Well, well, it's Halloween again.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, the return to school following the splendid summer holidays saw a cessation to the Soviet Army build.  There has been some progress, pieces have been prepared and there have been some joyous distractions along the way.  I have no doubt that the project will be completed, but I still struggle with the work and life balance.  That said, I thought I would share a spooky Halloween post, a piece that had been prepared some five years ago and is only now being dusted off and shared with you, good reader.

This then is my homage to Ring, a 1998 Japanese, psychological, horror film directed by Hideo Nakata.  A wonderfully odd piece of celluloid that revolves around a cursed videotape that kills the viewer seven days after watching it.  Without wanting to give too much away a young girl, Sadako is killed and her body disposed of in a well; her grisly return forming part of the cursed tape.

The build started with a Fenris Games well, but thinking that I might want to use it in my 'Witchfinder world', I added a few little extras in the form of a rope and bucket, mushrooms and even the remains of some luckless soul, perhaps Sadako herself?

The well was then 'filled' epoxy resin, which helps to convey a much needed feeling of depth to the piece.  As for Sadako, this was another of my Studio Miniatures horror characters and was relatively simple to paint on account of her damp, matted hair covering her face.  

A little bit of fun with the digital editing to allude to a grainy VHS recording and the piece is done...

Happy Halloween! 

What's that coming over the hill...

...is it a Monster?

Way back in the mists of time, March 2018 to be exact, the entries for final bonus round of the ‘VIII Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge’ were posted.  Monstrous was the theme and wonderful opportunity to present a veritable cornucopia of monstrous beings – the legendary Universal Monsters!

From the silver screen’s infancy there has been a desire to shock and scare the audience out of their seats.  Drawing inspiration from literary greats such as H.G. Wells, Victor Hugo and Mary Shelley, Universal Studios created a stable of monsters that would terrify and delight in equal measure.  Such was their popularity that the long running franchises are still revisited today.

My tribute to this golden age of cinema hail from ‘Studio Miniatures’ and were yet another of their Kickstarters that I supported.  A couple of them required assembly, namely ‘Frank’ and his wife, but the rest were lovely, crisp, single piece castings and an absolute joy to paint; although the preponderance of black did strain my eyes a little!  I had, albeit briefly considered painting these in greyscale, but my experience of this is rather limited and if memory serves me correctly it is a lot harder to pull off than you might imagine.

The question now is what to do with them?  Well these may yet prove the perfect villains for a certain crew of mystery solving teenage detectives, perhaps just the ticket for a 7TV crew?  Either way, I am thrilled to have them completed and were a fitting final theme for last year's challenge.

Happy Halloween!

I'm not sure when I first became aware of John Carpenter's Halloween, I certainly didn't see it at the cinema - I'm far too young for that!  I do however remember sitting down in a darkened room with friends to watch it on a video cassette player* with a picture so bad that you could barely discern what was happening save for the flash of light on Michael Myers’ blade.  Yet something of that time still fascinates me, perhaps it was Carpenter's own eerie, electronic keyboard soundtrack or the unsettling and disorientating movement of the camera, but a good horror story can be a winning formula and I certainly enjoy a celluloid scare!

*remember those?

I mention this here as it has bearing on a couple of matters, firstly this being All Hallows’ Eve and to make up for my woeful output during ‘Zomtober’, I thought I would mark the occasion with a couple more of the ‘Studio Miniatures’ horror characters range.   It somehow seemed appropriate to paint up this knife wielding pair as none other than Michael Myers himself.

Michael senior was not the most taxing of paint jobs, given that he is in a boiler suit, but his younger version more than made up for it with the clown costume and the addition of a carved pumpkin for the base.  

When it comes to this most wholesome of hobbies, I have always enjoyed a film or television tie in and it didn’t take make much persuasion to back this series of miniatures when they were launched as a Kickstarter, but what do you do with them?  

The short answer is that I am still not sure, but a chance comment by the ever creative Jeremy ‘Jez’ Winstanley has me thinking, albeit very long term, about a Survival Horror game possibly involving a haunted house, or mansion, and an intrepid crew of young investigators and their dog!

This has no real direction at present, more a collection of loose ideas that allows me to paint up some rather splendid miniatures once in a while, but it does allow me to hoist up another side banner to collect them under.  

Speaking of Survival Horror games, now might be an appropriate moment to confess that I have fallen foul of yet another horde of crowd funded plastic!  ‘Resident Evil 2: The Board Game’ launched by ‘Steamforged Games’ and produced under licence from Capcom really caught my eye, probably as a result of many a long hour scaring myself stupid with the original game nearly twenty years ago!  

So as darkness falls this evening, I need to keep a wary eye out for spooks and ghouls as the village children will come trick-or-treating.  This has, of course, been a wonderful excuse for me to buy far too many sweets and chocolate that I will inevitably have to finish off myself!

Happy Halloween!

In Full Bloom!

Some with the end of June fast approaching I am delighted to present for your delight and delectation my completed ‘Audrey II’.  This has been, without doubt, one of my most ridiculous undertakings to date, but one that has proved to be a truly delightful distraction.

When it came to the painting, I slowly, but surely, started to build up the layers of green around the base and neck leaving only the mouth to contend with.  This has been my greatest worry throughout the build, but in the end I used the musical version of ‘Audrey II’ as a point of reference and enjoyed the added splash of colour the mouth and lips brought to the piece.

Whilst I knew that I wanted to pay homage to the intergalactic, carnivorous plant star of the 1986 musical film, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’, I could not have envisaged the way the project developed and led to all sorts of wonderful diversions.   

Even with the addition of cast members and companion pieces, my addled brain continues to dream up additional accessories and scenarios.  Already plans are afoot for a more permanent home for 'Audrey II' and this in turn might call for a return to my 'Paranormal Exterminators' project, perhaps even calling in assistance from 'Mystery Inc.'

All that remains is to thank all my fellow contributors that have helped make this another great year of madcap modelling, sculpting, cutting and converting, but a special thanks must go to Roger Webb who has tirelessly reposted all our entries on to the ‘Forgotten Heroes’ site.  I leave with one final shot as 'Audrey II' makes an exciting discovery in the lost lands of 'Awdry Towers'!

I've given you sunlight

I've given you rain
Looks like you're not happy
'Less I open a vein

An Ensemble Cast

Audrey: I don't believe it.
Audrey II: Believe it, baby. It talks.
Audrey: Am I dreaming this?
Audrey II: No, and you ain't in Kansas, neither.

Throughout the build it has been important to keep an idea of scale and whilst I accept that there is a little leeway when it comes to an accurate portrayal of an intergalactic carnivorous plant, hell bent on world domination, the constant presence of Seymour Krelboined* has help keep the project on an even keel.   Now admittedly my Seymour, actually an ‘Artizan Designs’ Dr. Bell, reminds me a little more of the Florist’s owner Mr. Mushnik, but nevertheless his unwavering commitment to the project has seen him bumped up the painting queue.

*Changed to Krelborn in the musical.

It was whilst I was putting the final touches to Seymour’s tatty jacket that I started to wonder if I had any other suitable miniatures that could pass as members of the cast?  As luck would have it my latest ‘Studio Miniatures’ Horror Characters Kickstarter threw up a potential dentist in the shape of a Peter Cushing inspired sculpt – a truly terrifying prospect, but what about the luckless Audrey?

This proved a tad more problematically as it appears that I have a shortage of sorrowful looking, female sculpts, but as luck would have it I spotted a potential plant food wannabe on the ‘Crooked Dice’ website, simply known as the Duchess and decided to treat myself – all in the name of completion you understand.

So cast assembled it is time to return to the task in hand.
Paint me!  Paint me now!

An Amuse-bouche.

Seymour: It's true! I chopped him up. But I didn't kill him!

I used to worry about my inability to focus, but more recently I have decided to embrace it, to see where it takes me.  More often than not these flights of fancy lead to dead ends, but occasionally one takes hold and really lifts off.  So it was with this project as when I was assembling ‘Audrey II’, I found myself imagining different uses for all the redundant bits and pieces that I had collected during the build.  Before long a couple of little companion pieces were assembled, which I present for you here.

The first, ‘Audrey Jnr.’ started life as a simple bud, found amongst the assorted broken silk flowers and leaves that I had stashed away. It just seemed to cry out to me, “Feed me, Seymour!” and so before long I was looking for something suitable to plant him in. This flowerpot was made from a slender cardboard tube, with a simple cardboard lip. Using an off cut of the identical resin flagstone that had formed the base for the main build things were soon underway.

A couple of planting trays from ‘Supreme Littleness’ and some small dolls house terracotta flowerpots started to give the impression of a forgotten corner of Mushnik’s Florist. It still needed something extra though and by chance I unearthed the final element, a ‘S & D models’ metal watering can.

The other piece is a little darker and simply known as the ‘feeding station’.  For some reason I found myself wondering how Seymour would be able to feed the plant as it started to dwarf him? By climbing up his step ladder of course!  The floor is once again the now familiar resin flagstones with the rest of the elements predominately made up from various ‘S &D models’*, all originally bought a while ago as part of a now long forgotten greenhouse project.  The final addition of a couple of bags of miracle grow and some serious gore saw this particular flight of fancy exhausted.

*Available through Forty-Third Limited

Back to the build proper and 'Audrey II' has had an undercoat and a couple of passes with the trusty airbrush and I have to say that I am rather pleased with the results.  Everything is still holding and the green has had the unifying effect that I had hoped for!

Finally then, just a reminder that all the posts for this year's 'Forgotten Heroes' event have been dutifully reposted by the ever efficient 'Roger Webb' and can be viewed as a collective over at the official site 'here'.