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. 

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.

Willy Ley Orbital Rocket

Late last year at one of my Model Club's Zoom meetings there was mention how expensive kits were when all the aftermarket parts were obtained. someone else wished we could go back and just build a kit without worrying about anything. It was thought up early this year that the Club would have a group build entitled "Build Like An 11 Year Old." Being one of the sponsors of the build I was now on the lookout for a kit that I either built or could have built as a kid in the late '60's - early '70's.  Not long after, I saw in an email blast from CultTVMan, that the Atlantis had the Willy Ley Orbital Rocket available.   According to Scalemates, the original kit was released by Monogram in 1959, and then Atlantis re-popped it in 2024 in the same 1:193 (?) box scale size. 

It arrived at the house not a week after ordering and upon opening the box I was brought back to being a kid again with red, white and blue colors of the plastic. All the flash also brought back memories. 

 The back of the box also had a surprised in that the photos were those of Allen Ury of Fantastic Plastic. 

Now, how was I going to build like an 11 year old? First thing I thought of was that with the colored plastic, I wouldn't paint it. Remembering back, not having an older brother or dad who built models, I probably wouldn't have known how to fill seams- so I would leave this out too. 

An early problem was that one of the astronauts appeared to be missing. I figured that was fine as what's the chance a little kid would lose a part - pretty good- I thought. So in the main ship I had just one pilot. Bust as you would know it, after the fuselage was glued together, I found the 3rd astronaut on a different sprue covered in flash. Perfect, I thought, as I was prying the fuselage open to get the second pilot into the main vehicle. 

Thinking of the 50s and how the real spacesuits were silver, both pilots were brushed with silver and just a dot of black where their face shields would be. An 11 year old would be aiming, but I just quickly made two dots...
 

While I had the silver out I also painted the engines with the color.

The rest of the model went together fairly painlessly. With the interior of the second ship more visible and smaller, I smeared around some gray paint in there. I was also at this time I saw where the painting instructions were hiding and discovered that the astronauts were supposed to be in a light green uniform. It was too late for the first two guys, but the 3 pilot was painted with a lime green, a silver helmet, and the black dot.

Now it was time for the decals. I remembered that I wouldn't have know about Micro Set/Micro Sol, so I wouldn't use those either.  Here it was discovered an error on the decal sheet. On the wings of the main ship was two yellow, triangular stripes, one for each wing. I cut them out, dipped them in the water and then realized that they were both for the same side. An 11 year old would have known he couldn't use them, but probably wouldn't have figured that they could be used as stencils and paint the stripes on - at least I wouldn't have thought of it. So I just left them off. After all the decals were on, many stood proudly above the plastic because of all the rivets. So in an effort of trying not to lose them with handling, I gave in and Micro-Sol'd them down ~ -1 point for me. 

With that I glued the two ships together and then to the stand. I came as close as I could to being that 11 year old. My other point loss would be that I wasn't going to search out the Testor's Tube Glue I remember. So I just used the Tamiya Thin that I had. With that, I was done. Thanks for looking. 

 

Terminator 2: HK vehicle

 This happens to be my first ever commission. I met the guy at the local IPMS meeting. After looking over the kit and what had to be done, I gave a price which was accepted. He gave me a lot of leeway to follow the boxart and what others had done.  Here are the pics I passed on to the owner. 

 

Getting the fuselage together

Building the legs

Adding to the fuselage

Making sure the tail lights stay in place

Strip styrene added to replace panels sanded away

Black gloss add for the metallics

Rustoleum gloss for the base. Worked great!

The Thing - MacReady

 As is my usual, I have 2 or 3 kits going at the same time. So they all usually finish withing a few days of each other. This time I have the character MacReady as played by Kurt Russell. 

The kit is in 4 parts - the bust, each hand, and the base.  The likeness is once again excellent, and the casting job is terrific. Only the slightest work is needed to get rid of a hint of seam line on one side of his head.

 Starting to put the primer on...

As with Norris I went overboard with the under colors. Plus there's a little more color on the icy cliff.

From there is was just a matter of looking at a still to find out he had on a gray t-shirt, blue hoodie and a brown leather jacket. His hair is brown and the Net tells me he has blue eyes. Looking at another still, the wire he uses on the blood test was a red on a white spool. I thought the white would be too stark in his hands so I used V's Sky Gray - a very light gray. 

The wire was a small paper clip cut to size and stripped of a little bit of the plastic coating. The paper clip was also painted red, and the bare metal was painted with V's Copper. The Petri Dishes in the film were clear, but I wasn't about to cut it all away and try to recreate it with clear plastic. I painted it up the best I could to make it look transparent.

For the ice, I saw this YT video where they mixed the Woodland Scenics Snow with some clear UV resin. To me it look a little too clear so I added a drop of white. One drop was way too much and IMHO made it too start.  I used Precision Ice and Snow's winter wash on the spaceship - yep the spaceship is sticking out of the mountain on one sire - That just wasn't enuff color so I mixed up more WS Snow and UV resin, leaving out the white paint and added it on. It really looks like chunky ice.   That about does it. Thanks for looking.

The Thing - Norris

 Over the past few months I've been collecting busts by Gillman Prod., featuring the characters from 1982's The Thing. So far, they have released 5 busts. One little extra was that if you bought the first 3 you got pieces of a kit that will form the Norris Head Spider. At one point you could buy the actual head at a discount. So the Norris Head make kit #6. 

All are approximately 1/4 scale and I'll start with Vance Norris. He was played by Charles Hallahan (1943-1997). There's still a debate as to when Norris gets assimilated. But it comes to a head when he has a "heart attack" and during defibrillation his chest opens up and bites Dr. Copper's arms off at the elbow and from a monster emerges. 

The kit is very well done with 2 parts - the bust and the little monster head. There was a little cleanup of Norris' hair, and where the little monster head meets the next, there needed a little Aves to close a gap. Otherwise cleanup was effortless. 

 

 Here I tried a little under-painting. Some of it worked well, but in some areas it was just too much. 

 

I was doing the MacReady figure at the same time, and I wanted to give them two different skin tones, so I started Norris with Vs Dark Flesh (which isn't really that dark).  From there it was adjusting the highlights and shadows. I painted the throat veins with various greens, and then used Citadel's green wash to fill in the deepest areas. After that I used a green tinted UV resin to make it shiny and gooey. The UV resin matched too closely to the paint I used so I tried some of the Army Painter Speed Paint. It too went on like a heavier wash, and a little V. Gloss brought the goo back to the forefront. 

 Similarly I did the same thing only with reds and pinks to the chest/belly area, and to the coiled monster and gave that a coat of the Pink UV resin to that. The resin was easily painted on  (make sure the brush is disposable), and some UV light sealed the whole thing up. Just to make sure I sat it out in the Sun the next morning - Just to make sure.  With that I was done. Thanks for looking. 

 

Jabba the Hutt

 Bo-shoo-dah.  This time around we have another Gillman kit, that is Jabba the Hutt. It comes in 10 parts of gray resin - the bust, base, 4 gargoyle heads, and the 4 gargoyle rings. Don't remember why I didn't take a pic of the base, but you'll see it soon enuff.

 The closest primer color I had to the figure was a tan, so I gave it a covering. Then testing out what green I wanted, I tried out V's Black Green.

While that was drying I decided to do the gargoyle heads in a bronze color. They were never the center of attention, and I figured it would give the base a little color. Still not seen - the base was just painted gray and washed with dark colors.

 

For my 2nd session, there wasn't very many pics of Jabba (the puppet, not the CGI figure) from different good light angles, so my best guess from what I could see were oranges and tans (beside the green). The original green I used fit in well, but I didn't carry it as far up as I should have.  No matter, this is the benefit of me never mixing colors. ;)  Doing it all with the airbrush, made things go very quickly. 

 

For my final session, I just needed to neaten things up, do the eyes, glue the rings in the gargoyle mouths, and then since the gargoyle heads stick out from the base, I epoxied them in. I also added some Citadel Nihilakh Oxide to simulate some verdigris color.  Even tho it's the desert I picture that room like a wet musty cellar :P

With that, I was done. Thanks for looking.