2018 in Review

2018 was a pretty good year in the hobby room. I actually managed to get to a number of kits what were quite old along with some of the newer ones.  My tally was: Jan.-3, Feb. - 0, Mar - 1, April - 3 May -6, June - 5, July - 6, Aug. - 1, Sept. - 3, Oct. - 7, Nov. - 3, Dec. - 8. That's a total of 46. I also have 5 in various stages of completeness that didn't get finished this year, but will show up in the 2019 list. 

By images the list looks like - 

Jan - 

Feb. --
Mar. 

April - 

Bases Part 3

Thinking about the Kappa vignette, I  pictured a stream/river bank in a wooded area. The "only" thing missing from mine, is the wooded part. So I thought it at least needed a tree.
My other hobby is designing and caring for bonsai. Eventually everything living dies, and that's also true with bonsai. But with them being manipulated into interesting designs, I don't throw them away. Instead I keep them for making interesting trees in my dios and vignettes.

Having the tree curve over what will be the water also creates a certain grotto type look. This piece of wood was a bit larger and I took some of the smaller branches from the part I didn't use and superglued them to the  tree. You may also notice that I glared the base of the "tree" and added exposed roots, completing the illusion that it is anchored to the ground.
The next thing I did was to take some wire, and copying a YT tutorial I saw, I created what will be a small shrub to the left of the tree. After the image was taken, I "barked" it up with glue and chinchilla dust.

That took up most of the session. Even thought it's out of order, I just had to try and see if Realistic Water would mix with some acrylic paint to tint the water. I took some turquoise paint, mixed it up (it mixed) and poured some in the water area. I didn't want to fill it all the way up, so some went into the T-Rex vignette. Thanks for looking.

The Devonian Tapole Finale

See the build - http://kevtk.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-devonian-tadpole-specimen.html 

Well, I finally got the little guy into his specimen jar.  It took a blob of hot glue, and then with the tail attached it needed to be cork screwed into the jar. So the glue got a little messier than I would have liked. Once it was in there and the glue cooled, I filled the jar with the Propylene glycol, and tightly screwed on the lid. Almost done.

I felt it needed a specimen label, so in MS Word I created one. Had a little look at the CFTBL movie info and got the year made, and doctor's name. Then I looked up "Aquatic Lizard Creature" and for a place - the Black Lagoon in Spanish and added that to the label.   Much later, after it was stuck on, I remembered that Portuguese is spoken in Brazil, not Spanish... Oh well. 
Thanks for looking. 

TIE Predator Showcase

A completion of the  Tie Predator with it's Death star Tile base. 
Seethe Build - http://kevtk.blogspot.com/2018/09/scale-solutions-tie-predator.html
 
Thanks for looking. 

 

Bases part 2

I dug right in and the first, and simplest to finish was the base for the Tie Predator. You see a finale post about that one shortly.

The next one was the cone shape that was seen in Pitch Black when the Marauders first came out of the ground when the eclipse started. That one a day later was still not dry, and was left on the radiator to dry out completely.

But the other two were dry and got their coats of paint. These two will also have water features. The one that will be the base for the Kappa, I decided to build a frame around the foam -

You can also see on one of the mounds (rocks) that there is a bit of gray. despite measuring twice I still goofed it up and needed to expand the rock with some Aves, to give the Kappa a enough room to squat. 

Here's where we are with them at the end of the day. Thanks for looking. 

Bases

In looking to have a clear desk to finish off 2018, one thing that has held be back was finishing off the bases and putting them on the shelf. Seems like I'm quite behind on bases, so here we go.

The easiest one to finish was the base for the TIE Predator. All I had to do was take one of the Death Star Tiles from the set from SSM,  I glued it to a wood base. The fit was just about excellent. It will get a shot here and there to create interest with some white gray paint.

The next three are carved in foam, and then coated with some Sculpt-A-Mold. From left to right- a base for the Kappa, Pitch Black's Marauder, and a 1:72 T-Rex by Krentz Presentz. 
Once dry, they will get their coat of primer and then a paint job.

Check back for completed models and thanks for looking.

The Kappa

I saw this kit at one of the Vendors's tables at the IPMS Nats in AZ.  The Kappa comes from Japanese mythology :

Kappa considered to be a type of suijin (water deity) that inhabits the freshwater areas of Japan. According to legend, the Kappa is fond of causing mischief and even harm towards humans. A Kappa’s pranks can manifest in the form of harmless jokes like making noises similar to flatulence or looking up a woman’s kimono. However, some Kappa are more violent and have been known to try to drown livestock, kidnap and eat children, and force themselves upon women.
Although Kappa are generally considered a force to be feared, there are some instances in which the Kappa are considered to be generous – though this most often happens when a Kappa is indebted to a human being. Some of the most common records of friendly Kappa are early Japanese legends that attribute the knowledge of bone setting and medical salves as being taught to man by friendly Kappa.

The kit contains two frets of styrene parts. There are no instructions, but 3 images and corresponding part number to show where they go - 

The build begins. There are no locator pics and in some spots it's a balancing act to keep the parts where they belong until the glue sets.

Felt the need to put some paint on the shell.

Primed in tan and then sponge dabbed in Mahogany.

A little Ivory added the the belly.

 Work started on the hair. There is no "cup" as the myth suggests, just a bald spot. I could have added one, but just didn't. 
While the idea of the tab on the hair fits into the slot on the bald spot looked good on computer, it didn't really work, besides the first one. In the end the tabs were cut off and the hair superglued into place. There was also gaps, and some Aves came to the rescue there. 

Painting 90% complete. The model comes with two round stones in his upturned palm that isn't added yet. I didn't look up the meaning of that. Nothing was mentioned in the summaries, and everything written on the box is in Japanese.

The kit comes with a super simple base of just a log stump or is it just a large rock?  Anyway too simple for me. So I took some foam out of my "foam box" and started  carving a shoreline.  He'll go on one of the stones in the water. 

Check back for completion. Thanks for looking.

♫ You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch♫

This is me when you give me some Super Sculpey (link is for info only, I'm sure you can get it cheaper elsewhere) mixed with Super Sculpey Firm. I just made a simple wire armature, wrapped it in some foil and then went to town.
I looked up some images of the 1960's Grinch, and just went for it. The sculpting is crude, but I guess the main shapes are there. Thanks for looking.

Originally it was just an exercise to create a likeness

Moving fwd, I made Santa's bag for him.

All painted up

The Devonian Tadpole Specimen

This is an interesting little kit from GarageKits.US . It's a what if... what if, before coming in contact with the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the scientists found some of it's tadpoles first. 
The kit is just 2 parts - the head and body, and then the curly Q tail. The kit also comes with a jar and lid to further the specimen feel. 

Knowing the colors for the Creature, I looked at the kit and the head seem to have little detail vs. the body which has very nice armored scales.  I felt the head needed my squiggle pattern to give the animal some life under the skin - 

 Looking good so far, then an unexpected heavy shot of light green on the forehead obliterated most of the squiggles. :-/  So time to add more detail to the outer part of the skin. 

 I added various washes and highlights to the skin and crevices. The eyes went thru 2 or 3 different versions. I wanted them to look real, but then again, it's a specimen in a jar... a dead specimen. So I left them without specific edges to the pupils and iris. I also left them slightly cloudy.  Each paint layer is separated by a shot of clear Satin.

My idea next is to put a blob of hot glue on the bottom of the jar to keep him in place and then the liquid. Still not sure if I want to use tinted water or something else. 
Check back, and thanks for looking.

Creative Beast's Saichania

I haven't built a dinosaur in quite a while, and since this one has been on the Pile, I decided it was time to do Creative Beast's Saichania. 

The Saichania is a robust ankylosaurid dinosaur first found in the 1970s in and around Mongolia and China. It was about 15 ft. long and weighed 2 tonnes. It's know from a number of partial skeletons. 

The kit is in 6 parts of white resin. There are some flash here and there and one or two pinholes - none of them being in any place of importance.  

The base is very well detail (as is the rest of the kit).

I wanted to keep this model simple so I chose only a few colors - a "burnt flesh" from V's Flesh set, a brown for the top part and a blue gray for the scutes and spikes. 

To finish it off I drybrushed a lighter gray on the scutes and spikes, some Agrax in the darker areas, and some Sepia on the lighter parts. Thanks for looking

 

The Purple Worm

This was a mini from D&D has been sitting on my To Do shelf for a long time. Following the box art I started in. 
The kit comes in 4 parts - the body, top and bottom hales of the head and a base. 

It was much easier to paint the inside of the mouth before gluing it together. So it got a coat of V's Beige Red. It was at this point I noticed a missing tooth on the bottom jaw. So I drilled a thin wire in and sculpted some Aves to fill in the missing fang.

Again, I got into it and never took and WIP pics. The worm was painted with V's Purple, Then I highlighted with flesh color mixed with the purple. I kept adding flesh to get the different levels of highlighting. 
The teeth were painted with Ivory, and then the whole inside got a wash of Sepia.
Thanks for looking. 

Bah Humbug!!

Staying with the sculpts of John Dennett, I picked up his new release in the form of Ebeneezer Scrooge. This is the Alastair Sim portrayal from the 1951 film.

The kit comes in just 2 parts ~ the bust and the base. 

The first decision was whether to do the figure in B&W or color. Despite the box art being in color the movie was in B&W.  I spoke with the sculptor, who sent 2 colorized pics at the same time I found my own. This is the one I went with - 

Starting to add color - 

Then once again, I got into a groove painting the facial features and forgot to take WIP pics. I used a splatter technique on the base and then applied the woodland Scenics snow with a few layers of PVA. Thanks for looking.