Another couple of Marvel United miniatures today – and the final pair of April’s models. We have Ben Grimm – the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing and his close compatriot, Johnny Storm – the Human Torch! Unfortunately I didn’t get Red or Sue completed in time for April and still don’t have them done for the intended group shot, so we’ll have to come back to the other half of the team once they’re done…
Originally, The Thing was one of the “easier” models that we’d picked out for Marouda to paint, but when we started playing through the Fantastic Four box I decided to take the lead on getting the FF to the painted stage and so painted Ben up fiirst.
Johnny was produced in a pretty nice clear red plastic, so I had to decide how best to paint him. I’ve seen some renditions of this model with Johnny’s blue uniform and human flesh painted in, with the flames around him being either left clear or painted in, but with models like this being on the less common side I preferred to lean into the transparency, so gave him some all-over treatments of thinned orange and yellow contrast, doing my best to remove it from the raised areas of the model and just adding in Johnny’s eyes, mouth and the Fantastic Four logo on his chest in white. Not especially realistic, but something that works for me in the comic-book context (and – let’s face it – also would for a fantasy or 40k model).
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Benjamin Grimm and the Fantastic Four was my all-time favourite comic growing up, even eclipsing the “Phantom” by a small margin. Go Thing!
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Haha cheers, Guru! 🙂
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Really nice job on the Thing! What did you use for the orange and also the blue of his shorts? Color wise it looks a lot like a Thing you we had as kids.
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Thanks mate! He was originally sprayed a desert yellow, then thinned Gryph-Hound Orange Contrast, then drybrushed Citadel Troll-Slayer Orange, then VMC Light Orange 70.911, then a mix of Light Orange and (I think) VMC Ivory.
The blue was (I think) all AK. Medium Blue, shaded by mixing it with Dark Prussian Blue and highlighted by mixing the Medium Blue with Deep Sky Blue.
Yeah, turns out that the 90’s John Byrne version of the FF is the one seared into my memory, so white belts, gloves and boots to go with the blue jumpsuits!
I may have even had the same action figure as a young man for the shelf. 🙂
– quick google – nope, turns out the Thing figure I had back then was wearing pants, boots and a FF-4 sleeveless T-shirt!
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I don’t think I would have ever guessed how you did that orange. It definitely has that bright orange toy vibe. Probably because the shading in-between the rocks is more orange than black or dark brown. Byrne’s run was in the 80s, but I know what you mean. One of my favorite runs of the FF. I have a mini bust of Annihilus that is modeled after Byrne’s rendition. I want to say the Thing toy we had was something like this, but I was imagining something smaller: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/lHIAAOSwSqJg60jt/s-l1600.jpg
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It was completely a matter of making it up as I went along – no proper planning involved. So it went something like this…
“It’s too yellow with that spray, needs to be more orange.”
“wow. that’s way too dark. I need to lighten it. What oranges do I have on the desk? Yeah, that one will make a good mid-tone”
“ok, cool. That’s on track now. I’ll add some of that light orange that I like.”
“right, now to desaturate it a little. which one of these should I mix in?”
A fuller explanation for me seeing Byrne in the late 80s and early 90’s would be the back issues I was picking up as I went back and added to my spider-collection as well as cross-overs and other relevant events (SW, SW2, etc) – as I was never an actual FF collector. But yeah, when I think of the FF it’s his versions of the characters that come into my head!
Your FF toy does look super familiar to me as well, but I’m pretty sure I only had the one of them, and I definitely had the pants-and-boots one. Unless I *did* have more than one..? 😮
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Great work on both mate, I think what you’ve done with the human torch works really well, and the white looks good.
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Thanks Dave! No doubt he’d also have looked good “painted in” but then it’d be a waste of a nice translucent model!
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Nice work on the Thing mate, and Johnny looks pretty ‘cool’!
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Thanks Alex. I should do Bobby Drake soon and see how he goes next to Johnny!
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Oh I like these! 🙂 Both of ’em! The flames are spot on!
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Thanks John! He looks pretty sweet backlit as well! 🙂
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Its clobberin’ time! Great job knocking these two out. I know I said it for Groot but The Thing is another mini that’s perfect for the Chibi style. I’m excited to see more of these and yes, I might have looked to see if there are any individual sculpts for sale after this post so thanks for that 😀
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Thanks mate! You’re not wrong – the more abstract these characters are the more easily they fit into the style, I think. Haha I’d imagine there’s a fair few of them out there on eBay across the entire Marvel Universe!
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I just realized I missed a chance to reference CM Punk there too… What a miss on my part. I’ll have to do some digging then. Cheers, mate! 🙂
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I was thinking about old Punky-boy when painting this as well, but also couldn’t think of a way to do it at the time. I’ve just thought of something I might be able to do later, though! 😉
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