Blackhawk Scorpion 02

The giant mechanical bugs on the comic book cover had legs that were not simply straight tubes. They were flared at the ends where they met in spherical joints. I sharpened a wood dowel in a pencil sharpener. Then I heated the ends of styrene tubing just enough to soften it and inserted the conical point of the dowel to flare the tubing. This worked very well though I did have to flare more tubing than the number of legs to get enough uniform shapes. The spherical joints were made from plastic pearls with the pearl finish peeled off. I have found plastic pearls, available at craft stores in the jewelry section in many different sizes, to be very useful in scratchbuilding. Smaller pearls and discs of plastic sheet made the “feet”.