Garage Kit Zombie Web Log

Argonauts Predator 2

2011-08-05T05:45:04Z

Thought I would share some in progress shots of this one. The original has the dreads sculpted in some sort of action pose, with them flying through the air. I could not convince the gentleman I was painting this for to have him dunking the skull in his hand through a hoop made of various bones and skin, but maybe next time. For this one, I tried to alter them so they would be at rest.

So the bottom of the action dreads had to go, and I cut into the back ones so I could heat it up and glue them so they laid down flat on his back. But first I have to paint the body.

Why wouldn't a psycho race of bloodthirsty, vagina-faced monsters wear full body fishnets?

If you mix oil paint with Aves' Apoxie sculpt, you can do cool shit like this.
This made it so much easier to resculpt the ends of the dreads, so I didn't have to worry about where it is going to touch the body but still showing white and hard to paint. And as a bonus, as long as you mix it up enough, it does not rub off on or colorize anything. Eventually you can wash your hands, go back to it, and it will not turn them whatever color you mixed in. Groovy.

It was tricky heating the head up and putting it in place. It's been a long time since I worked on a vinyl kit, you forget how fun and different they are.
Then just finish off the dreads, which I let dry and then went back and topped some off with jewelry.

Couple of finished pics

Paintapalooza

2011-06-28T04:25:36Z

Unfortunately it never takes long before I have to build some more kits, but I do love those blissful spells where I have piles of kits to paint. So the build-a-thon paid off. Don't get me wrong, sometimes its nice to just have some pieces to sand or putty, but those times are few for me, and I would always rather be painting something. Alas, the before seen zombie queen will need some painting before some building resumes, and I have another kit which requires the worst: The build / paint / build more / touch up paint / scenario.
In the meantime...

Build-a-thon

2011-04-03T17:15:00Z

Ursula is finally ready for paint, I took a lot of time making sure everything was cleanly prepped and smooth before starting. It's a big kit, so any flaws are going to show, and you want none of that in a figure like her.
So between her primer coats drying and letting putty cure, I keep busy on other kits. I don't care for letting my hands go idle, you never know what they could be up to and I'm the nearest target.

So here's one with lots of pieces thats good to start plugging away at. Bisley's Zombie Queen.

And these two are going to be a blast, and a great excuse to watch Young Frankenstein for the hundredth time.

Sometimes when prepping you run across gems like this. You can see the final glob of clay used on the knee. I like finding stuff like this, evidence of the sculptor. Will just sand it down a bit.

I do not care for finding this sort of thing. The likeness is perfect but I could do without the pinholes. I know I know, it's a kit it's a kit!

This is going to be the perfect companion to a Sunday afternoon and a stack of giant monster movies. Time to get out the glue!

I'll just leave this here

Monster From Hell

2011-03-29T05:31:00Z

And now for the subject of the title...
No, the kit is lovely, and at first glance the casting seems decent. But the last picture will reveal...

The kit is of Ursula Andress from Dr. No. My client asked that I re-sculpt her hair so it is dry, so using a still for reference, gave her much more body. To her hair.

But I do have to add more body to her body, covering her breasts and right shoulder are hundreds of tiny pinholes, and everywhere on the kit. And dont you love it when kits are broken right in the middle of a thigh or forearm? These pics dont look pretty with all the seam lines and putty visible, and the giant holes where I pinned her legs, but she actually has some primer on her now and is just about ready to paint. Need to fill some more pinholes yet.

Don't get me wrong, not complaining about the casting or anything, the resin is easy to work with and I've seen so much worse. And these are model kits afterall. What I have to build this thing too?

patterns

2011-03-09T04:03:00Z

Ok, now we're going from kits with diamond patterns to ones with large wall bases. Or maybe the next one will also feature a freakishly furry torso. Actually no, but I am resculping some hair on that Ursula Andress kit.
(up next)

It's about time I put some pictures of some of these pieces I've finished up. I know I must say this often, but some day I'll dust off my website and put some proper pictures up in a better designed gallery. I'm working on a website for a sculptress, and doing so is getting the cobwebs out of my system whilst teaching me a few new things, so hopefully before too long I can make all that happen.

These are some old vintage-ass Dimensional Design Midget Monster kits. Oh I'm sorry, I mean Midget Spectrally-Challenged kits.

And currently making some progress on Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell.

Here he is all primed up. I have to weigh this kit, I swear it weighs 10 pounds!

Some airbrush work...
(I know huge difference but give me a break, I'm tryin' with the blog updates here)

And here he is now, a little challenging with the whole "where does the hair begin" thing with the way the entire body is highly textured, but slowly drybrushing from lighter to darker colors is working just fine, and the rest should be pretty straight-forward with this one. Will have to ask if the owner wants him all bloody or not.
You know, after he went after that dude's face with the glass and all.
Dr. Victor: "Why did you..."
Monster:"I learned it by watching you!"

Diamond Eyes

2011-02-22T03:05:00Z

So these sorts of things are always fun. You get to edge one side at at a time, careful not to get any on the window. I use oils in this stage, so it is easy to wipe off, but still its time consuming if you have to go back and wipe it all off. Clean sharp lines are best of course.
So you paint one side along the edgeand then the other sideand the other side of the other side
and the other side of that side, and so on, like 4 times, and then the top, and then the top again with some dark metallic to make it look like lead.

So like this guy here. There was no rush, so I have been taking my time with this webbing. Taking way longer than I thought, (always) and all this diamond stuff is driving me a little batty! But a few small areas to touch up and then stick the eyes on and he's out the door. Then I get to paint another one. Need to build up that latex a bit so I can peel it off the eyes and use that as a template to cut out the reflective material.

On a smaller scale... I had these fishnets on this lady. I love recurring themes threaded through different paint jobs. More and better pictures of her soon when I add them to the gallery,

Also finished these guys. Forgot the bolts on the top of 31's head, blarg. But otherwise done.

Might as well end with The Count, he is all but done as well. Quiet on the blog means busy in the dungeon. Lots more going on, hope everyone is as excited as me for some warmer weather!

Micro waist with a pale white feline face

2011-02-01T02:58:00Z

Actually, no I'm not talking about me and how sick I've been for the last few days. Now that I'm finally coming out of my delirium, I thought I should offer an update on what's going on.
As usual, I have a bunch of kits in various stages, and have four including spiderman that are just about finished.
Some in progress pics:

Got these midget monsters about done, had to put them aside for a few days since I was primarily painting with oils and they needed to dry

Coming up: Got the Janus Dracula about ready to paint, so I can start constructing some japanese monsters and styling Honey Ryder's hair.
Oh, and I'm getting something in that may come close to Slimer in size, I doubt it, but will certainly dwarf it in scope. I can't wait!

Happy Twenty Evil-en

2011-01-13T07:35:00Z

I for one will be glad to be out of the aughts, and lets just skip through the twenty tweens (seriously?) and get to the twenties.
But I hope your year is off to as good a start as mine. Sometimes being snowed in or kept indoors from the bitter cold is good motivation to sit under some hot lamps and do some work.
So lots going on. Completed Yoda and I have to say I was pretty sad to let him go. Its a great sculpt and was fun to work on. Except for the paint stripping part.

How he showed up:

And how he left:

He's still not perfect by any means, but I hope his owner is happy with the results. Its just as tough making resin look like a muppet as much as it is real flesh. Well I wasnt entirely going for a muppet look either. Just not the Episode I puppet. That abomination was worse than JarJar IMO. Thing was nightmarish looking.
And because I'm running on a half-assed installed version of Photoshop that keeps crashing, I'm going to keep this brief. Of course I finally sit down to do this.... *grumbles*

Well let's throw some red in here for stupid christmas being over with too. If you haven't taken your junk down yet, neighbors, you should get your ass out there.
(Hey I have to make this EVIL some how. Yoda? Spiderman?)

And ok, I got some primer to throw on Vampira, Dracula should be built by now as the construction is in the capable hands of my colleague Mr. Pigman Clemons, and I got this really nice kit of Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder and some more gems, but I'll just leave that for now and spread it out a bit.
Like I said, lots of time to build kits in between shoveling.

Oh, well here we go, somewhat evil-ish. I did finish this little Frankenstein replacement head.

Humbug!

2010-12-20T03:11:00Z

Anyone that knows me well, knows how I loathe this time of year. Not only am I a big baby when it comes to the cold, I'm not much of a festive sort when it comes to the holidays.
*grumbles*
Furthermore, I experienced some more hardware difficulties with my computer, so bear with me while I pick up the pieces.

Checking out the eye placement on this guy. I think I have fished quite a few kits I need to add to the gallery over the last few weeks, and again my apologies for the lack of updates.

Pictures look kind of yellow or warm. Just trying to get the ball rolling, got lots of new things to start posting.

Light, fire, boobs, weird Japanese monsters, and vampires.

2010-11-12T08:58:00Z

Hope everyone had an excellent Halloween. That, and a few seasonal changes around here have kept me busy, but also lots of cool things happening with the kits and a few pitfalls.
I always try to do something extra if I can or take an opportunity. Since Tinkerbell's wings were cast clear, its sort of a given you are going to try and light it. But I went a little too far with some other ideas but once I had the light behind the wings it was a lot more subtle than I had hoped for, even with a pretty intensely bright bulb. I'm no electrician or wizard at this, but I've learned a couple things from a few other projects. So I stuck with it since I'd started, and thought I would light the wings at least if I could.

I stuck the wires through a cut piece of clear tube, those things that come on the ends of your brushes to protect them before you go home and trash them instantly. But you save that clear piece, because you know, you might need it some day.
Then I put some apoxie sculpt around the wires, and let that set up a bit. I pushed the posts of the bulb into the putty so they would touch the wires, then back out. Now I have a perfect little plug, so in case you need to you can replace the bulb.

(J- spread the posts out a bit a little far out, you might have to even pinch it a bit when putting it in the holes. Just a tip for connectivity.)

Its kind of cool, I guess, I painted the wings with some iridescent colors that do not show up well in pictures.

Still some minor details to add, the leaf she sits on.
Then there's those gremlins. Well they're done, but I was trying to simply make some bases for them, but I ruined what I had going and it was a complete waste of time. It happens, but still it's the worst. Wait no, worst part is, I realized a perfect solution that's easy as hell.
So since I finally also figured out what I was doing with tinkerbells light, I took advantage of having it there and "painted" it on the flame of the glue bottle while I took the picture with a slow shutter. I could at least show you a completed picture of Gizmo while I finally finish the bases.

And just what kind of amazing world have I been missing out on?
I had to share this with you. What is this delightful creature?
Indeed I lead a sheltered resin existence, but I can't wait to paint this little guy. And I got a larger Pigmon, and his expression is the same as mine when I saw how the back of his head was engineered. This kit has a ton of parts and is incredible, but that deserves a post (and many) of its own.

I mean seriously, look at this. Is this a puzzle? Nice job!

Speaking of cool boxes, I snapped these pictures for the benefit of someone who has been looking for one of these, and we found one. So again, thought I would share. Oh man it brings back memories, you can't beat these old Janus kits. Mike Hill knocked this one out of the park in my opinion, and it was this kit that I won some awards with many years ago in Chicago at a convention, and John at Janus thought I did a good enough job that I might paint some of their kits for his customers who wanted them pre-painted. And that was that, Garage Kit Zombie was born. Or wasit killed?