“Until the day I held my magic sculpting tool aloft”

OK so here we go with my first proper posting of “He-Month” and time to show what I’ve been up to this last week and how far I’ve got with the “Sons of Eternia”, well work has been progressing at a steady pace, and though I’m very much playing catch up with Jez (as his figures were almost there to begin with, perhaps I should have just taken him up on his kind offer, it would have been so much simpler!), I’m quite pleased as to where I’ve got to, The big problem with sculpting stuff like this and indeed with sculpting from scratch is you can only do a small amount each day otherwise your likely (well I am) to stick your great big clumsy finger right into the soft putty you just spent half an hour trying to get perfect, so no sooner do you get yourself “into the zone” as it were than you have to stop and wait till the next day for it to dry properly. Of course the obvious answer here is to have more figures on the go at any one time, and I’m sure the professionals do, but as I can only get half an hour or so in a night anyway (especially this week as we’ve been doing early starts to our night shifts again, blooming real life, really sucks sometimes!!), this isn’t really an option.

Anyway enough with the excuses what you want to know is what I’ve done, so last post I left you with the figures partially dismembered and just about ready to start having the “greenstuff” applied. Well as it’s been a while since I’ve really done any of this work I decided to start off with a couple of small easier areas, so after spending most of Sunday messing about with the header for my Blog (anything rather than start proper!), I finally sat down to slap on some putty that evening, taking Skeletor first I added his left boot, I decided to go with the cartoon version of this which is very similar to “Superman’s” boots rather than the toys which have these rather bizarre three toed “claws” jutting out a strange angles around the toe. Then I set about adding He-man’s furry undies, this is a pretty simple job as you just smear the putty round the area in question then “tap” in the fur with the edge of a knife, I left a curved dip at the front where the front of his belt would widen, and that’s what I started Monday night by adding, this was just a tapered sausage run around his waist and then using a rubber sculpting tool dishing the middle all the way around, then I added three small “balls” of putty at the front that were then flattened into disks and another tiny one was then put on top of the middle disk (this will probably be painted as a jewel of some kind) though the cartoon version of his belt is plain the toy does have these on it though they are smaller. After this I added Skeletors other boot and his cross-belts, these I just ran over his shoulders and blended in on his back rather than sorting out any back detail as in a change to the original I plan to add a cape (long term readers will know how I “Love” doing capes!), as I always thought his hood should be attached to a cape.

Tuesday didn’t really see me making that much progress, as He-man only got his boots added (I could do both of these at once as his feet are wide apart so there was less chance of me knocking the finished one while working on the other. I’ll add the “fur” tops to these after they are dry. Skeletor had his “undies” added (thank god! Now we can go down to a PG rating) and the first of his shoulder pads, well as these are made up of three “leather” strips I don’t know if it counts as a “pad”, but you know what I mean. I had meant to do both sides but just ran out of time before work.

Wednesday came along and I decided it was time to add He-man’s famous chest plate, now I know that Jez over at “Carrion Crows Buffet” was having trouble adding this to his figure as his arm was across his chest, but as my chap has both hands held up above his head I was hoping that I wouldn’t have any such problems. So starting with the straps running over his shoulders I added two small sausages of putty and smoothed then to shape, tapering them into the gap between his head and his shoulders, then I cut the bottoms of these off square where they attach to the plate itself. Next a blob of greenstuff was stuck in the middle of his chest then carefully flattened it out into a rectangle and two more sausages were run from the sides of this around to the centre of his back, two more small sausages were then added from the rear of his shoulders to meet up with these and they were all smoothed into the familiar “X” shape. I didn’t add a buckle or any kind of detail here as I plan to add the scabbard for his sword over this later. Taking a small knife I then added lines on the front of the straps, the original has small red squares running up them but I wasn’t even going to attempt that! Then turning to Skeletor I really only had time to add the straps to his other shoulder and with the tiny bit of greenstuff I had left I attached his head at a jaunty angle, this is another of the GW plastic skeleton heads with its mouth open, as I like this head the best (this is actually one of the new plastic “skelly’s” heads as I have some of these and the old set, and though it is slightly bigger than the old ones, I decided the slightly more defined and angular look to it was a better match to Skeletors original face).

On to Thursday and as we all know accessories make any outfit, so starting with “old bonebonce” I added the leather straps over the front of his pants, these were done in the same way as his shoulder ones, then I ran a sausage of putty around his waist for his belt, this was going to just be a plain strip but I got a bit carried away and it ended up being wider at the front and recessed slightly. Then in a flurry of productivity I put the covering at the top of his cross-belts and decided to add the crossbones insignia on his chest as well! After two failed attempts at doing this with just tiny sausages I eventually had a bit of success by putting two sausages across in an “X” then adding two tiny balls at the ends of these and blending then all together, a right kerfuffle but I’m rather pleased with the end result, finally I put a small ball of putty in the centre of this and flattened it out into a disk (this should really have had another dot in the centre of this but I was getting a little worried about how far it was going to stick out so decided to leave it as is). On to He-man and first job was to add the cross to his chest plate this was done but adding a small ball of putty to the plate, flattening this out then pressing the tip of a knife into each corner, and finally today I ran sausages of putty around the tops of his boots and then “tapped” the fur effect into them with a knife.

And so finally we come to Friday, and with not a lot of time and even less Greenstuff left (must get some more over the weekend) I began by adding He-man’s infamous “pageboy” hairstyle, I’m not sure I pulled this off too well or whether it’s the face on the original figure, but something there isn’t quite right, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about it, oh well I guess I’ll learn to live with it. I also added his scabbard diagonally across his back, and that was about it for today, except that I glued Skeletors sword in place (and added a little putty to make it secure) and glued the plastic “Goat skull” I retrieved from the same sprue as “Skelly’s” skull, to the top of an “Irregular miniatures” spear, that with a little work will become his famous staff.

Well that’s one week down, still a bit of work to do, but I think I’m getting there, Be sure and check out Jez’s blog at…. https://carrioncrowsbuffet.wordpress.com/ to see how he’s progressing with his figures, and this week’s morale, is….

 “In today’s story Roger learnt that he should make sure he has enough Greenstuff in before starting projects like this”.    

Cheers Roger.