Crafting Quickies – Dark Lion-O, Luchador Eraser, DIY Moss Man

I know I end almost all of my project write-ups by saying something to the effect of, “I’m really happy with how this came out!” but as the glow of having finished a project fades and I start to look back, I’m not super proud of how a lot of my recent (and pretty much all of my past) projects look in retrospect. I’ll see the pics I’ve taken and think, “man, I could have spent way more time sculpting this part” or “I should have done a better job touching up the paint here and filling in the gaps over there” but I don’t let it discourage me. Because everything I don’t make for someone else (which is 99.9% of my projects so far), I just chalk it up to practice and move on to the next one. I have a never ending list of “next ones” and even if my projects look worse, I still feel like I’m getting a little bit better.

I’m a firm believer in the benefits of repetition. If I eventually learn to do something well, I have to do it over and over and over again. That was my mindset when I approached these little projects, all of which started life as one-off resin castings and many of them I made for my Random Resin Recast series, wherein I attempt to teach myself the ins and outs of resin casting and mold making through trial and a whole lot of error. My mission for these Crafting Quickies was to come up with ideas for what to do with these random resin castings and then execute the ideas as expediently as possible and hope they look decent enough.

First at bat was this recast I made of a vintage Thundercats Lion-O mini figure from the 1980’s. As you can see, this casting wasn’t the best and neither was the sculpting on the original figure. The face came out kind of lopsided, which made painting the eyes and trying to make them look right a real pain (but more on that later). I primed the casting in gray, glued it onto a duplicated GI Joe stand, and gave it a resin copy of a He-Man Mega Construx Power Sword that I had lying around because the original figure didn’t come with a Sword of Omens.

The first thing I wanted to get right was Lion-O’s skin (fur?) color. Instead of using the original mini figure as a reference, I decided that the Super7 Savage World Lion-O figure from my collection would be a much safer bet. I mixed together some drops of Citadel Kislev Flesh paint with some Reaper Candlelight Yellow until I ended up with something that was relatively close. For the light-colored markings, I went with Reaper Desert Sand mixed with a tiny bit of Vallejo White.

I took creative liberties with the rest of the paint deco, since I thought it would be fun to give him a Dark/Mirror Universe/Goth motif. Here are the rest of the paints I used:

• Hair, boots, Power Sword: Citadel Naggaroth Night
• Outfit, dark facial markings/goth facepaint: Citadel Addadon Black
• Eyes: Vallejo white, Citadel Mephiston Red (pupils)
• Thundercats insignia: Mephiston Red
• Claw Shield: Citadel Rhinox Hide

I tried to give it a wash using Citadel Reikland Fleshshade on the skin and/or fur and Citadel Nuln Oil on everything else but this was another one of those cases where there just wasn’t a lot of detail for it to seep into and provide any real depth.

So I just brushed over it again with the base color, touched things up as best I could, flocked the base with some craft sand, and finished it off a glossy protective clearcoat.

Here’s the final piece side-by-side with the original mini figure that I copied it from. I really did try my best with that face but the casting was such a disaster. But hey, onwards and upwards.

Here’s one you might recognize from my second Random Resin Recasts article. This luchador was originally an eraser that I cast several times in epoxy resin. Here I just took the best parts from the other two castings (the blue feet and the brown hands) and glued them to the pink one, which turned out better than the other two outside of its hands and feet.

I wasn’t going for any specific deco but I thought a combination of yellow, green, and blue would look really cool on a masked wrestler. I don’t remember what I primed him with, if I primed him at all. But if I did, I likely just hit it with a coat of Duplicolor Adhesion Promoter immediately followed by a flat gray undercoat.

Here’s the colors I used for the basecoat:

• Skintone: Citadel Bugman’s Glow
• Eyes and teeth: Vallejo White
• Costume: Reaper Dragon Blue, Citadel Yriel Yellow (mixed 50/50 with Reaper Candlelight Yellow, I think),
• Boots: Abbadon Black
• Base: Abbadon Black (followed by a Citadel Mechanicus Standard Gray dry-brush)

And if you’re keeping score, this is the third appearance of that Boss Fight Studios zombie figure base that was previously duplicated for my Sunset Overdrive OD Mutant custom as well as my Death Knight.

I gave him a quick but heavy wash with Reikland Fleshshade. This time, there were all kinds of details for the wash to accentuate. I’m thinking back to the original piece that with was casted from and there’s absolutely no reason for the sculpting to be this good on an eraser. Not that I’m complaining.

I did a quick pass with the dry brush, using the base colors for his tights, some white mixed in with the gray for his base, and a lighter fleshtone for the skin (Kislev Flesh) to see how it would look as a highlight. Afterwards, I once again sprayed the entire figure with a glossy protective clearcoat.

Again, the casting was far from perfect (those hands and the hastily filled-in space on the back where the original eraser-figure’s cape would plug in) but I still had fun painting it.

This last one was easily the quickest of the three. I took a spare epoxy resin casting of a Masters of the Universe Eternia Minis Beastman (which you’ll see in part 3 of my Random Resin Recasts series when I eventually get around to giving that batch its write-up) and figured I would do something a little different. Since I had no shortage of flocking material, I decided to turn this Beastman into a Moss Man.

First, I spray painted the figure in one of my Rust-Oleum Camouflage Army Green. I don’t know what it is, but this is probably the best this spray paint has ever looked on one of my projects.

Then I coated it with Mod Podge and dunked it in my fake grass flocking. When that dried, I painted the eyes and teeth (and possibly gave the face an Athonian Camoshade wash for a tiny bit of added depth) and sprayed the entire thing with a matte finish protective clearcoat.

After the clearcoat dried, I glued it to a resin copy of a GI Joe base. I think I painted the base with Citadel Death World Forest and then dry brushed with Reaper Naga Green, possibly with a drop of yellow mixed in. Then I gave it another protective clearcoat to make sure the flocking wasn’t going anywhere and called it complete.

And there you have it. Nothing stellar but it felt good to get some crafting in, especially during periods when I don’t have a lot of time to spare.