Thursday, July 17, 2008

One of my Insane Hobbies - Part I


MAD MONSTER PARTY - OUR TIME TO SHINE

I thought I would share with you one of my most passionate on and off hobbies. On and off for various reasons. To begin with, Resin Kit Building demands money and time. LOTS of money (avg. kit is 100.00) and LOTS of time (avg. completion time: about a month). As we know, money and time are the two most prized resources in the world. And, when a kit requires the subtleties that only an air brush can provide, the project time can double to two months. This is why this hobby has been on and off for the last, about 7 years or so. I haven't been able to work on my kits for quite some time, teaching duties and other doctoral matters have kept me away for about four years. Now that I am finding ways to procrastinate advancing my dissertation, I may just take it up again and finish a few projects that were begun in 2004. I'm gonna kick things off with uploading some pics from previous kits. I'll start things off with my "Mad Monster Party" resin kit. This kit was called "Our Time To Shine" based off of the song that Gale Garnett sings to Count Dracula. The kit had a very limited pressing of 100 castings - and is indeed a rare kit.


HERE IS THE SCENE FROM THE FILM: (note: I was working from a very ratty old print of the film on VHS - several years before the DVD release. As such, the colors were very faded. For eg. in my print - her dress was quite yellow - in the DVD it reads more gold.



I'll discuss what the hobby entails in the next few installments - I've got a few kits I'd like to showcase on Trash Aesthetics. This was a pretty clean casting with some dremel work needed for sprues - but on the whole a pretty easy kit to prime, assemble, and paint. I did not need the air brush for this particular kit. The original Rankin Bass puppets for the movie had a "man-made" assembly aesthetic to them (which is what they were) so I preserved that by keeping the color palette simple and faithful to the colors of the figures as they appeared in the film. I bought this kit at the House Of Monsters, which was in Chicago, in Wicker Park - right where Damen, Milwaukee and North conflate. It was a great shop in the Flat Iron Building which sadly is no longer there. They are still in business on Ebay if memory serves.

Kit was bought: Chicago - around summer 2001
Kit was completed: around fall 2002.
Acrylic Paints and various brushes






Boob Shot For Tali

3 comments:

Taliesin_ttlg said...

My hat off to you sir, I haven't the patience, nor the steady hand, to do such things.

I am worryingly pleased that Franesca's unfeasibly large bust remained unfeasible lol!

Anonymous said...

Nick, good to see you are steady. You actually did those? Wow. Everyone here gets more interesting as time goes goes on. I mean, you did the models too?The painting is exquisite I used to be into graphics and can really appreciate this. Tell us more about it as I do not know much at all.

Alas, I have anew URL. I had to make a decision. You know some of the story. In any case, the Cafe may be back soon. I will have to get everyone to relink somehow.

http://uraniumcafe-the.com/

I have 2nd thoughts now about the name but to be honest the names I wanted were chosen already, most referring to the Uranium Cafe near Los Alamos NM, which is what I named my site after too.

Good to see you back. Soon we can call you Professor maybe?

Bill

Chick Young said...

Tali - many thanks buddy. Yeah I took a shot of Francesca's boobs close up. I'll add it to the post with a "For Tali" caption!!!! Ha ha. And I will too.

Thanks so much Bill. You're very kind with the compliments! I didn't do the models. That's what is known as the "Garage Kit" industry. Resin and Vinyl kits that are manufactured in very small numbers by talented individuals and small companies. You buy the kit (which can get PRICEY!) and assemble it - which is long and complicated - and paint it. It's a hobby for crazy people. I will post more about the hobby not in the next post - but the one after that. Is the Cafe back up? I'll go and check now!

Chick