Last Night on Earth: Starfleet Survivor Hikaru Sulu

Based on the previously stated premise that the Starfleet survivors are garbed in 20th century Earth clothes, I proceeded to mix and match the Last Night on Earth (LNoE) survivor miniatures with Star Trek: The Original Series characters that they best portrayed. First up, I used LNoE's Johnny the high-school quarterback to respresent Mr. Hikaru Sulu, helmsman for the starship USS Enterprise.   

Starfleet survivor and USS Enterprise helmsman, Mr. Hikaru Sulu

What does SK stand for? Either Sulu Kato or the fictional Starfleet Kestrels

A combination of flesh and earth colours were used to mimic Japanese skin tone

There were some details on the miniature that made it, for me at least, suitable for use as Sulu. For example, the initials 'SK' on the jacket can actually represent the words Sulu Kato. In some Japanese versions of Star Trek, Sulu's family name was changed to Kato, so in this sense the initials take on a whole new meaning. The initials can also be used to depict a fictional 23rd century baseball team i.e. Starfleet Kestrels (non-canon and totally made up by me). Incidentally, the green-blue colour scheme used here is based on the scout patrol colours of my youth ... Kestrel Patrol. This blast from the past was dredged up from the depths of my memories when gazing upon a fellow hobbyist's Eldar.

Deprived of his fencing foil Sulu grabbed hold of the next best thing, an official Starfleet Kestrels' baseball bat

Back view of Mr. Hikaru Sulu

Moreover, the way his face was sculpted approximated Asian-like facial feature. Building on that, I used a combination of flesh and earth colours from the Vallejo Model Color range in my collection to recreate Japanese skin tone colours. The skin tone was based roughly from a paint recipe I found online but I modified the recipe to incorporate more earth colours to get the ethnic hue I wanted.  

Denim texture on Sulu's pant's turned out to be the most challenging bit

Side view showcasing more detailed work on the denim jeans

Most challenging part of painting this LNoE board game piece/miniature was the denim texture on his pants. Because I had forgotten to record the colours I used when painting the same texture on Knight Models Logan, I literally had to start from scratch when I realised I had actually also forgotten the technique I used (to a certain extent). So that meant a lot of trial and error before I achieved the denim texture results you see in the photos on this post. To accompany the predominately green-blue colour scheme arising of out the jacket and jean colours, I also added orange hues on the jacket buttons as well as stripes on both sports shoes in order to (hopefully) make all the colours 'pop' more.

Orange hues were strategically placed into the overall green-white-blue colour scheme

Mr. Sulu next to a paper clip and the smallest denomination in the Malaysian currency

For a sense of scale, I placed a 31-mm paper clip as well as a five sen coin next to the miniature as you can see in the immediate photo above. At this scale, painting his eyes were next to impossible for someone of my skill level. I spent about 5 to 6 hours straight just working on the eyes alone and I am still unhappy with the results. I tried using a magnifying lamp to help me paint the eyes but it seemed to make things worse so I ditched that and painted it using my naked eye instead. I did, however, have the help of a 6/0 Raphael Kolinsky Sable Brush to paint his eyes so it wasn't all bad I guess. In the end, I am fairly happy with how Sulu turned out, especially when considering his small scale.