Geo-Metric Hunchback

 A few years ago I picked up a few of the old mini kits from Geo-Metric. As usual they got lost in the stash until I just found them again.  I don't think I've done the Hunchback since the days when I was a little kid building the Aurora kit. 

 The kit comes in 4 resin pieces and two metal parts. It all came packed in two bags along with a pic of the finished model.

In the pic, Quasi was holding on to the jester's "crown" the crowd gave him. My first problem was the the hand holding the crown was molded just like the other hand - with an open palm. I just received my new PE pliers and they were strong enough to bend the fingers enough without doing any damage. It's not a perfect grasp, but it'll do.

Taking a break from cleaning up the model, I took a look at the vignette. It comes with a disc that doesn't quite fit under the ledge with gargoyle, and then the arch was just left open behind the figure. I took some trusty foam, and cut out a wall, and also added a spacer to make it not feel like the wall was just blocked up. Didn't do to well on that, but at least there's a solid background now.

Turning back to Quasi, he got his base coat of tan and then my usual Beige Red for the skin color.  Looking it up Charles Laughton had blue eyes, and so I did those. But the figure is really too small to make out an eye color once the pupil was put in. 

The image had him wearing a light green tunic with dark green tights, his shirt was some sort of beige,  and brown shoes. Laughton also was said to have sandy brown hair so I tried to mimic that.  With that done I gave his shirt a wash with some Citadel Green shade. Looking at the pic of the crown the colors looks to be red and blue. Finding other pics online - altho B&W, the actually crown part seemed to be a shiny metal. So I broke out V's Duraluminum, and washed it with Nuln Oil to darkened the details.

One shade darkening to the recesses of the skin and then 3 highlights later, I was done. I had previously drilled holes in the gargoyle for the pins I had in his feet and I was done. It was then I saw that he was looking no where with his good eye. So I got some V's Ivory, Azure, and Black and gave him a new place to look - at the viewer. 

Jolly Roger: Hex Marks the Spot

 This kit brings back a LOT of memories as I did a few of them in my early teen years. I remember at the time, that I thought it was the best paint job I ever did - most likely with those gloppy Testor enamel paints.

 Anyway this was re-released by Round 2 and is 1:12 scale. Comes with a few sprues of parts and then the deck planking in 2 big sheets. I also comes with a large  sheet of decals. 

Starting right in I gave all the parts a coat of Stynylrez tan primer. There was some flash and the deck and box parts had a slight warp to them, but nothing serious. Things went so smoothly I even used the primer as the base color and started in with some Vallejo Dark Brown Wash.

My first mistake was painting the skeletons so dark. I knew I wanted them aged. But this was too much. Took a lot to get them to a dark ivory or sand color.

The seam down the two sides of the cannon was tough to get rid of. So I solved the problem by dabbing on some Tamiya putty. Got rid of the seam lines and also help the gun have that cast look. My plan was to paint it a mix of deep green and black, then dry brush some bronze over that. I added some of Citadel's verdigris paint here and there. 

 It was then a matter of painting and washing a LOT of wood grain. Only the standing skeleton had color call outs for his clothes, so I just closed by eyes and picked a color for the guy in the box. I wanted them dusty dirty, so I added some gray to the colors to bring down the color value.  But I also ended up with some brown pigment to get them even more dusty. The Standing pirates shirt had decals for stripes, but I just did them by hand.

Speaking of decals they were VERY thick. The standing guy had a headband in addition to the bandana. But the decal was so thick that even after 4 or 5 coats of Micro Sol, I couldn't get it to snug down. so I just pulled it off.  The other place I had a problem was the decals in the squares of the box lid. They too just wouldn't snuggle down into the wood grain. I the end I had to make a lot of slits in the decal film and it still wasn't perfect. Good idea to keep the box lid open. ;)    The map also had a decal, but I didn't want to sand down all the raised detail, so I just painted the map by hand as well. 

With that I was done. Thanks for looking.  

 

TKS The Birth of Dracula Finale.

 I took a break from all the painting and started in on the base. I had these 4X4' blocks hanging around and decided to use that. The base supplied was just one layer but it had 2 or three layers that couldn't be seen to make it a little taller.  I thought would be enough, but the base was smaller than the block, I cut out similar sized blocks out of foam to add around the base. 

I then had the idea that I would used Green Stuff World's Crackle Paint to make cracks and I planed on painting the cracks yellow and red as if the Devil was making his way up to Vlad.  Long story short the crackle paint didn't really work out. :( 

I always wanted to add a back drop so I just kept cutting foam to make them. I didn't have my cutter and doing them by hand I ended up with a few different sizes. Oh well.  When they were all cut I glued them together with Gorilla Glue .When that dried I cover the whole thing in my Black paint/Mod Podge mix. This will protect the foam from paints and super glues. 

Turning back to Dracula's armor I simply applied Nocturna's Sanctuary Red over everything and then a couple of coats of V's Metallic Gloss.  That's it, I was done. Since the wood base is rather big I will get a little name plate for it.  Thanks for looking.  

 

TKS Birth of Dracula

 This is another terrific kit from TKS-  Terrible Kid Stuff from Italy. It's really call Elizabeta: Birth of Dracula. But I like the shorter name better. It's 75mm in gray resin, and  has 7 parts.

Seeing the red armor in the Coppolla movie, my plan was to paint his armor chrome and then add V's Transparent Red over the top.

 While the Chrome was drying I knew I was going to add a background, so I just mixed some red and black and painted the cape with that. The fur collar started dark brown and then a few dry brush highlights. Elizabeta was painted all Beige Red. I remember, again from the movie that she lept into the moat or river...  and I was going to paint the gown sheer in parts.

Adding the transparent Red to the chrome just turn the armor pink. Many layers later and it still wasn't what I was thinking. I needed to do something else.  As I painted his face I had to keep checking with the arm since it wasn't attached to see how much would and wouldn't show.

Elizabeta was painted in V's Azure Blue. Darker where the material looked thicker, leaving the Beige Red where it didn't. I also painted the skin with a mix of Pale Skin and Light Gray as she was supposed to be dead and wanted to to contrast from Vlad's skin tone.

That's it for this time. Check back for the finale. Thanks for looking.

Star Wars ATDP Finale

 As with the rest of the build session, this one was also a no brainer. I did look at the Yay site to see what they did, if anything about the painting. I just didn't want it to be this tall skinny white or gray thing. Looking they had little rectangles painted on it as a sort of camo - good enuff! 

After the white paint base coat, I cut out a smallish rectangle in a small piece of cardboard and started spraying. I ended up using 3 colors of gray. Their rectangles were smaller, but that's OK, I'm happy with mine.

After that I saw a video by this guy (I forget his name now) on You Tube where he used a straight piece of cardboard to imitate panel lines. So I added some of that too.

Finally taking after the weathering lessons from the You Tube channel Night Shift, I went about added dirt and scratches etc...

When this was all done, it looked - too much. I always thought that the Empire would have taken better care of their vehicles, so  especially up top, I mist coated some more white over everything. 

The vehicle is finished. A small base will be added asap. Thanks for looking.

 

Star Wars All Terrain Defense Pod

This is yet another kit from the bottom of my stash pile. It's Yay Monsters' ATDP. First seen in the TV show Rebels. It's actually a throw away idea from Empire Strikes Back. 

"There's clearly some influence from concept artist Joe Johnston as well, in our walker. Ours is actually one that Joe had designed for the Episode V scout walker, an abandoned design."

―Star Wars Rebels executive producer Dave Filoni

 

The model is in 1/48 scale and comes in sixteen pieces, with a piece of brass a few pieces of brass tubing. Giving it a once over before clean up, it looks to me that it was 3D printed and then resin cast, as there are some faint grow lines here and there. But for a vehicle, that doesn't bother me so much.   

 

Clean up was fairly straight forward, and then the building started. I have to say that this was the simplest build I've done in a long time.  The command crew area almost fell together, and the legs were a nice friction fit. 

Gluing the legs should be no problem, and then it's on to painting. But that's next time.

Celestial Messenger Finale

 Not having a firm idea of what I wanted to do on this one, there was a lot of back and forth. So this one I more gave up on than finished it. 

I'm still not happy with the way my OSL comes across. Oh well keep practicing. 

I don't know why camera is all over the place with the colors. The demon is more of a purple red ...

Thanks for looking.

Greenwell's Medusa Finale

 Having another look at the tentacles, I wasn't really happy with that purple, so it was changed. I also added some gold in to the covering she's wearing, and then finally I added the eyes. Once again, I goofed the right one and had to start over. That's another reason why I like starting with black... ;) 

Thanks for looking. 

 

Greenwell's Medusa

 Adding to my growing collection of Medusas is this nice little bust from Greenwell Studios. His websites seems to be gone and the only presence I could find is an "Art of" page on Facebook. 

This Medusa is a bit different from others in the this one sort of has Octopus tentacles instead of snakes. Anyway here's the bust as received all those years ago - 

 Primed and the base coat started -

Started on the tentacles - 

Check back for more...

Celestial Messenger

 This is another beauty of a 75mm kit from Aradia Miniatures. 

From the website.

Gave the figure a zenithal priming.

Started the base coating -

Added a little more detailing -

Check back for the finale. Thanks for looking.