A-20G Havoc Workarounds Now with Chuck in the Pilot’s Seat

[Sasha As]

Excellent work!!!

[ChuckD]

Happy to report that after a marathon session at the bench today, the Flash is done!  Now to turn my attention to the ground work and figure.  
 

Here is a bit of a teaser for now.  

 

[geedubelyer]

Brilliant stuff.

Well done. 

[Greif8]

Beautifully built and painted Chuck!

 

Ernest

[JayW]

What a worthy effort and a most interesting subject Chuck.    

[ChuckD]

Thanks, all. I’ve been staring at this model for 5 months and it took the above photograph to realize one of the guns is crooked. <facepalm>

 

(It’s fixed already.)

[ChuckD]

Now on to the more challenging part of the build... sculpting the crew chief. 

 

I probably could have just stuck the completed aircraft on some ground work and called it good, but I wanted to challenge myself with something new.  So, to recap from the OP, I chose to sculpt this here fella.

It's possible that this is Richard Hart, the crew chief.  However, I've found (and posted elsewhere in this thread) another photo of the Flash clearly taken the same day where some other chap is also standing in front of the ship holding the same dog.  So... really, who knows?  This guy got the call, so out comes the sculpting putty.

 

A few months back, I ordered a half dozen of these sculpting mannequins from afvmodeller.com and I'll be using them for our intrepid crew chief.  I also ordered some polymer clay to play with as it came highly recommended from the several youtube tutorials I watched.  In the end, I used the polymer putty to practice on a test piece and, as you'll see, I dropped back to Magic Sculpt for the "production" piece.  The polymer putty is great, but requires baking to fully cure.  Pretty sure the mannequin will not stand up to baking, ergo MS gets the nod here.

 

Save for the Magic Sculpt, here are the tools of the trade.  (Editor's note: throughout this tutorial, the author is going to sound like he knows what the hell he's talking about.  Please don't be fooled. )

 

The mannequin is resin and comes with a small variety of hands and heads.  Various craft wire and superglue are, of course, present.  I tried to buy a dog figure, but a 1/35(ish) doggo is almost impossible to come by.  The only semi-viable option I found was in the figure kit barely visible at the top of the pic, but as luck would have it, it was much too large a pup to fit my scene.  So, looks like I'll be crafting ye olde doggo from scratch.  Heaven help me.

 

After basic assembly with wire and super glue plus the addition of a head from Hornet models, I started adding a little bulk with GreenStuff as I wasn't sure the straight Magic Sculpt would adhere well to the resin.  Lesson learned: Skip the GreenStuff.  MS would have adhered just fine.  In any case, I tried to go light and thin with the GS.  All told, the figure (sans hat anyway) is 52mm tall, so just shy of 5'6" which isn't outside the realm of reality for the pre-growth-hormone-in-everything era of the mid-1940s.  In all seriousness, my granddad was considered a very "big" guy during his infantry service at 6'0".  His old service jacket's shoulders are a solid 4-5" narrower than my shoulders, but I digress.

 

He looks cozy in his little green straight jacket.

 

After that set overnight, I spent some time pinning and gluing the arms in place.  I *think* the proportions are more or less correct, but we'll see.  Here, his shoulders look too broad, but with the legs filled out (as shown below), they look a lot more appropriate.

 

And now the conundrum: Der Hund.  Using a couple different gauges of craft wire, I formed a rough shape of the dog's spine, tail, and legs.  The ... excessive... snout is just there to give me to something to hold on to.  I think when I'm ready, I'll glue the wire frame in place and use putty to sculpt the little fella.  Again, heaven help me.

 

It does seem to fit the scene reasonably well, so I'm at least somewhat optimistic.

 

Borrowing a lesson from my niece - an award-winning Breyer horse sculptor and painter, seriously, she's amazing - I applied CA glue to the doggo frame and dipped it in a small cup of baking soda.  The soda immediately adhered to and hardened on the frame which should give me the grip I need to keep the putty from sloughing off as I try to sculpt it.

 

Now begins the actual sculpt work.  I'm going to do this is a couple phases, starting with the easiest part first - the legs and lower torso.  Start by mixing the MS and adding it roughly to the figure.  I like to roll it out into a snake, squish that flat between my fingers and apply it to the inner sides of the legs first.  That seems to be easier than trying to push it between the legs after the rest of the figure is covered.

 

Continue adding material and smoothing the putty till its fairly smooth and uniform.

 

Now using clay shaper tools of various stiffnesses, toothpicks, knives, and, well, really anything that will achieve the desired effect, start shaping folds and creases into the clothing.  I make no pretenses to be an expert at this, but it's fun enough to do that I want to continue practicing.

 

And that's it for tonight.  Tomorrow, I will start with the torso, belt, shoulders, and maybe the arms.  I'm still debating on how (and when) to tackle the dog, so we'll how that plays out.  Wish me luck!

 

[LSP_Kevin]

Wow!

 

Kev

[Shoggz]

That's really great..

[themongoose]

What a great tutorial. Somewhere out there an artist lost a sale since we don’t have to buy the book!

Edited November 12, 2024 by themongoose

[Greif8]

Exceptional sculpting work on the figures Chuck.

 

Ernest

[ChuckD]

 

Hi, all.  Back with another update.  Sculpting figures is a game of patience for sure, particularly if you're using 2-part epoxy putty - which is panning out to be the best option for this application.  I suppose if I were sculpting a figure from a solid metal wire armature, it would be something of a different story as I could use a polymer putty that could be baked to harden.  In this case though, since I've got resin and plastic bits on my figure already, baking is a no-go and epoxy putty (Magic-Sculpt and Green Stuff in my case (henceforth MS and GS respectively)) win the day.

 

I've been debating for a week now on how to handle the sculpting of the dog and the upper torso of the figure.  There's obviously so much interaction there, it's a difficult proposition as to how to handle it and what to tackle first.

 

In the end, I decided to place the dog in the figure's arm and sculpt both canine and dude at more or less the same time.  To do this, I first broke the superglue bond on the right arm's elbow to remove the lower arm and give me room to fit the dog and do some final adjustment to the arm holding said dog. 

 

I also wasn't having much luck getting the MS to stick to the thin wire of the dog armature, so I first coated it with the far more sticky GS.  Glad the superglue and baking soda technique works for my niece, but it appears not to really work at this scale.  GS is a great base for bonding putty to wire and giving MS something to positively stick to. 

 

Here  you can see what I started with.  In this photo I've just started adding a little bit of MS to the lower legs, rump, and tail.  All is very rough at this point and is quite chunky.

 

As before, we continue to add MS and smooth out to a rough shape.  Much like after a base coat of paint on a model or maybe after a wash is initially put down, it's easy to look at this phase and think all is lost.  I had to keep repeating to myself "keep the faith" as I worked the putty around because, while I still have a lot of practicing to do, I also have enough confidence at this point to have some hope of being able to turn out a passable product.

 

And we begin forming the folds of the materials. 

 

When sculpting the lower torso, I deliberately left his belt line with pretty thin coverage.  My intent, as highlighted below by the blousing of the shirt, is to add his belt with GS once the main sculpting is done.  Then I'll use more MS to blend the lower torso with the newly-added belt.  Bear in mind, each of those operations will require 4-5hrs of curing between working sessions.

 

I want to fully place the right arm before sculpting anything there, but I couldn't really do that yet with the MS on the dog being soft and uncured.  So, I left the right arm and the front of the torso for later.

 

And here is where things stand now.  I was able to get the dog's head sculpted to a decent degree.  Once this hardens, I'll add ears and eyeballs, and maybe scribe some light details.  All in all, the pooch is coming along a lot better than I expected. 

 

The little divot on the nose will be filled once the putty hardens.  I tried to fill it while I was working with it, but the putty was too soft and a push in any direction deforms something in another area.  I suspect that once I'm done with the whole project, I will prime, fill, sand, and shape a bit before I call the final sculpt done.  For instance, there are some lumps on the shoulder and the dog's neck and such that could benefit from some sanding.  Likewise, the dog's legs and tail are still a bit chunky and will require some thinning here and there.

 

And so, here we are.  Waiting for the dog's head cure before I continue on. 

 

To do yet:

• Right arm
• Right torso
• Dog ears
• Dog eyes
• Lengthen dog's front left leg to match right
• Thin dog's legs and tail
• Add belt & blend
• Add man's collar
• Add pockets to shirt and pants
• Add buttons to shirt
• Sculpt man's hat
• Irrevocably screw up the paint work
• Prep base/ground work
• Mount a/c to ground work
• Mount dude to ground work
• Photograph
• Place model on shelf
• Admire briefly
• Move on to the next project

[ChuckD]

On 11/24/2024 at 11:08 AM, ChuckD said:

 

 

• Right arm
• Right torso
• Dog ears
• Dog eyes
• Lengthen dog's front left leg to match right
• Thin dog's legs and tail
• Add belt & blend
• Add man's collar
• Add pockets to shirt and pants
• Add buttons to shirt
• Sculpt man's hat
• Irrevocably screw up the paint work
• Prep base/ground work
• Mount a/c to ground work
• Mount dude to ground work
• Photograph
• Place model on shelf
• Admire briefly
• Move on to the next project

 

 

 

[LSP_Kevin]

Impressive!

 

Kev

[MikeMaben]

Well done Chuck