A very long time ago Marvel and DC collaborated on a series of comics called Amalgam; new characters were created by remixing those belonging to the two comic publishers. It was a rather novel idea back then, and the fact the the two long-standing rivals were actually working together to launch this new comic universe was quite exciting at the time. Now I'm not going to say that the resulting comics were good, but it was certainly interesting seeing the characters they chose to combine and the resulting designs. So I thought it was very cool when CGPyro started sculpting 3D models of the Amalgam characters; it was quite the nostalgia trip for me. I still wish he would keep making more.
I don't really print or paint statues for myself; for the time being at least I don't have a good place to store or display them, and perhaps more importantly I'm more focussed on painting my gaming miniatures. But I feel statues can make good gifts, so I made this one for a friend who does like to collect and display statues, and is a fan of Batman and Wolverine.
Assembly
I printed the model on my Longer Orange 4K Mono. I had to scale the model down to get it to fit; I found 48% was the maximum size I could print at - and even then the edges of the cape got clipped off and had to be fixed after printing. The real problem though was that this left some parts of the model very thin and delicate. It wasn't long before the forearm spikes started to snap off.
So I had to print replacements. I could not use the original parts as I needed to redesign the spikes to envelope thin steel pins, else they would simply break off again. I designed them smooth then chipped away at them with a hobby knife after gluing in the pin, in order to imitate the ragged style of the originals.
I drilled holes into the forearms and glued in the spikes, trying to position them as close to the original positions and angles as I could.
I ground off the protruding tips of the pins with a rotary tool, trying to get a smooth seamless finish.
After gluing the model together I needed to do some repair work, fixing misprints and gaps between the parts, cleaning up the remains of supports that I missed in my first pass, and blending the new spikes onto the forearms.
Initially I did the repair work with greenstuff, but I found I needed to switch to the more sandable milliput for some parts, especially for smoothing over the seam between the two halves of the cape and fixing small divots left from removing the supports.
When the forearm spikes started to break off, I worried about the claws. But after testing them, they seemed to be fairly tough, and they stood up to the rigours of the assembly and cleanup process just fine. Right until they didn't.
So of course I had to design and print new claws that could be reinforced by pins.
Since the claws were curved I needed to carefully bend the pins before inserting them.
I was using 0.6mm pins, but unfortunately after preparing all six claws I found the pins weren't long enough; my original plan for drilling holes into the bases of the old claws and the knuckles of the hands didn't work, so I would need longer pins to be able to reach much further back, past the wrists. So I had to modify the design for larger 0.8mm pins, printing them all again.
This left the walls extremely thin, making it harder to assemble the claws without breaking them. So I ended up leaving the supports attached until after the pins were glued in place.
Once the pins were glued in the supports were removed, the tips of the pins were ground off with a rotary tool, and everything was sanded smooth... ish.
Attaching the new claws to the hands was rather difficult; cutting away the remains of the old claws and drilling channels for the new ones was tricky due to the brittle resin and the shallow angle.
After the new claws were glued in, I found they were not spaced and angled as well as I'd hoped. I tried to bend them slightly to get a consistent spacing and spread; the results weren't perfect but they're not too bad.
Again I had to sculpt over the joint, and ended up needing milliput to get a smooth seamless result.
But the actual point where the claws exited the back of the hand needed more work. I was not really happy with the details on the original statue, so I sculpted a more detailed joint based on my memories of the old comics and cartoons.
The original model had a rather involved gargoyle base, inspired by the cover of the original comic. I personally didn't really like how it looked and felt that it was too much; the focus should be on the character, not the base. Plus I just couldn't be bothered to print, assemble, and paint that complex multi-part base. So instead I modified a model I found on Thingiverse called "Sculpted Ruin Piece" by TheBigTricky, making sure there would be good contact between the base and the model's feet.
There were still some delicate parts, like the bat-wings on the cowl and boots, and the absolutely tiny fangs on the bottom of the cowl - I don't know what I would have done if they had broken! But luckily there were no more issues and the model could finally be primed and painted.
I used a sandable light grey primer from either Tamiya or Mr. Hobby (I don't remember the exact type). This actually showed some more issues that required some more filling and sanding. The model has some sculpted detail for the yellow tiger-stripes on Dark Claw's costume; however, these were very shallow at the scale I printed at, and I was afraid they would be very hard to see when the black costume was being painted, so I took some photos here that would help me locate the stripes later.
Paint
The model was based on the cover of the original comic, and similarly my colourscheme was based on this reference image:
Since the costume was black, I started with an airbrushed coat of Vallejo gloss black acrylic primer to serve as the black basecoat. This was a big mistake; the glossy finish made the gradients hard to paint, and also generally did not work as a very good undercoat as I often had issues with paint just not wanting to stick. At this point I think I'm done with glossy primers, except for specific uses (like airbrushing chromes or colourshifts). In theory I could have put down another coat of black or just matt varnish, but by the time I realised the extent of the issue I had already put a lot of work in.I started by drybrushing the cape; I like to do large dryrbush areas first as it can easily spill over the surroundings. I did an initial drybrush with (pre-SFG) Privateer Press Formula P3 Exile Blue. I brightened some areas with another drybrush in a lighter blue; I don't remember for certain, but it was most likely The Army Painter Warpaints WP1113 Electric Blue. There's a chance it might have been mixed with a darker blue, I wasn't taking proper notes at this point.
I then started blocking in the main highlights on the costume with Exile Blue. The was the part I was least sure about; some areas were easy enough, but there were some details that I just wasn't sure about; like the folds on the gloves and thigh muscles, especially on the leading left leg. After blocking the highlights in, I thinned down the Exile Blue with a lot of water and (pre-SFG) Privateer Press Formula P3 Mixing Medium to create a mixure that was very transparent but not too runny (P3 Mixing Medium is kinda thick, it helps prevent the mixure from flowing too much). I mixed up a decent quantity in a clean glass pot and used it to very very slowly build up gradients for the highlights with lots of glazes, covering smaller areas with more layers of the glaze.
I was still quite new to this and experimented a fair bit while painting this model; eventually I found that I got the best results by wicking most of the paint off the brush and applying coats that were so thin they basically just barely wet the surface. Pulling the brush towards the brightest parts of the highlight (where possible) also helped avoid accidental pooling where it would look bad. I had some issues with semi-dried paint getting picked up again if I over-worked an area or didn't wait for the glaze to dry enough. Overall it was a VERY slow process that was made harder by the difference in finish between the matte painted areas and the glossy unpainted areas, as it made trying to evaluate the existing gradient much harder. I do think that I improved a lot, and gained a lot of confidence, over the course of working on this model.
These highlights took so much work that I wanted to protect them with a matte varnish; this would make it much easier to fix any later mistakes and would also deal with the issue I was having with the glossy finish. I decided to finish all the basecoats first; I think I might have been afraid that the varnish would make some details slightler softer, so getting the initial basecoats first would be best for keeping the details looking sharp. I probably didn't need to worry about filling the details tbh, as I didnt really notice any loss of details after the varnish.
I picked out the yellow areas with Citadel Colour Base Averland Sunset. I had a very hard time keeping this neat; the recessed stripes were indeed very hard to see, and so shallow that they didn't really help much when it came to keeping the paint neat along the edges. In some areas the paint didn't want to go down smoothly because of the crappy gloss black primer, and some of the musculature that I was trying to paint across was quite pronounced, making it hard to put down smooth lines that looked good. It was also VERY hard to get my paintbrush in some places in a controlled way, at least with the tip angled the way I needed it to put down a neat controlled line, because of all the stuff in the way - mainly the arms and claws.
I basecoated all the metals with (pre-SFG) Privateer Press Formula P3 Boiler Black. The inside of the mouth was painted with (pre-SFG) Privateer Press Formula P3 Ryn Flesh mixed with a bit of Citadel Colour Base Mephiston Red. The teeth were done in Two Thin Coats 10036 Trooper White, and the face in Two Thin Coats 10026 Dwarven Skin. I went ahead and washed the entire face, including the mouth, with (older formula I think) Citadel Colour Shade Reikland Fleshshade. I did this before the varnish as I was afraid the varnish would fill the details a bit, which would make a shade less effective at settling in the recesses, plus if I had to try to fix any highlights later I would want the shade protected by the varnish. The model's base was painted with Green Stuff World 1832 Acrylic Color Redwood Brown.
I airbrushed a coat of Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 113 UVCut Flat lacquer varnish through my Badger 250 syphon feed single action airbrush. I was afraid I might have overdone it and put down too much; the finish when dried almost seemed a bit too rough? But it really didn't seem to cause any problems once the final varnish was done so I guess it's fine.
I realised that I was going to need to paint more blue over the yellow areas, so I experimented with putting down a precise layer of liquid mask to protect the yellow, but that really didn't work so I gave up. I found a silicone sculpting tool worked really well for rubbing the liquid mask off without damaging the surround areas.
At this point I tried to paint the white eyes, but I found they were so sunken that I really couldn't get my brush in there without getting paint on the surrounding areas, so I quickly cleaned off the work so far with a bit of The Masters Brush Cleaner And Preserver. I have found that wetting a brush slightly, working up a bit of a lather in the brush cleaner and rubbing it on a painting mistake, then working over it with a brush of clean water (rinse and repeat as necessary, and wiping down with tissue or a cotton bud after) will clean up mistakes quite well - as long as it's done quickly. After a while the paint becomes more resistant, so generally a fresh mistake will come off with very little damage to the underlying paint, but a later mistake is much harder. And of course the fact that I was working over a lacquer varnish meant I had very little to worry about.
I thought that it might be easier to paint the eyes using a technical pen, so I tried it with a Rotring Isograph with Rotring Drawing Ink White (which I think is basically an acrylic paint), but it really didn't work as well as I had hoped. In the end I dug up a tiny old Winsor Newton Seriest 7 00 brush, which worked a little better because it had very short bristles (it might have been part of the Miniature range that has shorter bristles), painting the eyes with (pre-SFG) Privateer Press Formula P3 Morrow White, then cleaning it all up with Green Stuff World 1779 Acrylic Color Black Stallion.
I found it very difficult to decide on the highlight colour for the black. I was afraid of going too bright as, you know, it's supposed to be black, but I was seeing such a difference between how the model looked under my painting lights and how it looked under normal room lighting that I was afraid it would be dark and boring if I was too conservative. In the end I put together a mix of P3 Exile Blue and The Army Painter Warpaints WP1113 Electric Blue (I actually decided after the initial tests that it was a bit dark, and mixed in some Citadel Colour Blue Horror to brighten it a bit more, but I'm sure it would have looked the same with just more Electric Blue so I'm not counting the Blue Horror as part of the formula).
I used this mix to block in the second highlights on the black costume, trying to focus on higher and more upwards-facing areas, but leaving out some areas of the lower legs (especially those towards the back where the cape would block light). I then took some of the mix and, as before, thinned it with water and P3 mixing medium in a clean glass pot, going back and forth until I had the flow properties and coverage that felt right. I used this thinned mix to glaze in gradients for the second highlights.
I worked from the inside out, starting with the face and chest, then the legs and finally the arms, as I tried to leave the areas that got touched the most until the last. In between the inner areas (face and chest) and the outer areas (legs and arms, that I often rubbed slightly with my gloved hand while trying to get the brush to the inner areas) I actually went back to the face. I touched up the tips of the teeth with pure Trooper White again, but I didn't feel the inside of the mouth needed any more work. I did paint over most of the face with pure Dwarven Skin again, then I cleaned up and reinforced the shading with Reikland Fleshshade carefully and precisely applied to the edges and recesses. I blocked in some very light highlights with Two Thin Coats 10027 Elven Skin, then thinned it with P3 Mixing Medium and water to blend the highlights in.
Once all the highlights for the black were done, I went back and re-established the yellow stripes with Averland Sunset. I then shaded all the yellow areas with Citadel Colour Shade Seraphim Sepia mixed with Vallejo 73.596 Glaze Medium (mixed at around a 1:1 ratio) as I wanted more of a glaze than a wash. With the yellow darkened, I picked out highlights with Averland Sunset again, once again blocking in first then smoothing the transitions with glazes of Averland Sunset thinned with P3 Mixing Medium and water. I didn' want the yellow to be too bright as it was already very bright compared to most of the rest of the model, but I did end up adding a second highlight with Vallejo 72.006 Game Color Sun Yellow mixed with a little P3 Morrow White. This time I only added water when thinning the mix for glazing over the transitions, as the Sun Yellow already has a consistency very close to the P3 Mixing Medium, so water alone was enough to get the flow properties that I wanted.
Despite my efforts the yellow stripes were still a little messy, but as I hoped giving the stripes an outline of Black Stallion fixed that while also just making everything look neater and sharper.
I highlighted all the metal areas with Vallejo 72.054 Game Color Gunmetal, aiming to cover about half of every surface with the initial blocks of colour. Once again I blocked in highlights then smoothed the transitions with glazes. I repeated this process a second time with Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver, this time aiming to cover about a quarter of every surface with the initial blocks of colour. I had a hard time with this paint, I didn't feel like the coverage was great, and ultimately when I tried to glaze over the transitions I ended up thinning the paint far less that I had the previous colours.
As his claws are adamantium I wanted to go even brighter. I edge-highlighted the claws with the silver, then built up a third highlight with Scale75 SC-66 Scalecolor Metal N' Alchemy Speed Metal, which is very bright but has really bad coverage and is really hard to get a solid colour without basically globbing it on. It took a long time to get the highlights looking good - I barely had to thin the paint at all to use it as a glaze - and I ended up covering and brightening far more of the claws than I had originally intended, but overall I do like how it brightens and adds more contrast to the claws, making them more eye-catching. I used it to brighten the ends of the claws and the edge-highlights across the sharp edges (leaving silver edge highlights along the backs of the claws).
Finally I blacklined all the metal bits with thinned Black Stallion.
As I prepared to move on the base, I noticed something: there was a line across his back foot. Upon further inspecting I realised it was snapped cleanly in two, about halfway between the toes and the heel.
I think it was when I was highlighting the yellow stripes that I was bit careless and the model was knocked over. I had it blue-tacked to an old deoderant bottle to serve as a painting handle (at 11cm tall and with a wide flat top it was a good size for a handle). The model didn't really fall, it essentially just go knocked over. I was afraid it had hit the claws against the table or something, but luckily only the front of the base had actually contacted the table, leaving a very small blemish that wasn't an issue. But I guess this must have been when the foot broke, because I don't know when else it could have happened.
I was frustrated and angry, but luckily the break seemed to be absolutely clean, without any missing chips or anything. So I tried to fill the break with thin superglue, but I think my superglue had thickened up or something because it didn't flow into the break smoothly and I basically had to flood it, then it didn't wick up cleanly when I tried to clean it up with tissues. Fortunately the foot did glue into place properly, but there was a lot of hardened glue leftover around the cut. Plus the surrounding area had a lot of that hazy white residue that you get around superglue. It took me quite a lot of work to clean up all the leftover glue and get a smooth finish again using a hobby knife and fine sanding paper, then of course I had to repaint most of the foot. It was pretty much perfect when done, but it was quite a bit of extra work and makes me worry about the statue's longevity; this damned 3D printed resin, I guess I need to buy the really expensive, really tough stuff in the future. If I can even get it.
I cleaned up the Redwood Brown on the base, then washed the entire base with The Army Painter WP1136 Quickshade Washes Dark Tone mixed with few drops of the Vallejo Glaze Medium. I've been having a bit of an issue with old washes drying and having bits in them, so I filtered the shade with an airbrush paint filter (I should have done this for the face as well, as the shade left a couple of dark spots that I think were caused by dried bits of pigment). I hoped the glaze medium would help the shade spread more evenly across the base to darken the whole thing, but also I find it extends the drying time a lot, which in this case was important since the base was quite large and a longer drying time would help me get a smooth(ish) even coat. The result wasn't perfect, but good enough; once I drybrushed Redwood Brown over the base again it looked pretty good, with any flaws in the wash basically creating shading and subtle detail without looking too rough.
I highlighted the base with a drybrush of Reaper 09225 Master Series Paint Redstone Highlight. This was a lighter drybrush, using more downwards brushstrokes to focus on catching the edges and brightening the upwards-facing surfaces. I had planned to leave it at that, but under room lighting the base looked quite flat, so I decided to brighten it up a bit more. In the original artwork the rooftops he's standing on brighten towards yellow, so I decided to try to do the same by mixing the Redstone Highlight with Citadel Foundation Iyanden Darksun, again drybrushing with a focus on catching edges and brightening upwards-facing surfaces. I wasn't completely happy with the result (I feel there's a lot of bricks in the body of the base that hadn't caught much shading or highlighting), but it was pretty good and I didn't want to mess with it any more than that. I did spot an area under the toes of the left foot where where wash had apparently not shaded the bricks properly, but only after taking photos (so you can see it in the photos if you look for it); I painted a touch of Stallion Black over this after taking photos.
I wrote the date under the base with a technical pen and white technical ink, and airbrushed the statue with Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 112 UVCut Gloss. Since I had put down more than I intended when I used the Badger 250 last time, I switched to my (knockoff) Badger 350 (which directs the flow better) and reduced the pressure on my compressor, but this time I felt as if I spent ages spraying the model yet barely any varnish seemed to have been applied. I don't know if the pressure was too low, if I didn't thin the varnish enough, or if it's the airbrush itself, but when the gloss varnish had dried the statue was not glossy. So when I followed up with the matte coat (Mr. Hobby GX 113 Flat again), I switched back to the Badger 250 and bumped up the air pressure again, and this time it put down a lot of varnish again. I tried not to overdo it and I think it looked good when it dried.
The Box
Just painting the statue wasn't the end of the story however; I needed to be able to transport it. So, as I did for Savage Dragon, I used the original digital model to create templates, which I printed and used to cut foam sheets, which I glued together to make a liner for a carrying box - which I 3D printed this time.
The Dark Claw statue had a lot more three-dimension-ality than the Savage Dragon, and the resulting foam was not as form-fitting, but there wasn't much else I could do.
Unfortunately something went wrong somewhere, and the two sides just didn't close properly over the statue. I don't know why, in theory everything should have been sized quite well.
I fit the two foam blocks to the box halves.
Unfortunately, even without the statue the foam blocks turned out to be a touch too deep and the two halves of the box wouldn't stay completely closed. Of course this only got worse once the statue was involved. I couldn't trim the foam down because it was already quite thin in some areas; I really shouldn't have cut it so tight. Oh well, he shouldn't really be spending that much time in the box after all.
While he's not perfect, and I'm not sold on how I highlighted some areas like the thighs, overall I think he looks really good and I'm a little bit proud of him. He was a LOT of work; glazing the highlights was such a time-consuming job that halfway through the first batch I kinda gave up and put the statue away for a VERY long time; the glazing had come to feel like such a huge job that it was ages before I could bring myself to start again. But eventually I feel I got the hang of it and managed to stick with it until it was done.
For context, I started glazing the highlights on this guy before I painted my Butcher4, and I think I had a much easier time with the Butcher just from the practice I got on the first half of the first hightlights on Dark Claw. Actually, while I'm on the subject, the technique that I used to create my glowing energy blade was something I came up with after having to figure out how to fix this statue's broken claws.
Having a good quantity of the blue glazes in a sealed pot was extremely useful; even when trying to focus on the painting it took several days to highlight some colours, being able to just open a pot and get to work with a mix that I was used to, rather than trying to get a mix with the right coverage and flow properties every time, was huge. Especially for the Exile Blue/Electric Blue mix; trying to match the same colour every time I started again or needed to fix something would have been hell.
It also didn't help that he was large and awkward to hold. Painting smaller, lighter models just feels easier and more relaxed. Although at this point my eyesight is pretty bad, so the details on 35mm models are really feeling too small to see well or paint precisely, even with a magnifier (hell, I needed a magnifier when painting some details on this massive statue!). I'm thinking of focusing on Monsterpocalypse monsters for a while, they are big enough to see easily (well, relatively easily; most details can be painted with simple reading glasses), but not so big that they are hard to hold or transport. Plus Monsterpocalypse is having a kind of a resurgence, so now's a good time to give it some attention.
