What's On My Desk - 3/20/22

While I there’s about four or five projects that I’ve completed this month, I still need to do write-ups for them. In the meantime, here’s what’s currently on my desk. You might notice that a few mainstays from the last couple What’s On My Desk entries are conspicuous by their absence…

Starting from the front row, going from left to right:

• A resin duplicate I made of a Robot Heroes Sunstreaker from my first Random Resin Recasts article (the second one coming soon). Since I’m going to recede him as his police car variant Cordon, I primed him with Army Painter Matte White and sculpted him a lightbar.
• One of the four Robot Heroes Mirage recasts (again from my first Random Resin Recasts and seen in previous What's On My Desks), which I’ve begun to paint as Decepticon Fracture (aka Crasher from Go-Bots). I’m almost done, I just need to touch it up and clean up the lines. Which is easier said than done on these because it wasn’t the cleanest resin cast, the two halves of the mold didn't quite line up perfectly when I initially cast this one, and I find myself having to go back to dremel down all the gnarly mold lines (which means more repainting and more disappointment).
• Dark Lion-O – This was an earlier resin recast that wasn’t previously featured in my Random Resin Recasts. I made it from a vintage Thundercats mini figure that I found on ebay and randomly decided to paint up like how I’d image a Shattered Glass/Mirror Universe evil version of Lion-O might look. I’m almost done painting this one as well, but like my Mirage recast, my resin casting of this figure wasn’t the best so there’s quite a bit of touch-ups to do before I can walk away from this one. Also, I want to flock his base with some craft sand.
• Two resin luchadores from a new series of custom figures that I’ve started working on concurrently with my Champions of Lemuria series. This will gets its own article eventually as it’s a project that I’m very excited about because I consider it one of my first baby steps towards designing, sculpting, and casting my own resin art toy (which is one of my major goals for this year and something I’m slowly but surely working my way up to). But this series in particular is just some WWE Rumbler toys that I found at Goodwill a while back and kitbashed to resemble a generic luchador that I subsequently made a silicone mold from and plan to give all sorts of fun decos.

Second row, again going from left to right:

• Final Fantasy Red Mage – While I’d like to say that I’m finally done with the building stage (I finally sculpted eyes for the chocobo, not that you can tell from the picture), I have that weird feeling that there’s something else I should probably add in terms of details but I have no idea what that might be. Still, I’m incredibly close to getting this thing ready for the painting phase which is nice because this is one of those projects that I feel like has been sitting on my desk forever.
• Champions of Lemuria Wave One – I finished sculpting/kitbashing the last details on these guys, particularly the lion man’s chainmail and the human barbarian’s fur cape. I’ve also finally given them names: Aslan, Lord of the Jungle (the lion guy), King Grar (the human barbarian/my bootleg King Grayskull), and Kehar the Exiled (the eye patch tiger man). I actually have a bit of lore for this series as well, which I’ll unveil in their respective entry (or entries if I don’t lump them into one super long write-up when I’m done).

And in the back we have…

• A Conan the Cimmerian Resin Staction Figure that used the bootleg He-Man that I duplicated in my DIY Molding Compound article as its starting point. I have just a couple more details to add to this one, as well as some weapons (namely a sword and shield that I’ve also resin casted). I’m really excited to start painting this one.
• One of the Optimus Prime Recasts, again from my Random Resin Recasts article. I swapped out his arm with one that cast better and primed him with Army Painter Matte White because I’m planning to paint him up like a rare and somewhat obscure variant of MP-10 Masterpiece Optimus Prime that was a Japanese Nike Atmos store exclusive from 2019 based on the Nike Atmos Safari shoes. Mostly because I really like the color orange but I haven’t really had to opportunity to paint anything that’s primarily orange yet. We’ll see how that goes…

But this photo was actually taken on Friday (3/18/22), so while I haven’t done much in the way of crafting this weekend, I did manage to at least prime my Champions of Lemuria and luchador figures.

For the Champions of Lemuria, I’ll have to file down some mold lines and rough spots that I missed before but for the most part, I’ll be ready to start laying down a basecoat on these guys any day now. Though I am sad that I used the last of my Rustoeum Painter’s Touch flat gray primer and haven’t been able to find any more for a reasonable price. It’s not in any stores in my area and for whatever stupid supply chain reason, individual rattle cans of the stuff have doubled in price on Amazon. I have lots of other primers I can use but I always find myself going back to the Rustoleum flat gray acrylic because of how versatile it is and how well it covers. Oh well.

These are my resin luchadores (and look, I made another one). I gave them a couple coats of gray Mr. Surfacer 1000 from Mr. Hobby that is supposed to cover up tiny gaps but I’ll probably hit them with another coat before I got to bed tonight because there are still a lot of visible “pinholes” from the air bubbles (which is incredibly disappointing because the castings looked so clean when I first demolded them). Also need to file off the obvious flashing before I even think about basecoating these guys (and to also dremel off the obvious Rey Mysterio iconography on the masks that I should have sanded down before I made my initial mold, but that’s not a big deal).

Hopefully next weekend or something this week (if work or writing doesn’t get in the way), I can go on an epic painting session to make some major progress on all the projects I have stacking up. But until then, keep an eye out for the articles I have planned for the projects that I’ve already finished.