The Kappa Finale

Part 1: https://kevtk.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-kappa.html

With the creature finished I turned my attention to finishing the base. I added colors to the river bed. In hindsight, I should have used more muted colors.

 Added a little greenery to the river bed. I was planning on making the  water clear or mostly clear.

 A closeup of the tree root. Not bad going from a real branch to roots bad from aves.

 Some plastic aquarium plants painted and added to the river bed. I also added some "leaves" to the shrub.

 The finished product. Thanks for looking.

2018 in Review

2018 was a pretty good year in the hobby room. I actually managed to get to a number of kits what were quite old along with some of the newer ones.  My tally was: Jan.-3, Feb. - 0, Mar - 1, April - 3 May -6, June - 5, July - 6, Aug. - 1, Sept. - 3, Oct. - 7, Nov. - 3, Dec. - 8. That's a total of 46. I also have 5 in various stages of completeness that didn't get finished this year, but will show up in the 2019 list. 

By images the list looks like - 

Jan - 

Feb. --
Mar. 

April - 

Bases Part 3

Thinking about the Kappa vignette, I  pictured a stream/river bank in a wooded area. The "only" thing missing from mine, is the wooded part. So I thought it at least needed a tree.
My other hobby is designing and caring for bonsai. Eventually everything living dies, and that's also true with bonsai. But with them being manipulated into interesting designs, I don't throw them away. Instead I keep them for making interesting trees in my dios and vignettes.

Having the tree curve over what will be the water also creates a certain grotto type look. This piece of wood was a bit larger and I took some of the smaller branches from the part I didn't use and superglued them to the  tree. You may also notice that I glared the base of the "tree" and added exposed roots, completing the illusion that it is anchored to the ground.
The next thing I did was to take some wire, and copying a YT tutorial I saw, I created what will be a small shrub to the left of the tree. After the image was taken, I "barked" it up with glue and chinchilla dust.

That took up most of the session. Even thought it's out of order, I just had to try and see if Realistic Water would mix with some acrylic paint to tint the water. I took some turquoise paint, mixed it up (it mixed) and poured some in the water area. I didn't want to fill it all the way up, so some went into the T-Rex vignette. Thanks for looking.

The Devonian Tapole Finale

See the build - http://kevtk.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-devonian-tadpole-specimen.html 

Well, I finally got the little guy into his specimen jar.  It took a blob of hot glue, and then with the tail attached it needed to be cork screwed into the jar. So the glue got a little messier than I would have liked. Once it was in there and the glue cooled, I filled the jar with the Propylene glycol, and tightly screwed on the lid. Almost done.

I felt it needed a specimen label, so in MS Word I created one. Had a little look at the CFTBL movie info and got the year made, and doctor's name. Then I looked up "Aquatic Lizard Creature" and for a place - the Black Lagoon in Spanish and added that to the label.   Much later, after it was stuck on, I remembered that Portuguese is spoken in Brazil, not Spanish... Oh well. 
Thanks for looking. 

TIE Predator Showcase

A completion of the  Tie Predator with it's Death star Tile base. 
Seethe Build - http://kevtk.blogspot.com/2018/09/scale-solutions-tie-predator.html
 
Thanks for looking. 

 

Bases part 2

I dug right in and the first, and simplest to finish was the base for the Tie Predator. You see a finale post about that one shortly.

The next one was the cone shape that was seen in Pitch Black when the Marauders first came out of the ground when the eclipse started. That one a day later was still not dry, and was left on the radiator to dry out completely.

But the other two were dry and got their coats of paint. These two will also have water features. The one that will be the base for the Kappa, I decided to build a frame around the foam -

You can also see on one of the mounds (rocks) that there is a bit of gray. despite measuring twice I still goofed it up and needed to expand the rock with some Aves, to give the Kappa a enough room to squat. 

Here's where we are with them at the end of the day. Thanks for looking. 

Bases

In looking to have a clear desk to finish off 2018, one thing that has held be back was finishing off the bases and putting them on the shelf. Seems like I'm quite behind on bases, so here we go.

The easiest one to finish was the base for the TIE Predator. All I had to do was take one of the Death Star Tiles from the set from SSM,  I glued it to a wood base. The fit was just about excellent. It will get a shot here and there to create interest with some white gray paint.

The next three are carved in foam, and then coated with some Sculpt-A-Mold. From left to right- a base for the Kappa, Pitch Black's Marauder, and a 1:72 T-Rex by Krentz Presentz. 
Once dry, they will get their coat of primer and then a paint job.

Check back for completed models and thanks for looking.