Model Citizen

The Hulk...or...Making the Most of it...or...A Labour of Love

First a little history. I bought this months and months ago from a sculptor at The Clubhouse . It cost £60, which is a lot of money for me, but I really liked the look of this Hulk kit, in my opinion, the best I'd seen. I saw it at Buc Wheats excellent site and made some inquiries as to who the sculptor/supplier was. i found out it was fellow Clubhouse member Mikey B and placed an order. After a month or so with no contact I was getting a bit worried. I e-mailed and PM'd but got nowhere. In the end Uber Moderator "Spock" stepped it and helped me and other panicing customers get there kits. For me it took about 3 months and when it arrived I was none too pleased.

1. A view of the head. it was so bad my first thought was to bin it. Maybe garage Kit fans have become spoilt in the last years with kit's being produced that need hardly any clean up, but one look at this and I contemplated the months it would take to clean.


2. The head is'nt on it';s own. Take a look at the hands.


3. In this pic you can just make out a huge bubble waiting to cave in. It was really depressing to look at. As said £60 was a lot of dosh for me and it looked like it had gone down the drain.


4. Holes were'nt the only issue, there were resin protrusions aplenty. Now, a big question: Why did'nt I get my money back? Well, it took so long to get with so much "persuasion" I figured I'd never get the money. Also When I commented in the original post from Mikey about the quality I got no reply. At the time I was fuming and contacted other buyers to see if I'd been sold a duffer. it turned out I had'nt, they were all like this with customers saying they'd never make it. In Mikey's defence, it turned out he was going through a crisis, I dont know the nature of it, but having had them in my life it may have been very bad, at the time I did'nt care that much just thinking this is no way to run a business....now I can afford to be more philisophical and gracous....read on.


5. OK, well I thought about putting it back in the box (again) and putting it back on the shelf...yes, it really was that daunting, but instead I got out the dremmel and got to work.


6. The dremmeling I got done in 2 sittings, next it was time to fill. Some of the gaps were horrendous, and as a rule only the worst kit's I've done have needed a hacksaw on them!


7. The gaps between seams were pretty bad. i filled them with Sculpey, which i've got more confidence in now I've started sculpting a bit. i added some veins to mask the seams and blasted it with a heat gun to make it rock hard.


8. Legs, well i decided to pin these together. Although this is only a 1/6 figure because he's so muscley it's more like a 1/4 one. So I thought with all this weight a little pinning would'nt hurt. In case you dont know I'll just explain the easy way to pin.


9. basically, just put the bits together and make 4 pencil marks over the seam you want pinned. place the marks at 4 points around the area.


10. terrible picture, but the next step is to use a ruler to join the lines together, this will give you a cross....and X marks the spot. Easy huh?


11. Then just drill on the cross and insert the pin. I super glued the pin in and then glued the 2 together.


12. Well, this is the 3'rd priming. I've primed, filled, primed, filled then lost so much detail in the head I've dremmeled in the hair and eyes and primed again. This is the end result.


13. A few coats of grass green with my airbrush and the base coat is down. At this point I really started to enjoy this kit. For all the pain you cant get over how well this model has been sculpted. My plan now was to just go round the muscles in a darker colour, a style I've used before on military vehicles believe it or not.


14. Here he is finished! As said, for all the hassle Mikey B did a fantastic job on the sculpt and I'm glad I persevered with what may become one of the rarest hulk kits around. You can see the dark shading has gone down, and I've highlighted the veins with bright green. I wanted to make them noticeable and also thought it could show the Gamma pumping round his body.


15. The shorts I did in grey with some pastel on them to add age. The last thing I wanted to do at this stage was add washes that could run onto the skin, so pastels it was.


16. The base....it's kitty litter. no....really!


17. You can see on this close up i've lost a little detail on the face, but it's good enough.


18. Last pic, I added some brown to his hands and feet to show the use those fists have had. Thanks for reading this far. Mikey if you ever read this, all in all this was a great sculpt, well done. If you have one of these on the shelf, it's definatley worth the hours/weeks/months to finish it.