We received a big tub of cast-off toys for the boys from their grandparents and, going through it to see what to keep for them and what to send off to either Goodwill or the big toybox in the sky, I ran across what I am now referring to as “Slasher Astronaut.”
Slasher Astronaut is a piece of plain, grey plastic, approximately 2″ tall, in the style of those little, green army men we’re all so familiar with. What caught my eye was the dagger (not literally, of course, or I might be convalescing rather than writing this silly post). I mean, what’s an astronaut doing with a dagger?
Obviously, given the stance, he’s stalking something: a sinister alien, some aggressive (yet tasty) cosmic fauna … or another, hapless astronaut *not* infected with Mutagen X.
Let’s face it, in a hostile atmosphere, a dagger doesn’t have to slash your skin, all it has to do is slash your suit, making it a rather dangerous thing to carry around if you’re in said atmosphere and suit, I should think.
Anyway, I snagged Slasher Astronaut for my own but, placing it on a shelf in the gallery, realized it looked peaked, bland. It needed some color in order to bring out that distinct, mushy detail such toys have. Let’s paint!
Getting Tamiya’s acrylic model paint to stick was a real bugger. I suspect I needed a paint with a different base or should have tried to treat the surface to create better toothing for the medium but I was in such a mad rush of impatience I plugged ahead, no primer, adding and adjusting layers of paint before the last had the proper amount of time to dry. On projects such as this I really hate waiting for paint to cure!
As a final touch, I cut a tiny bubble of plastic from an empty cookie container to make a faceplate for the toy’s helmet. It was an extremely fiddly process but, after a few aborted attempts, I managed to create one that met my expectations.
With a dark wash to bring out the shadows, and a flat coat or three to knock back the shine on everything but the faceplate, Slasher Astronaut’s face ended up looking a bit dark, haggard, and lumpy. Just perfect for a character I imagine marooned and struggling to survive in a hostile, alien landscape or infected with and being driven mad by some cosmic bacteria that is slowly changing him into a different creature altogether.
What fun!
