Young Frankenstein's Monster

 Looking for kits to start the year (besides the Skystreak) I found Mark Warthling's Pestilence Labs Monster from Young Frankenstein, and John Dennett's Tiny Tim. I guess I want to get a head start of next Christmas. But he's for a separate post.

First thing to decide is what color was the Monster. Fortunately the movie being filmed B&W on purpose, and there were plenty of color images available. Where the box are shows a blue-green. He's definitely a blue.

 

One dilemma I always have for myself is should I paint him up as if the character is real, or as an actor in makeup. I usually go for the former, but this time I went for the later. I got out my flesh triad and went to work.

The blue went over the skin tones. I actually muffed up at this point putting too much blue on, and eliminating all the skin tone. I tried to save it my using my lightest skin ton as the highlight. Worked fairly well.

Then it was time to paint up the clothes. His shirt was a black, and the jacket was a brown. The stone was was painted with 3 colors to add a little extra color to the model.

The kit comes with a broken mug from his scene with the hermit. I was lucky enough to find this screen grab, as I thought I noticed a design on the mug while rewatching the movie. I tried my best to copy it.

Almost done I tackled the fire, and is my typical fire recipe. Remember that fire has to be painted backwards from the usual Base color, shadow, highlight. The lightest (hottest) color appears closest to the source of fuel - his finger in this case. 

The last thing was his eyes. Looking up Peter Boyle's eyes, according to a few statistic websites, I was surprised to find out that his eye color is black! Having a pupil show up against that would be a problem. So I made the irises a dark gray.  I also chose the eyes down as if he's pondering *whats happening to my thumb* look. A little gloss over the eyes, and I was done. Thanks for looking. 

 

Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak

 The new year starts off with a look back to the NACA days and the aircraft D 558-1 Skystreak built by Douglas. From the website:

The D-558-I "Skystreaks" were among the early transonic research airplanes like the X-1, X-4, X-5, and XF-92A. Three of the single-seat, straight-wing aircraft flew in a joint program involving the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the Navy-Marine Corps, and the Douglas Aircraft Co. from 1947 to 1953. In the process, the Skystreaks set two world speed records.

This is another very nice albeit old 1:72 resin kit from Anigrand Craftswork.

Not taking any chances of it being a tail sitter I added a lot of the Liquid Gravity beads to most of the open spaces forward of the landing gear.

The cockpit panel was just bare, and there was no decals for one, so I just added my own white dots. I should have looked first as all the instrumentation is black, but no one will be easily able to see it anyway...

The session ends with me closing up the fuselage with probably the best fit I've ever encountered with these smallish resin kit companies. Also on the drill is the seat. I tried something a saw where a tissue is white glued to the seat so it can be manipulated and form folds or creases. In this case it didn't appear to work. I just used one ply from the tissue. I'm thinking the tissue was too thin. Next time I'll try some toilet paper. Who knows- maybe 1:72 is too small to try it?  The final thing in the image is a line of sand color paint. Under the paint is a .5mm tape that will be the seat belts. But that's for next time. Thanks for looking.