Monarch Nosferatu

I've been playing with this one since I received it (Monday), and all the subassemblies have been assembled and the working-out has begun. To date, this has been an absolute joy, and it would receive my most emphatic and enthusiastic recommendation as a first-kit for anyone who wants to experience a little of what it was/is to be a "Monster-Kid"!



15.08.2009
To date. . .

As I mentioned, the subassemblies have been completed since Thursday, and I have been playing with the pose since then. Not exactly the easiest thing in the world considering the piece is hollow, but a few things were revealed--most importantly, the right leg is significantly longer than the left! This is easy enough to fix, whichever way one chooses to go about it.

With that done, the next step was filling the subassemblies with PUR. Once that was done, I drilled and pegged the legs and boots. Now any repositioning can be done with a fair degree of certainty. The repositioning of the legs will be relatively minor; the arms, quite the contrary!

18.08.2009
A few 'bites by way of progress made. The head is now well underway. The main enhancement has been the addition of the sleeping cap. This is turning into quite the project as there are limited views of the item in question. Thankfully, my experience with sculpting Renaissance headwear will come in very handy.

With the cap blocked-in, it was time to start reworking the face. First step: removing the ears. Next step was fleshing out the face a bit more. Save for his nose, Shreck's actual face was enhanced relatively little for his early scenes, hence it is more of a straight embellishment of portraiture.

Finally, with the left over putty, I began to enhance the "hump". This will lead to a more natural relocation of the arms and achieving the characteristic "no neck", hunchbacked look of Orlok.

22.08.2009
Much has been accomplished in the last four days. The head is now all but done. More importantly, the legs have been entirely reworked and repositioned.

Monarch is to be applauded for their design of the legs/feet: the boots fit into a cuff recess of the pant leg, providing not only a positive fit which still allows for some minor adjustment by the modeller if deemed necessary; but creates a convincing undercut. The problem lies in that the pant legs are stirruped and the stirrups are attached to. . . what? The second problem is that the essentially featureless legs are significantly and noticeably roomy--think tuxedo trousers.

I thought I could solve the problem by stovepiping the distal portion of the legs and introducing some much needed "landscaping" (i.e., drapery). By the time I was half-way through the reduction of the right leg, I had broken-through to the PUR filler in so many places that I decided to strip away the polystyrene shell completely. . .

Now I have two replacement legs made of PUR. While I will have to essentially resculpt both legs (reduce and "landscape" the PUR cores), the end result will be a significant improvement over the stock items.

That just about wraps-it up for this installment. As a sidebar note, these are enhancements and modifications that I feel are necessary to realize my vision of this subject: OOB, this would be a worthy addition to ANY collection.