Mars Rover Air Bags

 This is definitely in the "And now for something completely different" file comes the Australian Scale Solutions model kit of the Mars Rover airbags. Scale Solutions was very prolific with their kits in the early 2000s, but *IIRC* the Australian Post Office raised international mailing rates a lot. He complained that it would ruin his shop, and it didn't take long for him to stop posting his kits on sci-fi boards. 

This is a simple 1:40th scale kit in 4 parts of VERY hard tan resin. 

Around each set of airbags is this definite seam that needed to be ground away.

The kit even comes with a few rubber bands which is called for in the instructions. This kit has to be 10+ years old and I was surprised the bands weren't deteriorated.

Once super-glued and epoxied together together - including an aluminum tube for the stand - I glued the 4th side on. The fit was loose and all the seams needed some Aves to fill the gaps. 

All images showed this white tan airbags. Some images showed a gray strapping around the bags. I mixed up some white tan paint and then some light gray for the straps. They looked too dark. After adding some "Mars dirt" to the bags from bouncing, I gave it a mist coat of the white tan. That seemed to even everything out. I added a small Mars base and I was done. Thanks for looking.

Aradia Medusa

 Adding to my collection of Medusa's this time is from Aradia Miniatures. This was part of the Dante Inferno collection.  The figure is approximately 75mm and comes in 8 or 9 parts of well done gray resin.

My love/hate relationship with Aradia miniatures strikes again with this kit. It's obvious (to me - maybe not) that these kits are 3D modeled on computer, printed and then cast.  Being that they are 3D designed, the tolerances are very tight. The Main problem comes as there are no instructions as to assembly order. You only have a drawn diagram on the box.  You start building and then 2/3s the way thru you find out that the assembled sub assemblies don't fit together.

My mistake came somewhere between gluing the soldier to his base and putting Medusa's wings on her body. The folding up wing wouldn't fit with the way the spear was sitting. I had to bend the soldiers sear ( a copper tube) and justified it with it got bent during the fight. Yeah that's it...

Evidently, I'm guessing that I needed to put her wings on, and then glued her tail which wrapped around his back, THEN glue the whole thing to the base, rather than one figure at a time.

With all the building done this once again called out to be to make some OSL in the form of some fire from below. I think it came out slightly better than my last try.  Thanks for looking. 

 

Capt. Spaulding

 Another 1:4 scale bust from Gillman Prod.  This represents Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie's 2003 movie House of 1000 Corpses, and it's two sequels.  Sadly Sid passed away in 2019 at age 80.

 The kit came in 3 pieces - the bust, a hat, and the chicken bucket base.  This one came together so quickly that I forgot to take a lot of WIP pics. 

Firstly since he's wearing makeup, I started out with the typical skin color, then blotted on V's Foundation White.  The colors were simple so I just raced along following the colors in the reference pic. 

 

I was thinking about using paint for the colored part of the make up. But that went on too opaque. So I chose pastels and a small make up brush. After getting the pink cheeks on, and sealed they looked too big. They will have to change; so I repainted the Foundation White over it.

While that was drying I turned to the chicken bucket. I originally had primed the whole thing Stynylrez's tan color. It was a good starting point for coloring up the chicken. Loooking at various pics, I was able to use a few colors from V's Rust set, finally adding some of Citadels Agrax Earthshade to the deepest "holes in the bucket. I finished the bucket by putting a few strips of V's Cavalry Brown on. Kinda goofed the spacing, but - oh well.

 

With his cheeks dry I too a second shot at it with a smaller pink marks. I glossed his eyes and mouth, and then put some Pearlizing paint on his shirt to make it match the reference pic a bit closer, and I was done. Thanks for looking. 

 

My Favorite Martian

 This time I closed my eyes, and stuck my hand into the pile, bring out the Moebius' My Favorite Martian kit.  It's a pretty nice kit including Martin's space ship and Martin himself in about 75mm. One annoying part is that shortly after  I first got this kit, I picked of the aftermarket PE set that went with it. Now, it's no where to be found. :(

 Images are a little out of order. Here is Martin. I added the skin color and then gave it all a wash of Reikland Fleshshade. Doing a little investigating I found that he had a green metallic suit (as per the directions) in the first season. For whatever reason in the second and 3 seasons his suit was silver. Being that the craft is supposed to be silver, I went with the green suit. After a few mistakes I settled on a white primer to start then I painted it all V's Aluminum, then Transparent Green. Getting a good shade of green made the Aluminum disappear, so when the Green dried, I gave the suite a mist coat of Aluminum. This was a good medium.

Planing for the hatch to be open, I had to get rid of the pin ejector marks.

Check back for more. Thanks for looking.

Earthworm Jim

  After seeing it online, I saw and was intrigued by it . Firstly I never heard of Earthworm Jim, so didn't know of his story. But dang, he looked cool. 

The kit is from Prey Collection Studio.  I'm guess it was 3D designed and printed, and then molded and cast. There are no grow lines to be seen, and the casts are very clean. I'm also guessing that I picked it up in 2018, but it seems the files are still available to print your own.

As part of my goof up, there are no WIP pics. So here's the completed Earthworm Jim. Thanks for looking. 

The reason for this terrible angle is I lost the holster, and sculpted a new one from Aves.

Geometric Nosferatu

 I once again turned to one of the mini kits from Geometric that I bought from a JerseyFest a number of years ago.

The sculpting and casting were very well done. There was a slight seam line across the top of his head. But some wet sanding quickly made that disappear.

The image provided looked pretty cool, so I decided to use that paint scheme. 

 

Turning to the door, I decided on a big, ancient door filled with grime, slime, and rust. 

With that I was done. All in all it took three days working a few hours a day. Thanks for looking. 

Gina Brides of Dracula Finale

 This was probably the easiest session I did. All that was left was to paint in her eyes, add highlights to the gown, and glue her to the base. I also glued in a few grass tufts to make model a little different that everyone elses.  Thanks for looking. 

Miss Cupidon

 Yep, I know this Valentines Day looking mini should be done the end of Jan. or the beginning of Feb., But this was one of my multiple figs that I do at one time. I took this one b/c I figured it was easy to do.  and it mostly was. I must have seen it announced somewhere on FB, and me liking the work of Gautier Giroud, the sculptor, I picked it up. Only when it arrived did I realize it was only 35mm!

The kit came in 4 resin  parts and was limited to 250 copies. I got #13. As of this date, there was still 26 left in case you want one.  

 

With this one getting worked on a little at a time, I never managed to take a WIP pic(s), Tho it was fairly simple. The sample shown on the WEBSITE, had her wrapped in blue ribbon, but the Cupid thing had me thinking a pinkish red.  Skin tones were based on my usual V. Beige Red.  The figure was standing on a single rock, and I stayed with that them getting out little wood chips to make a rock pile. With that looking to manly, I added some nice green grass, and then dye the yellow foam flowers i had, with that same pink red. Thanks for looking. 

Brides of Dracula Gina

 This time around, I have Gina, from The Hammer Film's Brides of Dracula. As per the usual it's a 1/4 scale 2 part kit - the bust and the base. Sculptor Jeff Yagher once again nailed the likeness of  Andree Melly, who by the way just passed away in early 2020 at 87. 

Here the base coat is going on - dark hair, a light skin tone, and an almost white gown. Looking through lots of images, I saw she had light brown eye, bordering on green. I think the V paint English Uniform fits that bill, and will be what I'm using. Until then the eyes got their usual coat of black. 

With this kit, I tried a new technique of trying to get a more realistic skin tone. On other model builds on You TUbe, I saw other's when they want to weather, to apply a layer of thinner to an area, and then when they come back with some paint, it runs, spreads and dilutes, creating this uniform but uneven look. Why couldn't this be done with skin?  Vallejo paints won't respond well to thinner, so I took a brushful of V's Flow Improver. A heavy application of the improver resulted in the same look as the thinner - the paint spread and ran. Where the Improver was a little less, the paint spread a bit, but it could easily be manipulated with a ruined brush and some stippling.  Perfect? Nope. But I like the result and it was my first try.  I'll be using that technique more as I go thru my figure stash.

I sprayed a clear coat on the skin, and while that's drying I turned my attention to the base. It looks like the usual castle blacks of stone, but there are cutouts where someone was storing skulls. ;)

Going back to the bust I finished applying V's German Black Brown to her hair, and then gave the deepest areas a wash of Nuln Oil. All the pics have her with really dark hair, so I'll limit my applications of highlighting.

 That's it for now. Check back for the finish. Thanks for looking.