Road To Comic-Con: Repainting The Rex

          Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another entry to CWTC’s Road To Comic-Con blog po-

     To quote Tobey Kebbel’s character from Kong: Skull Island, “Sometimes life just punch ya in the balls.”  Despite how I may feel about this news, this prop and this costume isn’t going to finish itself so until we hear more about when Comic Con will be (or find a different one to attend), might as well just keep plugging away at it, right?

     Alright, so in this blog post, we’re going over the process of repainting our Super Colossal T. Rex from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom to closer resemble the infant Rex from The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  I’ve already gone over any physical changes I’ve made to the sculpt in Part 1 (link here) so this entry is focusing on any cosmetic changes.

     First thing’s first, our Rex needs to be primed.  Since there are parts of the Super Colossal Rex that are rubber, the usual Rustoleum primer won’t work too well since that stuff never cures properly on rubber and will come off at the slightest touch.  Instead, we’re using a can of aerosol Gesso (I used Krylon) since that’s a primer-like substance that works on plastic and rubber so I’ve primed the Rex as seen below.  I’ve also done inside the mouth, just as an aside.

Don't mind the Thrash and Throw Rex.  That is a repaint I have long since finished and sold.

     Okay, so for this, we are going to be using the following items:

      -Water with an eye dropper

     -Soapy water to wash brushes when not in use

     -A paint pallete

     -Paper towel

     -Brushes of various sizes

     -Clear nail polish for the eyes and mouth

     -Paint colors Tan, Antique White, Amish Grey, Wysteria (or a very light purple), Citrus Green, Raw Umber, Forest Green, Deep Red, Leaf Green, Yellow, Black, English Ivy Green (Campground also works), Cinnamon Brown and White

     -Clear coat

     -Cheesecloth

     -Super glue

     -Patience.  Lots of it.

     Okay, so like a numpty, I got started on this Rex without taking pictures.  I’ll go over the steps leading up to this point (don’t worry, there aren’t many).

     First, mix your Tan paint 2:1 paint to water ratio.  For those who don’t know what that means, for every two drops of paint, add one drop of water.  Any ratios will be listed as paint:water from hereon in unless otherwise stated.  Apply this to the entire dinosaur, including the inside of the mouth.

     Next, mix Antique White 1:5 and put it on the underbelly.  With the infant Rex, his lower jaw is white so apply this wash on the entire lower jaw exterior then under those crease lines you see that start at the back of the bottom jaw down.  Apply this color almost to the end of the tail.

      Mix 1:1 Tan and Amish Grey, dilute it 2:1 with water and then apply over the entire dinosaur.  It may seem like the first two steps were a waste of time but trust me, it helps with the process of building up the color.  You may need to do 2 coats of this so there isn’t too much color bleeding through.

     Next, take the Wysteria, dilute it 1:8 and apply it to the entire dinosaur except inside the mouth.  Not sure how well it’s showing up on camera but I assure you, it’s there.

     Next, take your Citrus Green at a 1:2 ratio and apply it to the overbelly.  Note how the tail isn’t entirely green.  That’s intentional.  Only make stripes and dots between the underbelly and the top of the tail (those purple gaps).

     Then we take some Raw Umber straight out of the bottle and dry brush it onto the Citrus Green.  In order to dry brush, what you do is dip your brush into the paint but then dab it onto a piece of paper towel until there is very little paint on your brush then you quickly (but gently) whisk it across the surface of your project, leaving little spots and accents on the detail of the sculpt.

     So once the Raw Umber dries (with a figure this size, it really doesn’t take long at all), we take Forest Green, mix it 1:8 and apply it to the Citrus Green to tone it down a bit.  Unlike the last step though, be sure to cover the entire top half of the tail as well.  You can see the glaring purple gaps are much greener now.  However, on these purple gaps, do two coats of the Forest Green wash.  Wipe or dab away any excess that may run to the underside of the tail with a paper towel.
                Once that’s done, we mix some Deep Red at a 1:8 ratio and then apply it to the underbelly and the eye sockets.  Be sure to get under the feet, too.

     Ugh, the coloration of this dinosaur reminds me of Christmas.  I hate Christmas.  Let’s get moving so it doesn’t look so Christmasy, shall we?

     Next we’re doing the eyeballs.  For this, take some Yellow and Leaf Green and mix it 3:1 (3 Yellow for 1 Green) but don’t dilute it with water.  Simply mix together and apply onto our resculpted eyeballs.  It probably wouldn’t hurt to do two coats for this one.  Take your eyeball mix and dry brush it onto the green parts of the Rex’s body.  Once your eye color has dried, paint a big dot of Black paint for the pupil.  Again, no need to dilute the black, straight out of the cap is fine.  Also use this black for the claws on the hands and feet.

Don't be surprised if you have to redo the pupils again and again to get them right.  I sure did.

 

     Now we need to tone down the underbelly a bit.  To do that, mix Tan and Antique White 1:1 and dry brush it over any red wash not on the head.  Not sure how well it’ll show up on camera but it’s there.

     Now that we’ve taken care of that, we need to make the stripes and patterns that adorn the dinosaur’s body.  To make this color, mix Campground/Black 3:1, then mix that with water at a 1:4 paint/water ratio.  The concoction might be a little runny so make sure you have some paper towel handy to gently dab off any running excess paint.  Use this mix (and some reference pictures) to apply the stripes and patterns onto the Rex’s body.  I wound up doing two coats of this patterning as my first coat looked a little too transparent for my liking.  If it looks good to you, leave it as is.

     So now we need to do that lighter, brownish color that is seen between the stripes running down the dinosaur’s spine.  To do this, mix Cinnamon Brown, Yellow and White at 1:1:1, then dilute it with water 1:1.  I added this color in a couple of little bumpy spots on top of the snout and then added it to the spots pictured above.  I was actually kinda surprised to see that in reference pictures that the brownish stripe doesn’t actually run all the way down the spine and stops at the hips before resuming a bit into the tail, so that’s why those parts aren’t painted.

  

     Once the brownish color on the spine dries, it’s time to add some black wash to the figure to further tone down the bright green coloration of it.  I have instructions written down on how to make this color scheme that says to use a 1:10 Black wash but I’m pretty sure this stuff is mixed 1:5.  I’m gonna see how this works if I dab this one and then gently pat away any excess wash with a paper towel.

     Okay, that looks better…except the bottom jaw.  Somehow I got sidetracked with something (probably laundry) and accidentally let the black wash sit for too long.  Now it looks like the Baby Rex has a 5 o'clock shadow.  Originally I tried spraying the bottom jaw with Windex and let it soak overnight in hopes of wiping away the paint there but that didn’t work as well as I would’ve liked it to.  Time to repeat those steps and just redo it, I guess.  An annoying but easy fix.

     So while I was in the process of fixing this half of the bottom jaw, I stopped and looked at my work in progress and realized that something felt off.  It still seemed too…vibrant, too green even with the black wash applied.  Looking at the reference pictures I saved on my phone, I noticed that the Baby Rex is indeed green but not this green.  His skin has a bit of a brown coating on it too so I decided to put another wash on top of the green, this time a 1:5 Raw Umber wash.

     That’s more like it!  I just applied the wash to this one side but you can see how much of a difference in makes just by looking at the foot closest to the camera.  Now, to add the washes to the other side, clean up this side of the lower jaw and fix the eyes.  I realized that I made the pupils way too large and need to dial them back a bit.

     I did have to tweak this a bit after I took this picture but for all intents and purposes, I'm calling it good with the eyes.  I've redone these things a few times now and to be honest, I'm getting bloody sick of 'em.  Adding the little white dot to emulate the little glint adds a lot to the overall look of it, though.

     Now, we come to the mouth.  I have a recipe for mouth coloration but the last time I used it on a Mattel figure, it looked like the mouth was all the same color when it really wasn't so we're gonna mix it up a bit to make sure that doesn't happen again.

      Just to set the tongue apart from the gums, I've applied some Flesh Tone at a 2:1 ratio.  Of course, in pictures it looks more orange than fleshy so maybe it should've been called "Trumptone" but I digress.  We still have some unpainted sections of the back of the throat and I want the entire inside of the mouth painted so lets get that 2:1 Tan in there.  It's actually more of a pain in the ass than it sounds.

 

      So now that the tongue and rest of the mouth is dry, lets turn our attention to the gums.  I went back and watched a few scenes with the Baby Rex in it and I think I got something.  First, we're going to put on a coat of 1:1 Cherry Blossom Pink on the gums, back of throat and jaw membrane.  While waiting for the rest of the mouth to dry, add a 1:8 wash of the Cherry Blossom Pink to the tongue.

      Now we need to add a 1:5 Deep Red wash onto the gums, not the tongue.  This wash only goes on the inside of the jaw membranes as the exterior of those are visibly lighter.

     While we wait for the gums to dry, onto the teeth!  Nothing really fancy here, just some 1:1 Antique White.  2 coats may be needed on some of the teeth.

     We then add some 1:5 Black wash to the exterior of the jaw membrane.  Same process as the underbelly, dab some on then dab off any excess with a paper towel.  Also, make sure you get under the skull of the Rex as I clearly did not in this picture (that's been fixed).

     Now we need to tone down the Red wash in the gums so we're making a 1:5 Burnt Umber wash and we're going to apply it over all of the mouth interior.  Teeth, tongue, the whole nine.  By doing this, not only are we dialing back the strength of the Red but also giving the teeth that worn, natural look.

     We're on the home stretch, I swear.  We need to shift our attention to the cast.  I had a bunch of leftover cheesecloth from when I did my other Baby Rexes for my Etsy shop. Double checking the film, the bandages seem to go from just below the knee to the top of the ankle, just before the big scales on its toes start.  So we cut a chunk off...

     ...put on some Super Glue...

 

     ...fold the cheesecloth in half, glue the frayed end on and being wrapping it around the leg as tightly as you can.  I wound up adding a bit more glue on the back of the knee just for some extra grip.  Once you've finished wrapping the cloth, glue down the end of the bandage.

     Voila!  Cast is done.  Now we take this little guy to the shed and spray him entirely with Clear Coat.  Once that cures (the Krylon stuff says it dries in 20 minutes and can be handled in 60), we take our clear nail polish and add it to the eyes and mouth for that natural wet look.

 

     And with that, we're due for the final reveal.

     Am I happy with how this one turned out?  Hell yes, I am!  Can I see things that I can improve on or need to go back and touch up a bit?  Hell yes, I can!  Doing repaints is a never ending learning process and there are definitely things that I'll have to go back and tidy up a bit more (the most noticeable one being how prominent the line on the bottom jaw is) but hey, that's life.  I do have a couple of pieces of advice for anyone who wants to give customizing their Super Colossal Rex a whirl, though:

     -Make sure you're working somewhere with excellent lighting.  No matter where I work in my house, the lighting is always crap.

     -For those hard to reach areas, an airbrush probably wouldn't be a bad idea.  I'm sure I'll pick one up someday.

     -With the Super Colossal Rex, it comes in four pieces: main body, left leg, tail and hatch on the stomach.  It may be better if you paint these pieces prior to assembling the dinosaur.  The tail can be removed once attached but the left leg cannot so it will make your life much simpler if you assemble the pieces after painting them.

     I would love to get another one of these (or more) to repaint with either this or a different scheme and put them in the Etsy shop but shipping would be absolutely ridiculous so I don't know if it would even be worth it.  I'll mull that over.  So now that Comic-Con has been "postponed," I guess I can't really call this Road To Comic-Con anymore so...I'll mull that new name over along with the whole Colossal Rex listings thing.  Anywho, let me know what you thought of this project and in part 3 of this cosplay project, we'll be going over the assembly of the actual costume I'll be wearing.

     As always folks, thank you so much for reading (especially long ones like this) and if you like what you see on this blog, you be sure to nudge that "Follow" button.  Stay cynical!

     -The Cynic

Road To Comic Con: Adjusting The Sculpt

     Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to another entry of Coffee With The Cynic's blog.  Today we are starting our Road To Comic Con series leading up to the Brandon Comic Con hosted by C4 - Central Canada Comic Con.  The event is the weekend of September 8th and 9th at the Keystone Centre in Brandon, Manitoba.  The family and I will be there and while they're going to do a group Diablo 3 themed set, I'm not that into Diablo so I'm playing more to my strengths.  When Mattel announced the Super Colossal T. Rex toy for their Fallen Kingdom toyline, I figured that would make a great prop for the Con if it was customized into the Baby Rex from The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  So Scholar had a brilliant costume idea for me: since I have long hair, it wouldn't really make sense for me to be Ian Malcolm or Nick Van Owen, right?  Well, she suggested that I do a gender swap of Sarah Harding so that I can have long, frayed hair and won't have to shave my beard either but that's for another time.

     First, we have our main prop, the Super Colossal Rex which needs to go from this...

     ...to this.  Or at least as close to it as possible.

     As you can see, there are some things that need to be changed.  1) This toy represents the Tyrannosaurus from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, so any scars that she may have will need to be filled in, 2) the eyeballs are way too small on this sculpt so we'll have to mold some new ones and 3) the teeth on this sculpt are just a little too big and molded together so those will have to either be filed down or removed entirely and replaced with new ones, I honestly haven't decided yet.  Thankfully, I think I know what we can use for 1 and 2.  This is all going to be trial and error so let's see how this goes.

     First off, the sculpt has some seam lines on it from being put together in the assembly line.  Some are more noticeable than others so I followed a literal rule of thumb: I ran my thumb over the seam line and if it felt like my skin was getting into the seam, it got patched up.  So I used this Tamiya modelling putty to cover those up.  This is a more liquidy than the Milliput we'll be using later and the surfaces where the seam lines sit are fairly smooth so I'm hoping that it won't be as noticeable.  So we just take this tube...

     ...and basically dab the stuff on like a bingo marker.  Then, depending on how much room I had to maneuver around on the sculpt, I used either a foam brush or a tooth pick to flatten out the putty and use any excess to continue along the seam lines.  I repeated this process over any seam lines that stood out until I had gone over the entire dinosaur.  If you're using this stuff, try not to rush but do bear in mind that this stuff dries and cures fast.  Like, not even two minutes after I had taken this picture, it was firming up.

     If anyone reading doesn't have this figure, for reasons I don't fully understand Mattel decided to have the ankles articulated.  I myself am not a fan of this feature so I patched up those lines too.

     Okay, so now that the seam lines have been puttied, we need to make sure the rule of thumb still applies.  I found when doing this that sometimes the Tamiya putty dried into pointy bits so if my thumb catches those, I gently sand down those points with the corner of a sanding block.  No need to scrub it back and forth, just a few soft strokes should do it because we don't want to accidentally sand off some of the texture of the sculpt.

     For those of you who don't know, Milliput is a two part putty epoxy that you knead together for model making, sculpting or even household repairs.  I use this stuff on the Hasbro Jurassic World figures to fill in those annoying screwholes and it works great.  So we're gonna fill in those Velociraptor/Indominus Rex scars.  Now this stuff takes a full 24 hours to cure (I'm pretty sure) so there's plenty of wiggle room just in case if I need to run some sculpting tools over it.

     Since this box was almost done, I just lumped these two parts together since we'll probably end up using this whole chunk.  Simply mix the two pieces together and knead/roll them in your hands for about five minutes or until it is one solid color.  Then I tore little pieces off, rolled them into long thing strips...

     ...and then laid them into the scars.  Once they're in, I flattened the pieces with my thumb to fill out the scar lines so that the putty doesn't stick out above the sculpt, or at least try to.  Worst case scenario, I can always sand these down later.

     Yeah, some sanding will probably be in order.  In the meantime, let's get some creases in that Milliput to match the sculpt.

     That's better.  Needs a few more but I scratched them in off camera.

     I also noticed these creases at the front of the snout.  I don't know if they're just from the fact that this sculpt is of a female Rex or of a more elderly animal (the Rex on Isla Nublar has got to be close to thirty, which is believed to be the age of the largest and best preserved T. Rex specimen, "Sue") but the infant from The Lost World doesn't really have these (at least not to this degree) so they need to be filled in too.

     So this is what's left of the Milliput and it looks to be about the right size to fit in the socket.  So what I'm going to do is turn this ball into a couple of eyeballs with eyelids and stick them into the sockets.  First, we tear a piece off and roll it flat...

     ...then cut it in half.  Now we have a set of eyelids.  Repeat with another piece of Milliput and roll the remaining ball smooth.  Cut the ball in half, put the eyelids on the top and bottom of the half balls and then stick into the eye sockets on the figure.  Make sure the eyes don't cover the ridges around the eye socket.  How does it look from the front?

     In comparison to the infant Tyrannosaur maquette?

     Alright, I'm pretty happy with how the eyes look.  Now, we can't really do much else until the Milliput cures. When I went by my desk about 12 hours later to do laundry, the Milliput was rock hard but I had a bunch of housework to do so for all intents and purposes...

     I sanded down the Milliput on the Rex just to smoothen it out.  I left a bit of texture on it just because it doesn't feel off when you run your finger on it and I didn't want to sand any of the sculpt away.

     Now for the teeth and gums.  I've decided that I am going to cut these retail model teeth out with an Exacto knife and use Milliput to not only sculpt new teeth but also a gum-line that will house the teeth.   As you can see, the teeth on this figure don't actually come out of the gums and I think we can do better.  So first, the knife and the teeth come out.

     The teeth are made of a soft, rubbery plastic so this knife cut through them like they were made of butter.

     Man, a Tyrannosaur with no teeth.  This just feels...wrong.  Let's fix this as fast as we can because it hurts.

 

     So I found two teeth of approximately the same size and stuck them together with the Tamiya putty so that this custom will have nice, rounded teeth and not flattened ones like the factory model.  Upon closer inspection, I found that the infant's teeth aren't all quite the same size, especially along the bottom jaw but this tooth will serve as a reference so we'll just wrap some Milliput around it.

      Let's see how it looks next to the Rex's head.

     I think I can work with that.  If I have to make smaller teeth, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.  Before we jump into that, we need to see just how many we need so we gotta make some gums for this guy.

     Just as a precaution, I had a couple little chunks of Milliput left over so I molded them into a couple more teeth so that my references would have some variety rather than trying to cut and paste the same tooth over and over, so to speak.

     So every Jurassic Rex has an overbite and while this does make things easier, we do still need to make sure the mouth will shut smoothly, so we'll ball up some Milliput...

     ...put some along the jawline...

     ...and test.  Voila, it closes nicely.  Now we'll fill out the rest of the gum-lines and then we can start adding our teeth.

     So here's the left over Milliput from the gum-line with the reference teeth.  I always make up too much of this stuff but at least I'll be able to put this to good use with the teeth.  So I made little indentations in the gums with the cured teeth and then sculpted new teeth with the fresh Milliput.  I would've used the three in the final sculpt but cured Milliput doesn't like to stick to fresh Milliput I've found out.  So about half an hour later of rolling bits of Milliput and sticking them to the gums...

     ...we have this.  Perhaps it isn't 100% accurate to the infant but I was on a bit of a time limit when I worked on this.  If need be, I can always try sanding down the teeth to make them more fine tipped but right now, I'm really happy with how these turned out.

     I do believe this covers any physical alterations needed to the sculpt so keep your ears to the ground for Part 2 where we'll be discussing painting the dinosaur.  As always folks, thank you so much for reading and if you like what you see on this blog, you be sure to nudge that "Follow" button and stay cynical!

     -The Cynic