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Santa has been dropping boxes off for the past month. So I thought I share whats in the boxes. First I got it into my head that I can start making my own figures. So besides signing up with Troy McDevitt's sculpting class thru Patreon, I got myself  a stand to help stead any future works of "art." ;)

Then there's a kit from Creepytables that looks a little like a certain caterpillar in a certain story about a certain girl in the 22cm size. ;)

 I refound Monster Dork Studios on Etsy, and picked up his take on Cookie Monster - COOKIE!

Finally Space Cadet Models released kit #2, A kit of Pioneer 2 and 4. As of now Space Cadet is only on Facebook, but they have their page set to Public so no one has to join FB that doesn't want to just to have a look.
As a fan of the vintage space craft, I'm looking forward to getting to these.

Space Cadet Huygens Lander part

This session starts out with a correction. I showed my WIP images on the Real Space Modelers Yahoo Group. The next morning I had a few "atta-biys" but there was one from one of the kits designers saying "Good Job", but also letting me know that while I might not be able to fix it at that point, I installed the landing radar upside down. Oops. 
I couldn't leave well enough alone and with the thought that I would be scratch building new landing radar out of styrene, I careful tried prying them off the Lander. One after another they easily popped off! When I got to the 4th one, I was in dread thinking one of them has to give me trouble. But no, number 4 popped as easily as the other 3.  I simply turned them around and glued them back on. 

While the glue was drying I turned my attention the the base. The instructions said that due to ... something I don't remember the real color of Titan was a color between wood and dark brown. I decided to lay down some Orange Ocher as a base to start. From there with the sun streaming in the window I decided to paint a shadow for the craft.  I also added some "ice" to the ground and was happy.

After that I turned my paint to the Lander. The instructions said it was a combination of gold and silver. I went with V's Gold and Silver from the new Metallics line.  The image has it looking too silver. But in real life it's more gold.  Experiments get painted next time.  Thanks for looking.

Brit Zombie finale

These pics are the combination of 2 sessions. I toyed around with the bruising and wounds. When happy I sealed them and painted in the eyes. I decided one of the eyes was going to be a dead eye, and put silly Putty around it as a mask - 

From there I added some Satin poly here and there, and some Gloss for the real gooey parts. 
While that was drying I drybrushed the skull mound base with various tans, creams and whites, and then put some Citadel sepia wash into the airbrush and sprayed a few areas. 
Finally I drew a few lines of Realistic Water on a piece of plastic. I wanted some drool...  When the drool strands were dry I picked the best one and stuck it onto the lip, and am calling this one done. Thanks for looking.

Space Cadet's Huygens Lander part 4

This session was to  assemble the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI).  First thing that needed to be done was cut the two pieces off the PE fret.  Then a resin piece was added to make the "T' on the short side. After that I had to laminate 1mm half round styrene strips onto the straight parts. I thought this would be a lot harder than it was, save for my first cut which was short.

Next was to add the mounting base. On the instructions it said to leave a little PE showing that would mate up with a slot in the hole for the HASI.  No good. I could see the slot but the were no way I could fit the PE in there. I ended up just drilling out the hole, eliminating the slot and trimmed the exposed PE to fit. 

That was essentially it. They made further instructions for those wishing to do more.  I wasn't going to but then I saw one step was to add wiring for the parachute jettison on top. Being crazy, I took some .010 lead wiring and added that one.  Came out ok.

Next stop is the paint booth. The instructions and images show a gold/silver color. That's next time. Thanks for looking. 

Brit Zombie part 2

Today I added the "skin" over the noodling on the zombie. For this I turned to Army Painter's Necrotic Flesh. 

After that I added some bruising to the skin and some ivory to where the bone is exposed. Thanks for looking. 

Space Cadet Huygens Lander Part 3

Moving along, todays session was to finish adding the rest of the fins on the bottom of the lander. 
Just as soon as I thought I had a system down, things would go wrong and I'd have to come up with another "system".  Also have a fin jump out of the tweezers and have to go searching took time as well. But they are all in now. :D Are they all straight? No way. But they're in. ;)  
Thanks for looking. 

The Brit Zombie

I found this model after stumbling across a You Tube video of  a channel of  guy called The Dark Power. He is a sculptor, model maker and special effects enthusiast based in London, England.
One of  sculpt videos he did was this zombie. The next video showed him molding and casting it. It looked great. In the video he also offered a casting for sale. I couldn't resist. While zombies aren't really my thing, this one piqued my interest. Made contact and a week a box arrived from England - it was my Zombie.

I cleaned him up and got rid of the few seam lines. I needed to be careful with this resin as it's very brittle. Then my usual double coat of primer - 

  
My latest session with him I did the noodle approach to make it looks like something going on under the undead skin and give it a little more interest - 

There's the skin to go on, plus a lot of bone, and gore to go. Stand by for that, and thanks for looking. 

 

Space Cadet Huygens Lander Part 2

I must have been really cranky last time, with what looks like a less than stellar review. Apologies for that. It really is a nicely done, detailed kit. 
Being the kit does have a lot of small parts I'm still taking my time on this. 

This session, I finished building and installing the landing radar - the 4 PE parts that look like shelves. I then started cutting out and installing the fins on the bottom (red arrow).  These take time. Besides cutting the part off the fret you need to get rid of any nub that remains, what slows you down is the fin is prolly one 1mm or so long. Tough for my big sausage fingers. :P 
Thanks for looking. 

Harry Finale

The major step this session was painting in the eyes. A web check of the eye color of Kevin Peter Hall turned up nothing. Most of the images show him with green eyes so that's where I went.  When dry, onto the tree he went. Merry Christmas and thanks for looking everyone.

Space Cadet Huygens Lander

The real space genre got a little more crowded with the formation of Space Cadet  Models. These guys have started their catalog with the Huygens probe that went to Saturn with Cassini and landed on the moon Titan.  More here -  LINK . 
On to the model. Opening the box you have a few pages of what look like instructions, a well detailed base. The major parts of the probe are very well detailed. Then I see that there's a gouge on the edge of the dome portion of the lander. Dang. But it can be filled. The myriad of TINY parts for the probe are extremely well detailed. A large fret of Photo etch also looks well done - 

Harry Christmas

It was only a few days after my latest "New" post, that the Harry from Harry & the Henderson Christmas ornament showed up. Produced by my friends at Gillman Productions, it's an excellent bubble free piece. 

After priming black, I started the base coating - 

Here's where I always try something - which doesn't work - and then have to backtrack. I tried a highlight to the skin that ended up being too yellow. Looking at screen grabs of Harry, he has quite a rosy complexion.
The I added a highlight to the brown fur that IMHO was too red. Time to start again.
I also wanted to start coloring in the eyes and teeth. I wanted to use V's White Gray, but being very thin, I added Iraqi Sand first.

Finally to end Part 1, I added the gray fur to age him up a little bit. 
Thanks for looking.