The new Havoc Facebook

I had been running the Havoc Facebook page through the account I used to play the Car Town game. If you haven't tried it, it can be a fun game, just.....extremely....buggy. Well the constant bugs finally got the better of me and I quit the game, part of which involved deleting the account since I would no longer be needing it. When the account went down the old HM page went down with the ship therefore a new incarnation had to be created. Just move your courser over and hit "like" on the right hand side of this page near the top to join in the fun!

General Robert E. Lee

About The Build

Manufacturer: Verlinden Productions

Scale: 1/5

Subject: General Robert E. Lee

Kit Number: 2068

Date Built: March 2013

Modifications:

• N/A

Verlinden's 1/5 scale Robert E. Lee was one of my first experiences with a large scale bust. I decided on this project the project along with a companion bust of Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant after watching the documentary series "The Civil War" by Ken Burns which renewed my interest in General Lee, a man I have long admired for his intelligence, loyalty, and battlefield prowess. The kit is a spectacularly molded three piece resin affair with first rate detail, little to no mold lines or air bubbles in the castings along with thin pour stubs which are easily dealt with. I started off by assembling the bust before priming it with Tamiya gray surface primer. In hindsight it would have been far easier to paint each component separately from one another as I ran in to quite a few issues with detail painting, to the extent I had to carefully remove the finished head in order to properly paint the uniform. All base coating was done with acrylics from Model Master and Folk Art save for the uniform which is actually Dupli-Color primer sealer. The face is shaded with Windsor & Newton artists oils while on the uniform I actually tried a new method I had seen in a Youtube video involving shading with ground pastel chalk and it worked like a dream producing nicely feathered edges, far better than anything I had done with oils in the past. I do believe this will now become my new default method for shading large scale figures. The "wood" base is included in the kit as a block of resin with some light grain texture in it to appear as though it were turned on a lathe. I base coated it with Folk Art "Nutmeg Brown" followed by a Burnt Umber oil tint wash which while it was still wet I went over it with a raged brush leaving lighter streaks as to make it appear like stained wood. Lastly the base was covered in two coats of Future floor polish to give it a nice polished appearance. Some issues with painting caused by my own stupidity aside, I found this build very enjoyable and I look forward to assembling more busts and large scale figures in the future.

Finished Build
click thumbnails to enlarge

Posted by Michael J. Wheeler at 7:21 PM

Coming in March

I've been feeling quite under the weather this past week in conjunction with dedicating most of my spare time to my fan fiction novel "Fallout 3: Genesis, a prequel based on the events prior to the start of the video game's main quest, so I haven't gotten much done in the way of model related things. I do have many things planned for the upcoming month though, here's a small primer to get the anticipation up.

W.I.P. Series: USMC M1A1 Abrams
The mine plow and lower hull on this project is finally nearing completion. After nearly a month of labor I should be ready to post the next update of the series sometime during the first week of the month.

Preparing for paint: Part IV
In the conclusion of my series on preparing parts for paint I go over basic seam filling, repair techniques, and tie the previous three installments together.

Verlinden 1:5 Robert E. Lee
This has been a side project for when I'm feeling burned out on the larger stuff. I'm fairly close to final detailing and the full page should be posted to the completed builds section early in the month.

Working with resin:
Ever wonder how to work with a material other than standard polystyrene plastic? In this tutorial I show you how!

Dealing with clear parts
Clear parts got you down? A tutorial on dealing with scratches, chips, and many of the other problems inherent with transparent parts might do the trick.

W.I.P. Series: JP Velociraptor
Moving along with my project for FSM's "My First Time Group Build", I assemble the Lindberg kit and give it a base for some nice skin.