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

TLW Baby T. Rex Custom Project Part 3: Finishing Touches

     Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the third and final blog entry in Coffee With The Cynic's Custom Baby T. Rex project based on The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  It's been awhile since I did one of these and I've covered a LOT of ground behind the scenes so let's get to it.

     First thing's first, once the clay has been removed from the oven and cooled, it needs to be fitted back onto the dog bowl and primed.  To fit it back on, I just used a lot of super glue on the underside of the clay and the top of the dog bowl.  Nothing terribly fancy here.  Once the primer had cured, I sprayed it with a Krylon clear coat so that the primer wouldn't feel so tacky when handling the item.

     Okay, so after applying a coat of Tan paint (mixing 1 drop of water per drop of paint or 1:1 as it'll be displayed for the rest of the blog), I noticed that the underside of the bowl had some gaps between the plastic and the clay.  I had some Milliput 2 part epoxy handy so I focused on filling in those gaps.

     Much better.  I let the Milliput cure for 24 hours and then once that was finished, I added another coat of 1:1 Tan paint.  The Tan didn't seem like enough though so I mixed 1:1 Cinnamon Brown and Raw Umber, then mixed that with a 1:5 paint/water ratio and applied it all over the Tan.
 

     Better.  Now, onto the bones!

     The lighting is different in this picture because I had to bring up the nest from my work station downstairs so that I could use the previous pictures I had taken of the nest on the computer to make sure I put the bones in the right spot.  I think I got most of them right.  I just used super glue to hold these guys in place.  Again, nothing super fancy.

     So now that we have the bones down where they need to be, we're going to add some dirt on top of the mud.  I had a bowl of dirt that I scooped up from a construction site in town a couple years back hiding away so I grabbed our cullender and sifted through what I had... 

    ...and voila.  Nice fine dirt to sprinkle onto the nest.

     So now we have to get the nest ready for the dirt.  What I did was grab an old plastic bristle brush as well as some glue.  This is the kind of glue that you have to let it get sticky first before you can do anything with it so I just ran some onto the nest...

     ...and then brushed the stuff around before it got too tacky and gummed up the bristles.  After letting it sit for a few minutes, I sprinkled the dirt all around...

     ...and now we have dirt on our nest.

     While walking with my kids the other day and talking about this project, we noticed a lot of dry vegetation laying about from all the snow finally melting away.  My son suggested that I put twigs and leaves and whatnot onto the nest for further decoration.  Honestly, pretty solid idea so I brushed on some more of that tacky glue, sprinkled on leaves and twigs...

     ...and this was the end result.  Some of the bigger pieces I used regular super glue to fasten them in place but most of the vegetation is sticking on because of the tacky stuff.  The color of the mud and dirt didn't look quite right to me so I mixed 1:1:1:1 of Caramel Candy, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber and Cinnamon Brown, mixed that 1:4 with water and dabbed it over the exposed soil area.

     Honestly, it doesn't look like much of a difference in the pictures but in hand, it did add a bit more personality to the piece.  I did end up having to add a drop of Black paint to the mix just to darken it up enough but here we are.  Although speaking of personality, those bones are looking a little too plain, don't you think?

 

     If this is a Tyrannosaurus Rex nest, those bones laying about should be bloody.  Not super crimson, fresh bloody.  No, I wanted to give the bones a more dried blood look, like the bones have been in this nest for quite some time.  So I mixed 1:1:2 Cinnamon Brown, Burnt Umber and Deep Red, then mixed that 1:4 with water...

 

     ...and dabbed it onto the bones.  Now, onto the Baby Rex!

     Okay, I know that in Part 2, I said that I was going to go over how to paint the Baby Rex but I got caught up doing another figure with the same color scheme for the Etsy store that I did this one at the same time.  Sorry about that, guys.  However, if you want to see a speed run video of how to do this color scheme, I've included Ted Brother's video on how he did his Juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex figure from The Lost World.  I tried to follow this video as closely as I possibly could and I've learned so much from watching his stuff.

     If the video goes a little too fast for you, I will be repeating this color scheme on my Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Super Colossal Tyrannosaurus Rex figure for an upcoming convention and I will be doing a step by step walkthrough on how I do it (so excited to work on that one).

     And there is the finished project (with a couple of works in progress in the background).  I did not glue the Baby Rex down as I figured that any potential buyers may want to take out and hold the dinosaur for closer inspection.  I'm pretty happy overall with how this project turned out and if you are interested in maybe purchasing this item, it is now for sale here.

     So the Baby Rex nest project is finally complete.  Let me know down in the comments what you think of this or if there are any other repaint schemes you'd like to see me document and tackle as I will be working on more figures for the Etsy store.  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