I used to show WIP models a fair bit previously. I’ve done that a lot less in recent times, but now that I’m (almost) over the hardest part of the hump at work, and with three weeks left until I have my time off (though still tons to do at work!), it’s also the small window of time where I am able to work on a few other projects – in this case gifts for people at work. This year, I’ve got three – all of which need to be completed in the three weeks before I finish. No pressure, then.

Littlest Lil’ BUB WIP

Lil’ BUB, in the flesh.

The first is a Littlest Pet Shop toy repaint. I’m turning a generic LPS cat toy into “Lil BUB“. Mounted, masked and sprayed grey with Mr Surfacer – which actually sticks nicely to the soft PVC of the toy. I probably shouldn’t have masked the eyes since I’m going to have to try and match those distinct gigantic saucers on the actual cat. Oops. I’ll figure something out.

COO Model skull. Decapitated, mounted, sprayed.

COO Model Skeleton

Sugar Skull examples.

The second project is a Calavera – or Mexican “Sugar Skull”. This one is a Wedding present for a friend who really loves them. It took awhile to figure out how to create one of these. I decided to decapitate a 1:6 scale COO Model Skeleton who’d had a forearm breakage due to trying to post the overly-brittle plastic it is made of (yes, even after heating). It’s a nice feeling to be able to repurpose something that cost me that much into something besides wargame scenery – I was pretty POed when it broke and it’s just been sitting on a shelf getting glared at whenever I pass it by.

This one is more of a traditional modelling project, despite being made from a 1:6 Model. Neck is mounted on a 50mm rolled-edge base and that on top of a Secret Weapon Miniatures plinith. Not sure how I’ll decorate the plinith yet. It’ll depend very much on time available. I’d like to do something at the base of the neck as well – even a bit of greenstuff to blend it in with the base and give some additional stability. Again – I’ll have to work it out.

And this is where we’re up to…

The final part of this project is “Jinx” by Raging Heroes. I’ll write more about this one later, it was a gift from RH to it’s eventual recipient, but getting it so very late in the final wave of RH stuff has made things much more difficult than planned, especially as I’m going to have to buy some kind of chemical to remove the terrible mould release that Trollcast seem to use. TC’s equally-terrible choice of where to mount the channels for the additional parts is going to result in a loss of details and need for resculpting part of Jinx’ tail. If they’d added those exact same channels on the opposite side of the model it would not have interfered with Jinx’ tail at all. There’s also some pretty bed mould slip across the entire model, to the extent that if I find this on any of my other RH models when I finally get them all in hand and QA them, I’ll be asking for replacements. I’m not sure how or why RH allowed this poor level of quality through from Trollcast.

So with this in mind, and despite the kindness and good intentions from Mirielle, Jinx is going to be the bottom priority of these three. Hopefully I can still get it done.