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Kaiju Elephants
OK, this looks pretty innocuous. Elephants for conversions. Big elephants.
They are dollar toy elephants, probably designed for toddlers and elementary
schoolers, so they are way too big to be 28mm elephants. But they will make nice
bases for some kaiju conversions.
As a side note, this is the first time my wife has looked at one of my conversions and said, "That's just wrong." No, really. Browse through the idea archive to get a feel for what that really means.
Naturally, the first step is a couple decapitations. I find it a bit disturbing
how happy this elephant looks after it has been further eviscerated.
And here they are, assembled and primed. I went with a double vertical and a
double horizontal for trunk positioning.
Since I am using toys (that are made with special toy plastic that doesn't like to stick to anything), I used Loc Tite household adhesive to reassemble the parts. And Krylon fusion spraypaint to prime them.
Here is where I went with the two decpitated ones. Did you notice the two
sharks in the first picture? Well, here they are again. When I ordered them,
I had planned on one shark head per elephant. Then they ended up a little too
small for that. So I decided to go with a double hammer for one, and a
custom wyrm head for the other.
I used my standard giant tentacle method for the custom head. You can follow that link for details. I feel that is more efficient and I forgot to take pics as I assembled it.
Here's the custom one. Beyond the basic wyrm structure, the eyes are beads I embedded in the clay body, and the teeth are a hair berette. The horns are also beads. I thought about filling in the holes in the ends, but I kind of like them they way they are. The other option I considered was thin tentacles (floral wire) sprouting from the holes in the ends of the tentacles. But that would have been a bit much, and I am not one for overdoing things.
The hair on the back is made with hair. Well, yarn. I cut up some yarn into short pieces and mixed it in with wood glue and brown paint. It makes a surprisingly hard and adhesive shell of hair when it dries
This one is just wrong, according to She Who Must Be Obeyed. I like him. I hope he gets a SyFy movie. I definned (without two n's, its "defined") the sharks post decapitation. All the fins made it on to the final model.
I just filled in the gaps with Model Magic clay, and then scored it with a kinfe until it looked like wrinked elephant skin. I didn't bother to score the shark skin. I was a bit worried about how that would look, but I think it came out fine.
I am kind of proud how the fading on the paintjob came out. I painted it in two colors, then let it dry. Then I mixed the two colors together and used a heavy drybrush technique, starting at the color seam and always brushing away.
I tried a similar fade technique for the dopple-ultraviolet-pacyhderms, but
pushed a little harder with the brush to get a more layering effect, rather than
smooth transition. I also used three base purple colors and white for the
underside.
I was most concerned about how to paint the ears. I finally decided on a mottled approach as a contrast to the purple layer cake effect of the body.
For some reason, I went completely with metallic eyes for these conversions. Not sure if you can tell (I can, but I also know its there, so my perception is likely biased by that), but these have solid silver, beady little eyes.
So what happened to the other two disassembled heads? Well, nothing yet. But I am thinking of a giant multi-polyp beastie in the future...