ULTRAMAN!

So about a year ago I went to visit my good pal, Buddy and see the Mellow Mushroom art department. All of the folks there are really cool and their offices are FILLED with all kinds of cool and amazing stuff that has been scavenged from the farthest reaches of the planet. As Buddy was showing me around, we came to a hallway with about six or seven of these statues that had been found somewhere in Asia. I immediately wanted to take one home and paint it, so I asked Buddy if he could make that happen. He said he'd see if we could work that out.

Cut to a year later and I call up Buddy to see what's going on, any work in the pipeline that I could help with, how things were going with him, that kinda thing. Buddy tells me he had spoken with the head cheese and had mentioned my desire to paint up one of the statues and had gotten the go ahead! So I swung by the offices the next day and picked him up.

Now I'm not sure if this is the actual Ultraman or not, but he at least looks very similar to the Ultraman I remember from my childhood. If you're unfamiliar with Ultraman, it was one of the shows that would come on after school on WTBS, along with the Munsters, the Addams Family, the Little Rascals and Three Stooges, and of course Bugs Bunny. I guess if you were to follow his lineage he'd be cousin to Godzilla and grandfather to the Power Rangers. Now that I have this shiny new blog I figured I'd let you guys see the process of how I'd paint something like this!

These first shots are after a small bit of patchwork on the chest to give you an idea of what the paintjob was like before I completely cover it over. By the way, all of these pics were taken in my Mom's workshop since I don't have a good place at my house to do this kinda dirty work.

 

 

My Mom commented twice about his "cute little butt"!

Pretty handsome fella, eh? Well, I can take care of that! A little sandpaper and... voila! Beat up worse than a hippie at a Hell's Angels bar!

 Above you can see where I had to patch a  crack in the foot with putty. Fortunately it's not a load bearing foot. All the weight rests on the other foot where a pipe from the base slides up into the leg.

The main reason for the sanding, after of course roughing up the surface so it'd accept the primer more readily, was to get rid of a small ridge on the edges of the silver stripes where there was a thicker build-up of paint. After I got him sanded and roughed up good it was onto the priming. After taping off his eyes and his head and chest "jewels" with that new Frog painter's tape, I used plain old spray KILZ and it took about two cans, including priming his base.

 

 

And with the tape removed, which did really well! No bleeding under the edges!

Looks kinda cool all in white, eh? Well, that's about it so far, but so you guys can get a sense of scale, here's a couple of pics with the big guy alongside me and one with my Dad. I'm 6'3" so as you can see he's a big one!

Now all I have to do is decide what I'm gonna do to him. So many choices! Hope you're all doing well and I'll update again soon!