TKS Birth of Dracula

 This is another terrific kit from TKS-  Terrible Kid Stuff from Italy. It's really call Elizabeta: Birth of Dracula. But I like the shorter name better. It's 75mm in gray resin, and  has 7 parts.

Seeing the red armor in the Coppolla movie, my plan was to paint his armor chrome and then add V's Transparent Red over the top.

 While the Chrome was drying I knew I was going to add a background, so I just mixed some red and black and painted the cape with that. The fur collar started dark brown and then a few dry brush highlights. Elizabeta was painted all Beige Red. I remember, again from the movie that she lept into the moat or river...  and I was going to paint the gown sheer in parts.

Adding the transparent Red to the chrome just turn the armor pink. Many layers later and it still wasn't what I was thinking. I needed to do something else.  As I painted his face I had to keep checking with the arm since it wasn't attached to see how much would and wouldn't show.

Elizabeta was painted in V's Azure Blue. Darker where the material looked thicker, leaving the Beige Red where it didn't. I also painted the skin with a mix of Pale Skin and Light Gray as she was supposed to be dead and wanted to to contrast from Vlad's skin tone.

That's it for this time. Check back for the finale. Thanks for looking.

Star Wars ATDP Finale

 As with the rest of the build session, this one was also a no brainer. I did look at the Yay site to see what they did, if anything about the painting. I just didn't want it to be this tall skinny white or gray thing. Looking they had little rectangles painted on it as a sort of camo - good enuff! 

After the white paint base coat, I cut out a smallish rectangle in a small piece of cardboard and started spraying. I ended up using 3 colors of gray. Their rectangles were smaller, but that's OK, I'm happy with mine.

After that I saw a video by this guy (I forget his name now) on You Tube where he used a straight piece of cardboard to imitate panel lines. So I added some of that too.

Finally taking after the weathering lessons from the You Tube channel Night Shift, I went about added dirt and scratches etc...

When this was all done, it looked - too much. I always thought that the Empire would have taken better care of their vehicles, so  especially up top, I mist coated some more white over everything. 

The vehicle is finished. A small base will be added asap. Thanks for looking.

 

Star Wars All Terrain Defense Pod

This is yet another kit from the bottom of my stash pile. It's Yay Monsters' ATDP. First seen in the TV show Rebels. It's actually a throw away idea from Empire Strikes Back. 

"There's clearly some influence from concept artist Joe Johnston as well, in our walker. Ours is actually one that Joe had designed for the Episode V scout walker, an abandoned design."

―Star Wars Rebels executive producer Dave Filoni

 

The model is in 1/48 scale and comes in sixteen pieces, with a piece of brass a few pieces of brass tubing. Giving it a once over before clean up, it looks to me that it was 3D printed and then resin cast, as there are some faint grow lines here and there. But for a vehicle, that doesn't bother me so much.   

 

Clean up was fairly straight forward, and then the building started. I have to say that this was the simplest build I've done in a long time.  The command crew area almost fell together, and the legs were a nice friction fit. 

Gluing the legs should be no problem, and then it's on to painting. But that's next time.

Celestial Messenger Finale

 Not having a firm idea of what I wanted to do on this one, there was a lot of back and forth. So this one I more gave up on than finished it. 

I'm still not happy with the way my OSL comes across. Oh well keep practicing. 

I don't know why camera is all over the place with the colors. The demon is more of a purple red ...

Thanks for looking.

Greenwell's Medusa Finale

 Having another look at the tentacles, I wasn't really happy with that purple, so it was changed. I also added some gold in to the covering she's wearing, and then finally I added the eyes. Once again, I goofed the right one and had to start over. That's another reason why I like starting with black... ;) 

Thanks for looking. 

 

Greenwell's Medusa

 Adding to my growing collection of Medusas is this nice little bust from Greenwell Studios. His websites seems to be gone and the only presence I could find is an "Art of" page on Facebook. 

This Medusa is a bit different from others in the this one sort of has Octopus tentacles instead of snakes. Anyway here's the bust as received all those years ago - 

 Primed and the base coat started -

Started on the tentacles - 

Check back for more...

Celestial Messenger

 This is another beauty of a 75mm kit from Aradia Miniatures. 

From the website.

Gave the figure a zenithal priming.

Started the base coating -

Added a little more detailing -

Check back for the finale. Thanks for looking.