“Shut your trap!”

Week three of He-month began with Jez finally posting up his first He-month posting after his computer woes had set back his update schedule, and pretty depressing stuff it was for me too! Not only is he already starting to get some paint on his figures but they are all absolutely smashing representations of the three figures he is reproducing in miniature. To make matters even worse two of them are the same as I’m trying to do! Still I was never a quitter and having my partner in crime back on board was just the push I needed to reinvigorate me, so it was back to the grindstone for me on Sunday and I was able to finish Trap-jaw. This began with me adding the strip that runs from the front of his helmet to the rear. This was done in two parts with a small length of putty being added running up to the “loop” atop his helmet and then a slightly longer one running from the loop to the rear, these were then smoothed into shape and poked through the loop to add some strength to it. Then I took a ball of putty and sticking it onto his shoulder shaped this into the circular top joint of his robot arm, lastly I added his famous robot jaw, this was a tapered sausage of putty run around his chin and shaped to fit, then using a pointed tool I added the jagged teeth, this is a bit bigger than I envisioned but I think it look alright (at least you can see what it’s supposed to be in a caricature’ish way). Then turning to my nemesis of this group Ram-man, I added his boots and the detailed top to the right one.

Monday, and I was able to make some good progress today beginning with adding his arms, these were first removed from another “Heroclix” figure “Havok” that I felt were just the right size and positioning for Ram-man. After these were glued on and dry, I finished off his boots, then set about adding his leather “skirt” and belt, these were just two sausages of putty one thick and one thin run around his body and then after they were smoothed I pressed in the “slats” of his skirt with the blade of a knife, and the small metal studs that each slat has were added using the end of the cut down nozzle that came with the last packet of superglue I bought from our local pound shop.

Tuesday, and all the work today was carried out around the back of the figure, I began by adding the armored shoulder plates to his shoulders, I was able to use these to hide the joins where his new arms were attached. Then I ran a triangle of putty down his back running from his shoulders to his belt and smoothed this to shape adding five small balls of putty to represent rivets. This is not exactly the same as any of the “Toy” versions of Ram-man but is a sort of amalgamation of all the different versions. I think it works.

Wednesday, another pretty productive day, I began by adding the front section to his breastplate, this was shaped at the bottom the same as the toy figure and I added three more of the “rivets” to the middle chest area. Then taking a few links of the chain I managed to pick up from a craft store last weekend (and it was in the sale and only cost me £2.00, result!) I glued these up the sides of his breastplate and “boxed” in the tops with some more putty.

Thursday, was helmet day, so time to hide the “classic American football” helmet that the Controller had been wearing (though there wasn’t really a lot of this left as I’ve been filing it down and down over the last couple of weeks!). I began by breaking off two of the “rivets” I’d added to his breastplate yesterday as I now realized that they would be in the way of the cheek pieces of his helmet (doh!), then I added a small disk of putty to the top of his head, and adding a thin sausage around the crown of his head, then blobs were added for the cheek pieces and finally a bigger blog was applied at the back of his head, then much smoothing and shaping was carried out to get the helmet into the classic tapered shape. Four crenulations were added around the crown as per the toy, and a ridge was added at the back to represent the place where the helmet sits atop the body armor. Now he looks like Ram-man! (and yes Simon that little bit of his face that you can see is all that remains of the figure I bought as the base of this conversion). Really he should have another collar of armor around the base of his helmet, but to be honest I’ve just run out of room to fit any more stuff round there.

Friday was another no sculpting day, and that brings me up to today, the end is now definitely in sight which is just as well as I need to get to painting these fellows this week to be in with a chance of finishing them by the end of the month. Please be sure and check out what Jez has been up to regarding his figures (they are really rather good, you know, and his Man-e-faces figure is inspired!) see them here….

https://carrioncrowsbuffet.wordpress.com/

While I was researching these figures I came across another back story for Trap-jaw, so I’ll leave you this week with that. It’s seems that Trap-jaw was a soldier who saved a child from a rampaging tank driven by Skeletor, however he was crushed beneath the tracks and Skeletor saved his life replacing his damaged limbs with robotic parts, he also brainwashed him into the evil henchman we know and love. A little gruesome for the “Kiddie-winkies” perhaps?

Till next week, cheers Roger.