff Leia across the waist at the point of articulation. This also caused me to cut the waist peg, which I left in the Buff Leia torso (I'll get back to this in the next paragraph). Since the Buff Leia torso is actually pretty short when compared to the Slave Leia Torso, I cut the Slave Leia torso about 1/4 an inch above the waist articulation. Cutting the Slave Leia at this point allowed me to slip the bottom of the torso and the skirt right off the peg. I then glued the bottom of the Slave Leia torso to the Buff Leia torso.
Now comes the tricky matter of retaining the waist articulation. With the peg still in the Buff Leia torso, I realized that I could glue it to the top of the Slave Leia peg, in effect making one long waist peg. However, I put off gluing the pegs together until after I finished the painting.
Next I cut the arms off the Buff Leia, while leaving the pegs in the torso. I cut the arms off the Slave Leia and glued them onto the pegs still in the Buff Leia torso. This kept arm articulation.
I then cut the face out of the Kara head and hollowed it a little. I also filed down the "string" in the back of Kara's hair, and scratched it with a knife until it matched the texture of the rest of the hair. I cut off Leia's hair and cut off pieces of the head until the Kara hair fit perfectly onto it. Once I was sure it would fit, I did some filing to Leia's face to remove the hair over the ears. I put off gluing the hair on until after it was painted.
So now there are four pieces: 1) the legs and pelvis, 2) the skirt, 3) the torso, arms, and head, and 4) the hair.
Now it's filing time. I filed the designs off the top of the skirt, as well as the cuffs off the left upper arm and right wrist. I filed the neck of the shirt down a bit, and I filed away part of the shirt (the part that's gray on the completed figure - it's hard to see in the scan below). Then I filed the boots completely off, down to the soles. I was able to get a nice finish on the legs using 600 grit sandpaper.
I used FIMO to make the gloves and to smooth out the joining of the two torsos. At this point, I scanned the figure (see below). Note that the waist peg has not yet been glued, it's just placed together.
Figure in Progress
The straps on the arms, and most of the boots, were made with orthodontic rubber bands. The soles of the boots were made with larger rubber bands, and then FIMO was used to fill in the toes of the boots and at the top of the boots. Then I covered all the rubber bands with a layer of Super Glue, which hardened the rubber. Working on the boots really took a long time.
Completed Boot
Now that the pieces of the body were just about done, I had to decide on a color scheme. I wanted to be able to test out different schemes without actually painting the figure. So using the reference pics as a guide, I drew up some quick, rough color schemes in PhotoShop.
  
Picking a Color Scheme
I decided against the first because I just don't think blue and yellow go well together. Although I found the third to be the most visually appealing, I realized that that there are a lot of reddish "bad guy" figures, like the Imperial Guards and Coruscant Guards. I wanted Guri to stand out, so I painted according to the second scheme.
Just before I painted, I decided to file the facial features (especially the chin) with 600 grit sandpaper, so she wouldn't look so much like Leia.
After painting the yellow and gray, I painted the boots gloss silver. The lips, blue eyes, and eyebrows were all painted using a sharp, pointy toothpick. The hair was painted tan, and then yellow and white were dry-brushed over the tan. The yellow shirt and gloves got one dull coat; the gray parts and hair got about five dull coats.
After the paint had dried, I glued the hair onto the head. I slipped the skirt over the waist peg and finally glued the waist peg. The range of movement at the waist ended up being very poor (about 5 degrees in each direction), probably because the fit is very tight. Oh well.
Congratulations for reading the whole recipe, and double congratulations if you finish your own version of Guri!
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