Archive for the ‘Vinyl’ Category
I recently picked up the incredible vintage Masudaya Robot YM-3/B-9 1/5 scale talking vinyl kit from Lost in Space at a local comic show. It’s a gorgeous kit that I quickly build up, but the claws that come with the kit are a letdown in accuracy compared to the rest of the kit. I designed a simple, drop-in replacement part that is more screen accurate and fits your robot without any modification, available in red (and other colors) plastic now from the PRHI Shapeways Shop. You could potentially cut the claws apart at the middle and make them articulated the same way the stock kit parts work, or leave them as-is for a no-effort upgrade to your trusty bot.
There is a whole host of new 3D printed replacement accessories for your vintage robots available now in the PRHI Shapeways Shop. You can now buy replacement shooting fists for all of your Takara Jeeg and Gakeen magnemos, and Mego Micronauts figures such as Baron Karza or Force Commander. Also available are Microman MicroGander replacement fists with and without 5 mm holes to hold accessories, and replacement missiles that will fit in the chest and foot launchers. For you vinyl fans, you can now pick up missiles for your vintage Bandai Missile Fire Vinyls (MFV). You can get regular replacement missiles, or missiles that end in a 5 mm peg so you can add your own custom warheads. For links to each product, read after the cut.
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Restore is having another painting contest, in collaboration with Pop Soda. I had a great time in the previous contest with my third place entry Gikaku, False Oni. Entries for this contest could use any of Restore’s toys, and I went with Fog because it was pretty much the only way I was going to be able to get one these days. I love the detailed sculpt, so I looked at lots of real life pictures of chameleons for inspiration. Turns out, chameleons are totally rad, so I had a lot to work with. I took key colors from a couple that I liked and tweaked the layout to fit the humanoid shape, and fired up the airbrush. The name “Pardalizard” comes from the species name of some particularly hot looking breeds. The contest is open for a few more months, and then we’ll see how I do!
I took all the photos outside so I could show off my nature-inspired Fog in his home. The photoshoot was a ton of fun and I am really happy with how the photos came out. More after the break, and there are a lot of shots!
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Bemlar has the dubious distinction of being the first Ultra Monster to face an Ultraman, way back in 1966. It’s a solid design that still holds up, and M1’s sculpt is a great representation, capturing Bemlar’s weird upright stance with just the right amount of stylization. The toy is covered with terrific textures that made painting this guy a blast. I painted Bemlar at the last Monster Kolor paint class, where I had access to the full host of MK goodies. I had just come back from seeing Godzilla 2014 the night before, which is incredible and everyone should see. I was really smitten by how hard it was to figure out what color Goji was in that film, so I wanted to try something like that for myself. I used a lot of strong directional sprays, a couple of metallic colors, clear colors, and some final pearl work to make Bemlar look a different color from pretty much every direction. I tried to capture that in the photos by taking shots from different angles. He’s blue in some, green in others, with yellow and copper hues showing up as well. Painted on flesh vinyl visible on the arms.
It was fun to flex all my airbrushing muscles after having done nothing but real type weathered robot figures for so long. Think I’ll have to find time for a few more bright and shiny toys in the future…
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On Saturday, June 22 I took a trek out to the brand new Monster Kolor shop in Middleboro, Mass for one heck of a good time. I attended the ‘Paint your own TriPus’ event, hosted by Monster Kolor with blank TriPus figures supplied by Max Toy Co. The attendees ranged in skill from the talented and always fun Todd Robertson and Will Long to people who had never used an airbrush before. The weather was perfect for a bunch of toy heads to hang out in a back alley and shoot paint. Benny Kline of Tenacious Toys was nice enough to photograph the whole even and post a huge gallery of photos from the day.
I spent the drive to Massachusetts planning the paint job for my TriPus. I wanted to something with deep blue tones and a fade on the bottom to give the appearance of a monster emerging from the ocean, all realistically colored and detailed up top. Walker had a few special paints and surprises out for people to try, so I was able to stick to my plan while trying out a few sharp new colors. Click through for nice big, tasty photos of some shiny green TriPus action! The whole figure was painted on Saturday with whatever tools and colors were on hand, and served as a great warm up refresher piece while I work on unpacking my studio into my new apartment.
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I recently finished this vintage Japanese soft vinyl garage kit of the Studio Nue version of the power suit from Starship Troopers. The Powered Suit is an iconic mecha design in Japan, and you should read my review of the kit over at CollectionDX for more info and some history.
If you just want big pictures of a chunky mecha kit painted up, continue reading…
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I will have a review and full write-up of this sweet vintage kit on CollectionDX hopefully soon, but I literally just finished the kit tonight and wanted to get some quick shots posted. Proper studio shots to follow.
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B-Club is the specialty item arm of Bandai. B-Club makes PVC character figures, model detail parts, soft vinyl toys and kits, and more. They’ve released numerous reissue Bullmark kaiju vinyl toys, but have also released soft vinyl model kits over the years. At some point, B-Club released a line of 1/75 scale kits of mecha from Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket. I don’t really care for the miniseries, but I like the machines in it quite a bit. When I learned about the line, I knew I needed to start tracking them down. Soft vinyl robot kits are a strange breed, but I love them. I wrote along, indulgent thoughtpiece about vinyl robot kit in a review over on CollectionDX. Go there to read lots of words, and scroll down for more and bigger pictures of the finished Zaku.
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This guy was a commissioned I finished up a few weeks back. The customer sent me a swatch of camo in the style he wanted, and I think I did a pretty good job of matching it. We settled on a flat finish and very technical ‘tight’ camo rather than the loosey-goosey airbrushed camo some other kaiju guys have coined.
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I picked up a pair of blank grey-green Marusan Ganimes from GrumbleToy a while back for my brother and myself. Ganime is the crab monster from the classic Space Amoeba film. I wanted to do something funky to get back in the airbrushing groove, so I painted the pair with blue shells like lobsters and crayfish sometimes have.
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Prometheus Rising Studios 