Ouroboros Cycle of Life

 I came across this kit in my secondary pile of To Do models. On the box it had a date of 2017, so it has to be at least that old. The name of the Co. which produced it was Blood Keep Miniatures.  But it doesn't really matter as when I first re-found the kit I looked it up and it is no longer in operation.  I did see that who I think is the sculptor as an STL of the kit available. You can see his work at ArtStation.

 The kit came in 11 parts of nicely cast resin.  The only problems problems with with the kit are two pieces (cleanly) snapped off the main parts. The other problem was the Death's head and the heads of the two horses were warped. Well, Death's Head was fine the middle horse was slightly off kilter, but the outside horse was off and shows a step in the one image.  

 

The above part showed the death book which had snapped off, and shows the hand with the hourglass that had to be attached. Thankfully I found an image I could enlarge to see how the parts exactly went together. 

 

For the "Life" art of the sculpt, another snapped off part ended up being part of her flowing cloak. These images helped me find it. Both arms and the 3 cherubs also had to be super-glued to the main body.

 I had to be careful where the left arm glue on as it also has to rest on top of that hourglass. I was hoping that it wasn't a case of it coming from a 3D design with the tolerances so tight that it would be a nightmare to have everything fit. No. Luckily I also used the gel type superglue that gave me a little extra time to match everything up. 

 

With that done it was in mostly 2 large sub assemblies with only his scythe, and her wings to add on. But first I have to fix that horses neck. But that's for next time. Thanks for looking and check back.

Frau Blucher Finale

 The idea of this session was to fix the 3 paint pulls along the jawline, and to add highlights/details to the shirt and jumper.

The jaw was actually fairly easy using the stipple method even tho by adding extra layers, it destroyed all the details underneath. 

The leather look (to me) was next. Various jumps in color value gave me what I thought was a decent leather look. The added Agrax Earthshade drew all the colors together.

The shirt was also easy. I used a Sage Green as the base - just to be different. Then V's Pastel Green was a perfect highlight. Then I mixed Ivory with the pastel Green for a 2nd highlight. Finally I added a pearlizing paint to the Ivory for the very high parts of the shirt and I was done with that. 

The final part was looking at the embroidery on the neck and arm cuff. I couldn't find a clear image of her wrist so I painted just what the imprints in the kit gave me. To keep the color going, I used a Green Black for the embroidery.

 

Taking a good look at the neck showed a different pattern. well, same pattern but colored differently. This was certainly a test for my magnifying visors! Also I noticed the sculptor forgot - left off the little broach she was wearing. ;)

 Once that was done, the final two pieces was a can of Ovaltine, and the joke horse. The producers were able to find the vintage label which I thought was a very nice touch. They also included it both in color and B&W for the people that wanted their model in Grayscale. The horse was simply painted brown, with a black mane and tail.

Once glued on the base I was done (sad note somewhere along the lines the horse was knocked off the kit and was eaten by the carpet monster. If it returns I'll be sure to glue it back on).  

 

Many producers now give you a CofA. Cool touch IMHO

Frau Blucher

 The first offering was the Young Frankenstein series was The Monster. The Doctor and Igor was the next too. The latest one was Frau Blucher who seems to have a problem with the horses. And no Blucher is the German word for horse glue as has been mentioned. But reaching blindly in the pile I skipped over the other two and pulled out the Frau. 

The kit comes in 5 parts - the bust, base arm holding a cigar, a can of Ovaltine, and a little model of a horse (the last 3 weren't included in the image). 

 The first thing I needed to find was a color pic, since I didn't want to paint her as we saw her in the film. I found one - sadly just one, so now I knew what her clothes looked like as well as the color of her hair. It also gives me a clue when I build up The Doctor.

 As usual, the first thing I did was the skin, using my normal techniques. What you see here is the base coat plus some spattering to hopefully bring the skin to life.

 While I was waiting for the bust to dry,  I turned my attention to the base, and since I'm guessing it's part of the castle I just painted the stones gray with splashes of color here and there. 

Getting back to the Frau, I added the 2nd level of skin tones, and then thinking about the white shirt, I just didn't want a big blob of white, so trying something different I turned to V's Sage Green. Planned for later is a Green Gray and then a White at the very tops of the contours. 

I guess I didn't wait long enough for when removing the tape after protecting her face from the shirt green - I had the tape pull off 3 areas around her jaw line. Lots of cursing commenced. I guess I'm getting used to skin errors because I was able to fix it in 2 passes of color. I also put a highlight on her hair.

Adding her final shirt colors as well as putting it all together is next - but that's for the next session. Thanks for looking and check back.

TROG!

 Anthropologist Dr. Brockton (Joan Crawford) unearths a troglodyte (an Ice Age 'missing link" half-caveman, half-ape) and manages to domesticate him - until he's let loose by an irate land developer (Michael Gough) to go on a rampage and kidnap a little girl. Crawford's last feature film. 

This 1970 low budget film, which I've never seen has been declared so bad that it's actually entertaining. The budget was so low that Ms. Crawford had to supply her own wardrobe, and was rumored that the costume for the Trog  was actually 1/2 the monkey suit from 2001 A Space Odyssey. That was the reason he was half ape, half man, because they only found half the suit. 

The 1:8 scale model, sculpted by Michael Berglund, and comes comes to us from Escape Hatch Hobbies. The model is in 10 clean parts and are 3 D printed. Once again, in my eagerness to get started I forgot to take a before pic of the parts. Here he is all super glued together.

The parts fir very well, but they do need a little filler. Here I used to last of my Milliput - 

The next job was to fill the holes meant to drain out the excess resin from the 3D printer. Here I used Aves to fill the holes. The reason was to provide a spot to insert pins to hold the figure onto the base. 

Speaking of the base here's the rock base and bolder that's about to be thrown. 

Looking towards the models, there's very few images of the entire monster. Here's what I found - 

 

Painting the figure, the colors are fairly easy to follow. The only change I made is to me, his face is on the gray side. So I matched a little closer to his arms and legs. 

The last image shows him just about done. All that was left was gluing the bolder into his hands - it dry fit perfectly for me until I had glue on the rock. :/    I added dirt and static grass to the base and then I was done. Thanks for looking. 

Dracula A.D. 1972

 In 1972 London - a century after his final battle with Professor Van Helsing - One hundred years later, the colorful 1972, Johnny, the great-grandson of the servant joins up with a "group" containing Jessica, the grand-daughter of the present vampire hunter, Abraham van Helsing and with their unknowing help resurrect Dracula in the 20th Century who is determined to destroy the house of Van Helsing, but who can believe that The king of the Vampires really exists and is alive - in 20th Century London? 

The image below is what I think the sculptor got his idea from. 

The kit is in 2 parts, where one part, the Victim, Caroline Munro, sits inside the base which is also the Dracula (Christopher Lee) figure. The kit was once again very clean.  As with most kits there is only a slight parting line across the hair. 

As is my new usual, the skin starts off with a coat of pinkle and red - 

After the pinkle was dry I applied the skin tones. I didn't want them both identical so Dracula got a light coat of Medium Flesh, and the victim for the Game Air Flesh. After that was some dotting from Reikland Fleshshade wash.

Drac's hair is almost Black, while the Victim is done with the German Black Brown. They both are wearing black so I have Drac highlighted with a blue shine, and the Victims dress is just strictly gloss black.  Her cheeks and chest were done with a very thin Transparent red, and her eye shadow is simply black pastel. Drac's 5 o'clock shadow was done with a dark blue pastel.   Once dry it all was sealed in Vallejo Matte ending the project.  

The only downside IMHO to this kit is Dracula's expression. If he was about to bite, you think you would see the teeth bared and the eyes squinting preparing for the attack. Post bite, I would think his eye would again be squinting, and his mouth relaxing still with the teeth bared. This expression makes me think he's creeping on Caroline.  Thanks for looking. 

 

The Thing - Bennings

 It's time to tackle another figure from The Thing series - this time it's Bennings. George Bennings was a meteorologist stationed at American Antarctic research station, U.S. Outpost 31. The character appears in the 1982 film The Thing and was portrayed by actor Peter Maloney. 

This is another excellent kit sculpted by Yagher and produced by Gillman Productions. The kit is in 1/4 scale and comes in 4 parts - the bust the two hands and the base.  After a quick clean up, the parts were assembled and then, after priming, game the skin areas the "pinkle" (Groundeffected's word for the purple pink color) and red.

 

After that, the flesh color was added, and then a sprinkle of dots of Reikland Fleshshade was added.

Surprisingly (not) I didn't take many WIP pics. But looking at the film grabs, he's see with and orange vest, and then an olive green parka, with a darker green lining. The fur around the collar looks to be a gray color. 

The base shows him on the snowy rock outcropping with some gas cans and 55 gallon drums in thew scene. For whatever reason I assumed the cans were diesel, and looking up the color codes diesel is put in a yellow can. So that's what I did. But thinking back, with how fast the Bennings-Thing creature was set on fire, the fuel was probably just gasoline... Oh well. 

So before I knew it, I was done. Thanks for looking.

Ode to the Moon

 This was a miniature I picked up spur of the moment - as many of them are, while I was looking thru Blacksmith Miniatures website. Many of the figures are based of the art of Jean-Baptiste Monge as is Ode to the Moon. 

The kit comes in a 12 parts and the scene finishes up at about 70mm. 

 The biggest difficulty is that it is designed where tree roots balance the slanted tree. There are about a half dozen of these "supports and with the detail in the model,it difficult to see where each branch goes, or even where it goes. Luckily I found an image of one already done where the modeler did a number of images creating a 360° view. 

 Once having that, the model went together effortlessly. As you might have guessed the drone part of the bagpipe looked an was VERY fragile, and at some point I lost it. I replaced it with a bit of styrene rod, tho I couldn't replicate the details.  Primer was next. The next thought was if I was going to put this into a vignette, the dead tree took up a lot of space for just a dull object. I decided I would add some twisted wire to form small branches that I could hang leaves from.  You can see them mostly around the owl.

Next was the base colors. Old tree bark is mostly gray, so I added that and then splashes of color here and there to add a bit of color. It also looks like some moss was sculpted in, so that would be even more color.

Moving to the elf/satyr thing - he's not wearing any clothes, so his head and furry legs were painted in a dark brown and then made the mid color a reddish. The skin started off a little darker than my other figures. In the image he has 3 skin layers with a 4th upcoming. 

See more in the next session.