Working through my Reaper Bones collection, and looking to find uses for them to boot, I've pulled one of the monsters out of the selection; the Jabberwocky.
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| John Tennial's original illustration |
It's a great sculpt, based on the original illustrations of the absurd poem, however the model itself once assembled has, shall we say, issues with its' balance and posture:
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| Go home Jabberwocky, you're Drunk |
The soft poly Reaper uses simply can't cope with the weight of the pose resting on the slender leg, a dynamic lean of the pose only becomes an image of a creature caught in the middle of falling over as it serves to encourage the model to collapse in a heap. The centre of gravity furthermore is outside of the base, or along its very edge, making staying upright on a level surface impossible; hence the tin lid blutacked to the base here.
This would not do, so drastic action would be needed. One bonus of the bones material is that it's easy to modify - cut, drill and so on - so I set the the bits boxes (of which I have surprisingly few) to find something suitable to make it stand upright and balance better. I found I had one old GW flying stand kicking about in a pile of bits and so felt its' transparency and relative strength would solve the problem. I drilled through the base with nothing more than a pin vice and some good scissors, to widen the hole, so the fit was tight. It was then a simple case of forcing the model into the right position and drilling an alignment hole into the underside of the Jabberwocky.
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| It penetrates a 'delicate area' in Jabberwockey anatomy |
That done he was still a little wobbly, so to secure everything I added a thick wooden base; and hussaaah! Works!
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| Sobered up |
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It's not possible to tell from the photo if his tail touches the base or not. But if so, couldn't you have drilled up through that & inserted a brass rod instead?
ReplyDeleteNice job and what a fun model. I'll be watching to see your paint job on that critter.
ReplyDelete@The One. It does have a firm contact with the ground in the tail, but the tail itself is not very straight, and I didn't have a suitably strong piece of brass rod or a long enough drill bit to consider that viable. My experience with this material to date is that once you've reset it in boiling water the the pose it should have been from the mould, it will always revert to that position given enough time. You really need to enforce a long term repose by cutting or otherwise locking parts into place.
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