Cheeseburger the Bear (Reaper Bones 77494: Dire Bear)

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Here’s a model that I randomly found in a baggie of Reaper Bones models from one of their Kickstarters. I believe I pulled it out at the same time I found the Carrion Worms, so it’s been sitting around for a couple of months now, having a little bit done to it every so often.

The fur had actually been done for some time, and the model just kept getting shoved out of the way from one spot on the desk to another, until I was doing the basing on another trio of models last weekend, so I grabbed the bear to do it’s base at the same time.

So a couple of days ago I saw it there, and decided to finish it off. A couple of hours later and the fur was finished, claws and muzzle and mouth and eyes painted, matt painted on and some tufts added. Anyone who has played Far Cry 5 will understand why I’ve called this bear Cheeseburger (though it also makes me think of the ROH/NJPW Wrestler).

I’m pretty happy with how Cheeseburger’s face turned out. It’s the first time I’ve painted a realistic Black Bear’s face (albeit on a simple Bones model), and it was quite a bit of fun.

In gaming terms, it’s a pretty flexible model. Obviously there’s a place for it in Roleplaying Games, but also anything scenario based, such as Historicals, Fantasy, even some sci-fi. There’s also potential for use in any army (again, especially Fantasy and Historical) that has animal or beast handlers – even 40k could work here – Dark Eldar/Drukhari Clawed Fiend, anyone?

I’ve only just considered that I could have made an awful pun and titled this post “Bear-ly Legal”, but on second thought while puns like Who Let the Dogs Out, etc are fin and fun, Bear-ly Legal might attract the wrong kind of crowd via searches. 😉

It does remind me of an amusing and wholly-unrelated anecdote that I’ll share here. Back in the mid-90’s when I used to play The Warhams with a regular and fluid group in a store in Melbourne’s CBD, there were a couple of other younger, 20’s guys who were also into wrestling, as I was. One evening we were talking about one particular guy lending me a pair of videotapes that he’d gotten hold of. One called Hardcore Heaven and the other called Barely Legal. We were discussing how good they were supposed to be (I’d heard of them, but not ever seen them). Another guy who overheard the discussion warned us that we needed to “be careful” with stuff like that. After a minute or so, we explained to him that we were talking about a different Hardcore Heaven and Barely Legal than what he thought we were on about. We were of course talking about Extreme Championship Wrestling’s first two PPV events. You’re welcome.

Oh, and here’s a size shot of the Big Guy. Pretty happy with how this one turned out, especially given that it’s a Bones model with soft detail and weird, difficult mould lines. The good news at least is that while both of those do stand out a bit in these oversized photos, they’re not really an issue for the model in hand.

22 thoughts on “Cheeseburger the Bear (Reaper Bones 77494: Dire Bear)”

  1. Cheeseburger! I love it! Like, not just the paint job, but I want to hug it. And even without knowing either of the references you mentioned, I am a total fan of the name Cheeseburger for it.

    As I was looking through the pics for the first time, I actually did notice the mold lines a little, and was thinking “Wow, Bones stuff must have *really* bad mold lines. I’ve never seen anything Azazel did where they were even remotely noticeable before.”

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    • Thanks Alexis! The thing with the Bones mould lines is not that they exist – I mean, anything and everything in the modelling world can (and does) have mould lines. The problem with bones is that they’re hard to see because of the way the PVC looks (and since spray priming doesn’t work, you can’t do that easy reveal once you spray them white or grey) and because of the weird, soft PVC material it’s much harder to remove them without creating huge skim marks from slicing (scraping doesn’t work) – so it takes much, much longer than doing the same on a HIPS or metal or resin model. And then you need to decide how much care and time you’re going to take on a model that cheap when you’ve got lots else to do. So I do the obvious ones, but don’t knock myself out over them.

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      • Yep. It’s pretty annoying. On the other hand, it (and the Bones price point) makes it easier to care less about making each one of them perfect. Same thing with the Brimstone stuff that I’m doing a bit of now.

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    • He’s a pretty big bear. Might have been the a case of the Paladin eaten by the Cheeseburger! Thanks for the compliments, I almost always do a google image search when I’m painting animals, just to see what nuances I can pick up.

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  6. I actually missed the mold lines on first pass and had to go back and look for them. I think you did a nice job on hiding them. The bear face is just killer. Especially on pic #5. Hopefully I never have to get that close to a bear face, and I definitely won’t be thinking “Hmm, Azazel didn’t quite get that tooth right…”!

    A question for you, do you have a preferred black paint? I’ve been using VGC Black, but I’m getting tired of how fast it dries on the brush and gunks up in the bottle as well. Yea, I’ve added flow aid into the bottle, but that hasn’t stopped it so far. I could add more, I suppose. I’ve been thinking about buying Citadel’s Abaddon Black, but also heard that VMC Black is decent.

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