Hey all,
A quick update; this is the final 'dirty' version of the skull facade. The lighting above the castle is a bright flourescent, so you can see it's nicely shaded. It took a lot of grey/black/grey etc 'mists' of spray to deepen the colour whilst still keeping it organic/rock looking. Does it look more natural?
The castle in general has been roughed up with oversprays of an awful 'mission brown' colour followed by a light dusting of flat black. The castle is standing on the wooden 'mountain base' that I made some time back. I haven't made the foam rocky face of the cliff yet, but I'm setting the castle up for a game, and decided to roughly spray the base and try using it to give the castle (more) ludricrous height. On the night I'll drape a dark green sheet over the base to retain a mountainous look. I made the base stand exactly as high as two castle walls stacked. The map will be a massive stone stair rising up from a swamp to the jawbridge. This is only the second 'full scale' game with Grayskull outside of one-on-one playtesting.
Up next is a WIP shot of the small one man elevators.
And another one...
They're literally made of left-overs and will have chains joining them to the bony fingers high atop the elevator shaft. They'll be painted mostly silver and dirty bronze like the rest of the metal fittings.
What's pretty cool is my wife has just bought some red velvet and offered to make "a regal curtain" to decorate the lower level of the front piece interior. We also had a party at home recently and my mancave bathroom was handy for partygoers. I had a lot of people coming and going (a lot of my wife's workmates) - and I was uncertain of the response to the 'den of geek' I've got going on down there. I was blown away by the 80's love that flooded the crowd! Surprisingly most of the women had fond memories of She-Ra and Golden Girl (google her - very cool toys!). One guy is bringing me his BOX OF VINTAGE HE-MAN TOYS(!!) to keep simply because he loved the castle, whilst another guy has now joined our gaming group after being "dragged to the party by his wife". He - fittingly - had passed on a rare night at home of miniature painting to, instead, spend the night at our place talking to guys about 80's toys and...miniature painting. There were a few dudes in the crowd who looked worried about the toys and stuff, but they outnumbered by the 80's tragics - and I was the host, so they focussed on the James Bond car collection I've got to maintain their hysteria of toy nerdvana.
The official list of 'to do' jobs on Grayskull is fast shrinking. It'll never be truly finished simply because you can keep adding detail until insanity and/or OCD takes over. However, the must do jobs are now; finish the elevators (easy enough), a bit of interior decoration, and 'pretty up' the rule book (which I've already typed). I still think about a bit of moss/grass draped in little amounts in corners here and there, but that sounds a bit 'meh'. Speaking of interior decoration...
Finally, here's a behind shot of the castle showing the 'underground cavern'. Basically - and this is a job that'll likely never happen - my idea was that the castle was built over a wellspring (to tie in to HS). The rectangular area under the castle was to have a removable insert that would be a detailed cavern focussed on the hexagonal 'wellspring' coming out of the ground. A lot of the castle features are more for actual play - and as a family is planned, I hope one day to be able to actually play with the castle like I remember playing with the original 80's toy version. Recently a friend visited with his two young sons. They spent all afternoon playing behind it - very carefully! - and it was a blast to watch.
Next project? Volcan Rock from Revell's 'Power Lords'. The Four Horseman guys behind the MOTU classics re-boot are doing a Power Lords re-boot, and as I've long thought about a custom Volcan Rock playset, the timing is perfect...
Oz