Quatermass Martian

 Still messing around with my collection of clays, I was looking for something to sculpt and remembered seeing a long OOP kit of the Quatermass Martian. Quatermass and the Pit is a Hammer film made in 1967. Where "A mysterious artifact is unearthed in London, and famous scientist Bernard Quatermass is called in to divine its origins and explain its strange effects on people."

In the film you never get a really good look at the creature except for one of them as a falling apart fossil. 

 

While doing some image searching I came across another model that gives me an idea of what I'm about to do. While sculpting the critter with Super Sculpey Medium, I didn't take an images. But here's the image from that kit taken at a Jersey Fest from a few years ago. . 

In the movie the discovery happens while a British subway station is being renovated. So I decided the base will have a subway look to it. It's all made from a few pieces of rigid foam and some sand and pebbles.

 The sign was made from an image of the subway station, and it was just a matter of placing the critter. The station looked a little too neat so I added more debris.  Now from the original image these martians were only 3 foot tall at best. So I too some artistic liberty and made it look taller in the station setting. Thanks for looking. 

Not Mickey

 Every time I finish the last project for December, and take a break for the Holidays, I always have trouble starting up again. My breakout is to always start out with something simple. I was able to do that with Not Mickey from Escape Hatch Hobbies.  For those that don't recognize it but think it's that other famous mouse, this guy appeared in Hal Roach's 1934 March of the Wooden Soldiers starring Laurel and Hardy.

The back story is that Hal Roach at the time was one the top dog directors in Hollywood. A newbie to the business, Walt Disney, was trying to get his name out when he and Roach spoke. Roach told of his "Soldiers" movie and then asked could he use his little mouse character. Walt said "Yes" but asked that he just not call him Mickey. A colorized version made him look a little more like that other mouse. In the mouse costume was actually a trained monkey, which accounts for all the "odd" movements.

The kit comes in 6 white resin parts - the head, two arms the body, tail and base. 

Assembling the kit not no problem, and painting like the colorized image I was finished in no time. I also added a little static grass to the base. Thanks for looking. 

Here he is on the table at my local model club meeting.

A Look Back at 2024

 I went back thru my blog for a look back at what I've done this year. so so many as in the past but pretty respectable.
Also not too many vehicles this year. Thanks for looking, and Merry Christmas to all that do that sort of thing. ;) 

 

 

Toyland"s Bogeyman Finale

 With the seam filling pretty successful, I gave the piece a coat of primer.  And then looking at the images - and surprisingly there's not that many good ones - and even with the B&W images you can tell the body color and the face are different shades and the loin cloth is yet another color.  For the colorized images the body is a green brown and the face is close to skin color. So that what I tried to replicate.

 

While that was drying I turned my attention to the base. It's from their cave lair which in my memory was a wet dark place - hence making a "good" place to banish people - Sorry Tom Tom... So after the black priming I added different grays, and then took V's Light Slime to get a green hue to the rocks.  To finish things off I added some UV resin in a few of the deepest depressions. 

The final step was to get the Bogeyman on his base. and as it would turn out, he didn't fit well. At first I thought it was the peg that was in the bottom of the foot, but that was only a partial answer. So I ended up super gluing what foot parts me the base, and after that had time to cure I added Aves underneath and near the foot. I made sure that he wasn't standing on two pedestals. And with that I was finished, and he can be added to the rest of my Christmas related models. Thanks for looking - and Merry Christmas! 

 

Filmy's Pebbles Finale

 To see part 1 go here: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1288699427458027210/965870427847097516

To see part 2, go here:  https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1288699427458027210/7413589169068839914

Wow! where has this kit been? Turns out I put it in a box to take to the model clubs "WIP Night" where everyone shows what they're working on. I guess when I got home I put it on my side table in the hobby area, without taking it out of the box. eventually the box got put on the stack, and there it sat in a box marked "Compressor"...

Putting it back on the worktable, I realized I was just a session or two from being finished.  As an important sidebar, I found this miniature painter, Sergio Calvo with a sort of unorthodox way of painting filling the base coat with lines and dots of paint - his work turns out fantastic. So I think I'll give that a try. Check him out at  the above link.

So anyway, I decided to "Calvo-ize" the hair and added numerous strands of different colors, and then glazed a red on top to bring her hair back to the more red of the cartoon. Looks OK, but I think I made the various strands to close together, and IMHO they all blended too well. Anyway IO was done, and thanks for looking .

 

Toyland's Bogeyman

 I just discovered this one buried in the stack, and since it looks fairly simple (famous last words) I decided to see if I could knock it out before Christmas. 

"March of the Wooden Soldiers" is an alternative title for the 1934 film "Babes in Toyland," featuring the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. The film is a musical Christmas story about their adventures in Toyland, where they help save Little Bo-Peep from the villain Silas Barnaby and his Bogeymen.

 The kit, is a caricature style kit sculpted by Tony Cipriano from his name etched into the back of the base, and was available by (IIRC) Monsters in the Woods. The figure is 6 parts and another 2 for the base.

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This was an old school kit meaning there are some seams showing, a little flash and some filling needed for the parts. The below pic is after some filling with Aves.

Ready to get started, I primed the whole thing in black Stynylrez primer. There are enough colorized versions of the film that painting Mr. Bogeyman should be no problem. But that's for next time. Check back.

Flash Gordon's SkyFlash

 The SkyFlash is the next craft up on Fantastic Plastic's Classic Rocketship series. From Fantastic Plastic's website:

 The "Skyflash" was the hero ship featured in the "Flash Gordon" TV series that aired for one season (39 episodes!) on the short-lived DuMont Network between 1954 and 1955. Like many rocketships of its era, the Skyflash was a single-stage, chemical rocket-powered tail-sitter inspired largely by the German V-2 ballistic missiles of World War II.

Operated by the Galactic Bureau of Investigation in the year 3203, the Skyflash traveled throughout the galaxy, carrying Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov on amazing adventures on the lowest of budgets.

The 1:288 scale model is well done resin cast, and comes in 7 parts. IMHO this has to be one of the quickest and enjoyable builds I done recently.  

The parts went together effortlessly, and the only tricky part was getting the nose cone to sit straight. While waiting for the glue to dry, it was time to think up a simple base for it. I had these 100mm plastic bases from Citadel. I took some 1/2 - 1mm tape to create divisions in the groundwork and then stippled to concrete color on. After pulling off the tape I added a shot of Smoke from the airbrush, and I had the launch area. 

Turning back to the ship I painted it in V's Duraluminum, and then gave it a zenithal shot from the airbrush of V's White Aluminum. And with that I was done.