December 27, 2020
While the workbench was active all week, it wasn’t very active because of Christmas. Most of what I did really didn’t require much intense effort. I painted several Eureka Polynesian figures and a few more of the Old Glory Cannibals from the Pirate line. I’ll be using both of those groups as the islanders for my King Kong collection. I also painted two of the Old Glory Cannibal war canoes that I will use as beached canoes in that same project. I’ll probably also set their crews on some plastic strips that can be set in the canoes if I want them to be active rather than beached, but that remains to be done. The last half of the week was spent painting 38 pairs of plastic palm trees for my Kong project. They’re easy to paint and base, but time-consuming nonetheless. I’m only showing 8 pairs here because they all look the same.
December 20, 2020
I began the week with the unexpected. Last week I completed what I believed then would be my King Kong… one and only. But while looking around for something else I came upon a bag of Heroclix figures that included Shriek and decided to do a second Kong (I have three of the same articulated version… all swap meet purchases) with Kong holding a victim who would be the Shriek figure. Most of the work involved positioning the gorilla, gluing his joints, filling the joint gaps with Milliput and scoring for the appearance of hair, and then painting the gorilla and the victim. Once that was done, I just glued the Shriek figure in the right hand of the gorilla.
Next on the workbench agenda was another project I hadn’t thought of prior to this week. I decided that the Gordon Institute needed a mobile crane. To achieve that I built a crane unit that would fit on the back of one of my modified Atlantis flatbed trucks (originally the tanker). Because I didn’t want to lose the option of the truck being a flatbed, I made the crane unit removable. It is made out of Evergreen and Plastruct plastic, floral wire, and a couple GW detail pieces (a pulley and a lever) left over from a kit previously used.
In my rummaging around for other stuff, I also came across what looked to me to be a diving bell or capsule. It required only paint. I think I will use it with the Gordon Institute Loch Ness project.
As part of my Gordon Institute King Kong project, I decided it was time to see what I could do with the Moana playset single outrigger catamaran. I have three of them. The first one I bought at a Disney Store clearance sale… $12. The other two I found for a dollar each in a pile of cast-off toys at the swap meet… I really miss the swap meet. I set each of them in a base of Milliput and then gave them new paint jobs. The crew figure I gave each of them was from the Old Glory 25s Pirate collection… their cannibal canoe rowers.
December 13, 2020
I'm starting a new project that will focus on my Gordon Institute for Archeology and Paranormal Study and its search for the origins of the legend of King Kong. My initial work on this project centers on the construction of a huge wall that divides the legendary Skull Island. I have decided that for my purposes this wall will actually be a natural rock ridge formation that divides the island. For the entrance through that rock ridge, I have used the Fisher Price playset Gorilla Mountain. I have posted pictures of that previously. For the rest of the rock ridge, I am using a plastic rock formation that I got at the swap meet as a cast-off toy by Toys To Grow On/Dino Mountain. I have purchased five of those formations over the years at prices running from $1 to $3 each. I bought it because it was cheap, easy to find at the swap meet, good plastic, big (10 1/2" across the base and 11" tall), and relatively easy to modify using a hobby saw, Legos, Duplos, and Milliput (lots of Milliput). I will be using four of these formations plus the Fisher Price piece to create my wall. I am posting here a picture of the original piece and then pictures of the four modified pieces... unpainted as yet. Note that the first two posted don’t have any shrub formations and the last two do. After painting the first two I realized that the piece needed more color, so I added Milliput shrubs. Once those were done, I went back and added the shrubs to the first two as well. Those changes are not pictured here.
This week I also found some nice terrain pieces (also swap meet purchases) that were originally bases for large Super Hero or Horror character figures. That type of base often showed up at the swap meet, and if they looked like they might work I bought them and repainted them. When complete with their figures, those bases are very expensive, but the bases by themselves generally cost me two to three dollars each.
Over the course of several years, I have purchased about a half dozen different toy gorillas at the swap meet to serve as my King Kong, the smallest being about 4 inches tall and the largest 6 inches tall. From what I have read, the different Kongs pictured in films could be as short as 18 feet tall to as tall as fifty feet. Given that, I decided to use my 6 inch gorilla as my Kong. The figure was originally articulated, but the gaps in the joints were huge so I had to fill them with scored Milliput. This Kong adventure will center on the work of the Gordon Institute. Because the 1933 RKO Pictures film fits nicely into the Pulp era, that film is the basis for the Institute’s initial interest in the Kong story and whether it might be rooted in fact rather than just the creative mind of a film maker. Interestingly, Marian Cooper, who produced the first King Kong film, was inspired by the 1926 Komodo expedition by the American Museum of Natural History led by his friend and museum trustee William Douglas Burden. The expedition was in search of the giant lizards reported on Komodo. The expedition included a hunter, herpetologist, cameraman, Burden, and Burden’s wife, Catherine.
As the week came to an end, I began to think about the fact that I needed a boat or launch that could transport cargo from the ship to Skull Island. I looked online for ideas… something in 1:43 scale… and everything I found was either very modern or very expensive or both. Then I remembered that I purchased a fishing shack from a 3D printing company, and it came with a boat. It was intended to be a rowboat, but it seemed to me to be very oversized for that. I decided to cut the seating benches off that boat, give it a tiller and rudder, a seat for the helmsman, and a cabinet for a centerboard motor much like what is found on a captain’s gig. I added three cleats and gave it a paint job. It will serve my needs well.
December 6, 2020
Since last June I have been working on my Gordon Institute Loch Ness project. At this moment I think I have only one more figure to paint before I do a practice layout to finalize how the terrain will be placed on the tables. I hope to have it photographed in early January. As I got closer to the end of the Loch Ness project, I began thinking more seriously about what project to start next, and I decided to do another Gordon Institute project. This one will take the Institute members in search of the legend of King Kong. With that decision behind me, I jumped into the project by doing its most significant piece of terrain… the gate separating the world of Kong from the rest of Skull Island. I have elected to divide the island with a natural rock outcropping that runs the width of the island and has only one connecting point which is a great gated opening in the rock. For that great gated opening I am using a Fisher Price playset entitled Gorilla Mountain. I got mine as a cast-off toy at the swap meet for $5 (mine was missing the animals… not a problem). Taking it apart was the most time-consuming element of the project. Once the toy was in pieces, I began putting it back together with the design I wanted. That involved filling holes with pieces taken from other sections of the toy and filling gaps with lots and lots of Milliput. The gate itself is made from Evergreen plastic. The altar poles are by Miniature Building Authority. They come nicely pre-painted but I repainted them so they would be the same color as the rest of the stone elements of the piece. With this piece complete, I still have about 4 feet of rock wall to go plus the reverse side of the entrance, but I am now officially on the search for Kong.
With one side of the great gate complete, I decided to do the reverse side before moving on to the wall sections. Fortunately, I have a second Fisher Price Gorilla Mountain playset that I purchased at the swap meet for $5 and I will be using it to make the other side of the great gate. There are two reasons for using two playsets rather than both sides of one playset. The first is simply that it is easier. The back side of this toy is crude and unfinished and would take a huge amount of work and material to make it look relatively good… that would be expensive in terms of time and money. The second reason is that I plan on placing the gate against the edge of the table to allow as much room as possible for terrain development. With that as the case a two-sided gate would not be practical. The second playset gate will be placed in a similar position for a similar reason on a second table. The second playset will have the same general shape as the first, but the gorilla head will be hidden under a cover of Milliput and I will do some reshaping of the upper half of the piece using Duplos covered with Milliput. The gate has a slightly different look… no hinges showing and no locking bar. To provide a little definition to the gate, I added some cross beams in the shape of a V on each side.
In addition to the gates, I also painted three frogs and two Reaper figures. All five of these will be part of the Loch Ness collection and I believe that in terms of figures they bring it to an end.
