The Thing's Childs Finale

 If you haven't seen part One yet go HERE. 

Allowing a few days to calm down, and started on Take 3 for the portrait. By this time I was getting good at it (IMHO). ;)  

Getting that done is was on to the rest of the bust. There are only a few instances when you see Childs with his parka. One was when they were ducking down in the hallway - 

 But seeing him at the end, even with the odd lighting it appears that his parka is quite dirty. But the blue has to go down first. I coated the entire thing V's Dark Prussian Blue, and then hit the upper areas with just Prussian blue. Finally I added a light blue to the Prussian Blue for the last highlight.  Then I realized this would be all moot when the dirt when on. Sigh. 

Turning to the back of his head, I fixed the drip from last session, added the appendages and adjusted the colors a little bit. For the tentacles I used the Florescent Green, and the finger/arm I used a light flesh color. The flesh was toned down with some Reikland Fleshshade, and the green with some green tinted UV resin. I also made a gooey drip with it. 

 Putting the post together I realized I never took images of a WIP of the base. It was painted with various metallic colors and then washed in some rust. There was a few stains added with V's Oily Earth wash. I then mixed up some Woodland Sceneics SNOW, matte medium, little bit of white paint, and some Pearl paint. I slathered it over the sculpted snow and was done with that.  I painted the bottle green, and then added a darker color hoping to mimic there being some drink still left in it. The glove was painted brown. Then the parka, and arm/glove was dusted unevenl6t with MIG's European Dust PIGMENT.  I finally glued the bottle to the glove, the glove/arm to the bust and the bust to the base. I was glad to get this one off my desk.  Thanks for looking. 

 

The Thing's Childs

 Having a few collections to complete I decided that Childs from the 1982 movie The Thing was desk on the table. The character, Childs, was played by actor Keith David, and was the base's mechanic. Keith points out that Child's breaks the Horror film trope that "the black guy never makes it to the end of the film."  He is part of the Childs/McReady controversy in that who was the Thing at the end...

 The kit came in 7 parts - the bust, base, gloved hand, whiskey bottle, and 3 appendages. The likeness is spot on and the casting as usual with Gillman is nearly flawless.  With this piece, the Yagher, the sculptor, gives away two of his ideas of how things ended. Number one the base is created to look like a generator, which answers MeReady's question :How's the generator," and Garry answers "It's gone, MacReady!" As a sidebar Garry was his last name. On the character list he was M.T. Garry. 

 The Yagher also gives his opinion of whether Childs or McReady, neither or both were infected. From the front Child's portrait is spot on. But from the back you see his head is split open and all sort's of gooey things are emerging. 

As usual I start with the portrait. I don't get to do dark skin all that much so I was glad I picked up a number of Army Painter skin double triads (6 colors that all blend) . I started withe the darkest one, and then I really didn't like many of the companion colors as they seemed too desaturated. I had seen another painter use oranges to highlight the skin, so I turned to my set of rust paints.  A few different layers and I was liking what I had so far. 

 Turning to the back of the head I added various reds and oranges to make the wound. My thoughts on wounds and blood is that a little goes a long way. I went too far, so I got some Agrax Earthshade to darken down the crevices and ended my session there. 

Coming back to it the next day I see disaster struck. I had angled the bust face down at an angle so the wash would dry in all the recesses. What it did was to rundown the head and then gravity would take it around to the bottom which from that angle was the face.  I now had this  dark stripe running across the face and down to the chin where it dried. I tried lightly getting it off. It didn't really work that well. So I got out the paints and had Take 2 of doing the portrait. After getting it fixed, I sprayed it with a matte clear to protect the new paint (which I didn't do the first time). Tragedy struck again as the matte clear coat instantly frosted. I had heard that if you quickly spray it with a gloss, the frost goes away. The frost did go away - mostly. Disgusted, I chose to walk away rather than whip it off the wall. Check back.

The Thing's Dr. Copper

 Copper was a physician stationed at American Antarctic research station,  U.S. Outpost 31. The character appears in the 1982 film The Thing and was portrayed by the late Richard Dysart. His fate is also briefly touched upon in the 1991 comic series The Thing From Another World. 

  The kit is another addition to The Thing collection of bust kits by Gillman Productions. As with the others, it is in 1/4 scale and the casting is very nice. There is only the slightest seam line across the hair and a bubble on one tooth. The scene depicts just after the Norris Thing's stomach munches off his arms.

After the usual prep for resin, it gets a prime and then I start with the skin. And begin with my normal coat of pink. 

 

 

Continuing on when the pink is dry, it's gets it's base coat of flesh. Then a little Citadel Reikland Flesh shade thru the a/b to reinforce the skin shadows. If you try this technique, make sure to leave some of the pink showing...

 While that was drying I turned my attention to the base. It is basically a big hunk of resin with the Norris Thing's stomach teeth. Wow that was a large description... I've been watching the videos of pro miniaturist Eric Swinson, and in his critique videos, he's often said don't let the painted base rival the figure itself. So I've been trying to make my bases a little plainer. 

 The next items on the agenda are his hair, the shirt, and the ... blood.  The hair was fairly easy, as it just a salt and pepper look. Now off the top of my head I pictured more salt, but in looking at the images, I was wrong. So a little more dark colors went into the head. The shirt is a maroon red shirt, with a beige-white undershirt. V's Cavalry Brown suit the bill. I added a little beige to some of it to create a highlight. 

The blood was next. My feeling in re: to this is that less is more. But this a pretty gruesome scene. So the stumps have to be bloody, but I left enuff flesh where you could still see it, plus a bit of the bone. I also put a little so some of the arm got it, but used a purple wash to indicate bruising (not that bruising would happen that fat. Finally, I mixed a water down blood color and with the a/b created some spatter - a little on the arms some on the shirt - which the red color of that tones down the gore, and then a few dots of it hit his face. A finally spatter on the base and I was done. Thanks for looking. 

 

The Thing - Norton Head Spider

 This time around we're taking a look at throwing paint on the Norton Head spider from The Thing. This is another Yagher sculpt, with Gillman producing. 

The way I got is was you buy a Thing kit, you get a few parts, the more kits you get from the series the more spider parts you get until you get all the parts - if you wanted.  

 The next step was to find a reference. something besides the movie since once the Spider is mobile you really don't get a good look at it color-wise.  Then I found this pic at the RPF.com - 

 

Before finding this awesome pic, I was planning on starting him off with some flesh color skin. So I begin with that "pinkle" undercoating. 

 

 

I do give a base coat of Flesh, and then add a bit of Pale Flesh on top. 

I wanted the legs to be a bit more mottled than the face, so I added various colors both washed and spattered on. 

This is another model where I could fiddle with it until the end of time. so at one point I have to push myself away from the workbench and say I'm done.  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.

1951 The Thing From Another World

 Another 1/5 scale from John Dennett. A very clean kit (as usual) with only the slightest hint of the seam line across the head.
I gave it a "nice and easy" painting (maybe too easy) that there was no real spot for WIP pics.  Thanks for looking.

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. 

 

The Thing's MacReady

This is another that has been on my shelf since 2012! Sculpted by Chris Elizardo, and produced by "Teddy Novak". It came as a one piece bust approx 1:4 scale.  With no eyes, It was also another easy one to do.

Using the following image, I matched up the colors the best I could.

First step, as usual was to get the base colors down -

A few days later, I was able to get another session in and get the bust finished. I was thinking about added the snow and what not, but decided to keep it simple.  Thanks for looking.