Ahhhh Jabba the Hutt. A character that goes back to my childhood, the excitement of seeing previews of Return of the Jedi and then finally seeing it in the cinema. So when I started to expand my Imperial Assault collection, how could I skip the most notorious crimelord of Tattooine?
One thing that was never apparent for many, many years was the fact that a lot of Jabba is actually green. Why? Well, when seen in the film, he’s always in dim surroundings and the main angles that he’s lit and filmed from highlight his sandy-yellow coloured face and underside. The “green” areas always looked to me like they were prdominantly a shadowed effect.
This was further reinforced by the oringinal Kenner toy. I never had it myself as a kid, but a friend did, and the thing was basically desert yellow in its entirety.
So then the remastered, butchered “Special Edition” Original Trilogy films came out, and what the actual fuck was going on here? Unconvinging, cartoony-faced CGI, a vastly smaller Jabba, a silly “comedy” spot where Han steps on Jabba tail, and much more green, to boot! Messed up on a variety of levels to the point where it looked (to me) like they’d just changed Jabba’s colour. In the same way that they changed his face, his size… you get the idea.
So it wasn’t until years later – sometime after the Internet became a thing I spent time on – when I finally saw and understood that Jabba was in fact, actually mostly green the entire time. So.. okay. So then that was how I finally painted the model, despite my instincts wanting to make him entirely made up of shades of yellow, tan and ochre. Finally complete (he’s a Neglected one, too!) It’s a pretty nice model, though it does have a few flaws.
So wild tangent aside, the main flaw with the model is basically the size. As you can see from this triad of “Scum and Villany” types, the scale used by FFG for Imeprial Assault is one that gives a lot of priority for the models being boardgame pieces first, and miniatures a (distant) second. People familiar with Star Wars will know that the droid, IG-88 is super tall, the Jawa is tiny, and Jabba is a huge, bulky slug. For scale, Jabba should be so big that the Jawa is about the size of Salcious Crumb (the bird-faced fellow sitting under his bong in the above film still).
Ah well, boardgame miniatures, eh? Whaddayagonnado?
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great looking rendition mate, agree about the scale problems in IA, but who has the time to resculpt all the models as well as doing the ones they haven’t made ! LOL
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Yeah, I don’t think it is (or was) a real concern with them for IA. Now they’re doing Legion, I’m sure they’re much more interested in such things. 🙂
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I don’t know why, but I am suddenly weirded-out by the fact that Jabba apparently did all his crime-lord business in the nude. Just never occured to me before.
Anyway, lovely paintjob. I agree with your scale concerns, but you’ve made him look just as gross & unpleasant as he should be.
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I never thought of it that way either. Now think of how many …unclothed aliens there are in Star Wars. Hell – look at the Wookiee!
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Agree, lovely paint job and too bad about the scale. Just not the same without a scantily clad Princess Leia on a chain, Carrie looked great back then.
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Thanks Mark! I’m pretty sure there’d have to be a figure of her out there in that outfit! No dount the WotC game has (at least) one of them as well! 🙂
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That would be epic!
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Looking good mate – yea, scale is waaay out, but you’ve nailed the painting.
I thought the remastered Star Wars trilogy was a big miss too… finny to think that Jaba was initially human!
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Yeah, though I guess it makes sense, given the differences in scope and budget between Star Wars and Jedi. 🙂
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I’m sorry, but nothing is ever going to persuade me to write “nice” and “Jabba The Hutt” in the same sentence, apart from when I need to state that “nothing is ever going to persuade me to write “nice” and “Jabba The Hutt” in the same sentence”! Nice painted minis though!
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Can you use “hot” or “sexy” instead then?
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Definitely not, but I can now put “barf” and “on my keyboard” in the same sentence!
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The difference in scale is quite surprising by FFG, I would expect a bit better from them but you’re spot-on about board game minis. The paint job is incredible on Jabba. So vivid and full of life (words I thought I’d never say about a slug!)! Return of the Jedi is my favorite Star Wars movie and Jabba’s Palace has always been a favorite as well so it is really neat seeing this.
I actually collected the entire Jabba’s Palace set of the Star Wars CCG because I loved the characters from it so much. While I doubt it would be of interest as the minis are so small and low quality compared to FFG’s even, one of the model kit makers in the 90’s made a small scale Jabba’s Palace set where you could recreate his throne room with some of the aliens. It is a neat model and one I’ve debated buying and having a go at in the past. Maybe one day when I have a bit more room to display something like that 🙂
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I’m sure they’ll do better when it comes to Legion. Different target audience markets between them and the Miniatures Crowd is much more picky about details and things like that. Especially where the Venn diagram overlaps with the Star Wars crowd. River Counters galore in there!
I loved Jabba’s Palace as well as a kid, mostly because it was essentially the Cantina writ much larger. RotJ has dropped a lot in my adult estimation though, because Boba went out like a bitch and the Teddy Bears’ picnic. Still enjoyable, though – and way better than TPM, Solo or TLJ. Just a little cringe to get through at times. 🙂
The model sounds coo – you should go for it, and to echo Pat – buy it while you can, if you can get hold of it!
I’ve got the Sideshow 1:6 Jabba in storage. Wasn’t able to afford the throne-slab at the time, and it’s so big I’ve never even been able to unbox it for display. We’ve got a lot of stuff to clean up and out to get the display room back to being what it was. Once that’s done, time for a bunch of photos and a couple of posts, and then a rotation of the items on display. Hopefully shit eaes off a little this year and it can happen by the summer break at worst…
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That is very true about the difference between IA and Legion. They will surely have to get it right for that if they want to be taken seriously.
Jabba’s Palace definitely is a bigger and better version of the Cantina scene. I was never a Boba Fett fan so his death is entertaining to me, if nothing else but I know I’m the rare Star Wars fan who doesn’t love Fett. Yeah, the original trilogy and Rogue One are the only Star Wars movies that I really love though I thought Solo was decent and better than TLJ. I liked the Force Awakens until TLJ happened… I miss feeling completely in love with Star Wars as it was nearly as untouchable as LOTR is for me but the recent movies have not helped that. I will certainly give that model a second and look now that we’ve discussed it!
A Sideshow Jabba is something I can only dream of owning. The size must be massive but I’m sure the details are incredible! I didn’t realize that Sideshow had released a Jabba (and assumed they didn’t because of his scale). I would love to see pictures of him up on the Bitz Box one day 🙂
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Yeah, the AT-ST in Legion looks pretty awesome – and even moreso when stood next to the IA one.
https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/267475-at-st-size-comparison/
I like TFA, though TLJ left me cold. So cold. And not in that seemingly-typical nerd-outrage way at “SJWs” and “girls” and “black people” and all that shit – just at it being a bad movie that made no sense in too many ways, even allowing for suspension of disbelief. Truth be told, while I didn’t hate The Hobbit, it didn’t help my love of LotR either.
One day I’ll get ol’ Jabba out and photograph him. I should work to get some of the current display stuff up. Probably when the weather improves, I can do a lot more, but I’ll try to fill out some posts with bits of the old nerd collection in the near future. I know that Dave (Wordaholicsanonymous) wants to see some of my book collection, and I know you’re into vidya games… 🙂
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It’s a real bugger when you find out to late that you have painted is wrong ,I thought for a long time that Napoleonic British soldiers wore blue grey trousers after seeing a picture in an old book back in the 60’s only to find out later that they were really just grey . I still find it hard to change though !!
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Well, I guess with the Brits you’ve got the old perspective of weather wear, inconsistent dyes and the like – so who’s to say what colour Feldgrau really was? Now apply that to uniforms from near on a hundred years earlier, and you’re (probably) good!
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Completely agree with you on the issues with Jabba in the remastered versions, even though I’d only seen the original version once before they were released it made enough of an impression on me that the changes really stood out. The size really jarred, part of what made Jabba so intimidating was his sheer bulk, and suddenly he was a (comparative) tiddler and green to boot (Pickle Jabba perhaps…). Anyway, ranting aside you’ve done a very fine job of painting him (as ever).
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Thanks Wudu – and nailed it on my Jabba issues as well! 🙂
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I remember the Kenner toy, my cousin had it. The grates that Jabba is sat on opened and you could shut figures inside! Memories!
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Ah yes. It did that as well!
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