Saturday, May 18, 2019

King Brian

King Brian is a character from the 1959 Disney movie Darby O'Gill and the Little People.  From IMDB.com : 

A wily old codger matches wits with the King of the Leprechauns and helps play matchmaker for his daughter and the strapping lad who has replaced him as caretaker. 
 

The kit was sculpted Joe Laudati and came in 4 parts - His head, body, cape and base. While the figure is cast in resin, the base was cast in plaster. My guess is to give the base some weight, and the figure is dancing, and all the weight is on one foot.

Looking at King Brian's costume, the main colors are 3 different shades of green, and then an orange tan for the vest. The shoes looked black, but I thought a very dark brown worked as well.

The coins (and crown) were painted gloss black in prep for painting them with Vallejo Metallics Gold.



 The face was next, and it was impossible for me to find out the actors eye color, so I just defaulted for brown.

Most all the colors were painted and when I went to glue on the cape, there was some filling needed. So I broke out the Aves and blended it in. 

To attach Brian to the base I added a rod thru his heel into the base. To save some weight the cater made part of the base hollow. No worries - the rod will still hold. 

Thanks Joe for autographing this.
For safety, I added a rare earth magnet to his sole and the base.  A few tries and it worked fine... until I added the cape. With the cape in place, the balance was lost and wanted to tip over backward.

I figured I needed another rod, and to play it safe I thought that I should fill the void in the base with resin, and then add that rod. 
 
Check back for the conclusion. Thanks for looking.

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