Relatively Creepy
Jim Bertges returns to a pleasantly disturbed childhood with Needful Things/Dark Carnival's Uncle Creepy from Warren Publications Creepy Comics.
When I first encountered Uncle Creepy, it was in the pages of Famous Monsters magazine. He was a pen and ink drawing by Jack Davis promising a new kind of horror comic book to be published by Warren Publications which also published Famous Monsters. Warren made good on that promise by creating a magazine sized black and white comic named Creepy that offered horror tales in the tradition of the great EC comics of the 50s by some of the best writers and artist the comics industry had to offer.
Most tales were spun by the prolific Archie Goodwin and were illustrated by Reed Crandall, Joe Orlando, Steve Ditko, Jack Davis, Wally Wood and many others who were truly at the height of their creative powers. And like the old EC horror comics, which were “hosted” by the Old Witch, the Vault Keeper and the Crypt Keeper, Creepy was also hosted by a slightly sinister, but endearing character, Uncle Creepy. He not only hosted the magazine, but provided narration and sardonic commentary for the individual stories as well. Although I was never quite sure of his origins, I always imagined Uncle Creepy as an old undertaker taking time from his various tasks at the funeral home to entertain his young readers.
Now Needful Things / Dark Carnival has taken Uncle Creepy from the two dimensional page and given him three dimensional life. Well, he’s at least as alive as a one third scale cold-cast resin bust can be. Sculpted by Tony Cipriano old Unc is packed with all the detail a modeler could ask for, from the wart on the side of his nose to the one snaggled tooth protruding from his mouth all the way up to the scraggly locks of hair that dangle from his bony scalp. The kit is flawlessly cast in four pieces; Unc’s noggin, the base and two little triangles of resin that constitute his shirt collar.
This is also a pretty hefty chunk of resin and because of its weight, it calls for some heavy duty pinning to attach Unc to his base. I traced around the spot where I wanted Creepy to sit and drilled two quarter inch holes. I cut the heads off two five inch long, quarter inch wood screws and placed them into the holes and then placed a dab of orange paint on top of each screw. I carefully lowered Creepy down on to the screws and the orange paint marked the spots where I needed to drill the corresponding holes.
To facilitate painting, I didn’t secure Unc to the base at this time. The only other assembly was attaching the shirt collar parts. Through a bit of trial and error and consulting the box art (beautifully painted by Rick Cantu, by the way) I figured out the proper configuration for the collar parts. I did heat the edges a bit and pressed them into place before gluing, just to get a snug fit.
The main attraction here of course is the painting and I wanted to take a slightly different approach than was presented on the box art. Rick Cantu did an incredible job giving Uncle Creepy a very dead look as though he had just risen from the grave. I wanted to give Unc a deathly pallor as though he was just about ready to get into the grave, so I chose my skin colors carefully. Using all craft paints I started with a very light flesh, a pale violet, two different off whites, purple (for those dark shadows) and a spicy red. I also used what’s known in the craft world as Float Medium which gives the paints a bit of transparency and extends the drying time slightly to facilitate blending.
To apply the colors I decided to try a technique that worked well for me on smaller figures, stippling. However, before all that stippling started I used an organic sponge to dab blotches and splotches of red and purple all over Creepy’s face. I also used a very fine brush to add in some squiggly lines here and there. So, after the stippling of various nearly transparent shades over those blotches, splotches and squiggly lines they became subcutaneous veins and discolorations.
Stippling involves pouring several puddles of color on a palette with a generous dollop of Float Medium nearby and using a large, flat brush dipping into the colors and lightly dabbing them onto the model using a straight up and down motion. It helps prevent too much build up if you wipe much of the color off the brush before tapping it on to the surface of the model. I went from one color to another without cleaning the brush, dipping into a darker color for shaded areas and lighter colors for highlights and so on.
With one good layer of pale flesh color applied, I went into the deep lines and crevices with some purple, mixed with Float Medium giving them more depth. That was followed with another bout of stippling the flesh colors.
Once the flesh was fully dry, the next trick involved the kind of brush you’d probably throw away or at least reserve for drybrushing. I picked a large brush that had seen better days; the bristles were twisted and uneven, and very lightly just touching the surface of my spicy red I picked up a bit of color on the tips of the bristles. I lightly dabbed of some of the color and then touched the remaining color to Unc’s nose and cheeks to simulate those tiny capillaries that often appear in the skin of older people.
For the final touch on his skin, I got out my oil paints and mixed up a shading concoction that consisted of a bit of violet, some raw sienna and a dab of yellow ochre. I used that mixture to add a bit of depth in the recesses and lines. I also heavily shaded Unc’s very deep set eyes with a combination of violet and raw sienna. Satisfied with Creepy’s creepy flesh, it was time to move on to his hair and clothing.
In the interest of quickness and ease I wrapped Unc’s head with some Glad Press N Seal, masked off his shirt and cravat with tape and sprayed his coat and the entire base with flat black right out of a rattle can.
I gave his hair a two tone basecoat with Delta Bridgeport Gray and Old Parchment. Delta Golden Brown went on his shirt and Pigskin was carefully worked into all the details of his lacy cravat.
When I attacked the hair, I used a long liner brush adding streaks of Ivory into the gray areas and following the general flow of the hair. Afterward, using a smaller liner I carefully added very thin strands of Transparent Black which brought out the shape of the hair. Creepy’s abundant eyebrows got the same treatment, starting with gray and off white and ending with fine lines of black. When everything was dry I laid on a coat of my new favorite clear flat, Krylon. They have a new formulation in their clear Matte finish that is just as flat as Dullcote and it comes in much larger cans.
The cravat on this kit is very interesting, it looks like it was sculpted and then overlaid with actual lace and cast. It really adds a lot of very realistic detail. The next order of business was to drybrush the shirt with Ivory and the cravat with Antique White, being very careful not to clog any of the recessed details.
The final touch needed to bring Uncle Creepy to life was his eyes. I started with a coat of Testors Camouflage Gray, then I penciled in the outline of the iris and pupil. Drawing in the position of the eyes before painting saved me from having to re-do them after having started the painting process. I wanted him to be looking straight out from under that heavy brow instead of appearing as though he was looking up so penciling them in first was a must.
I added the pupils next, instead of waiting until last I figured that I’d be using transparent colors over the black pupils and the layers of color would increase their depth. I decided on blue eyes and wanted to use my new watercolors on them. To color the irises, I first outlined the rim with violet, and then carefully worked in the blue. I painted from the outside toward the center, and then worked the center with a moist brush to lighten the color there.
For a bit of variety I added in a few lines of green over the blue which also contributed to the natural look of the irises. Using a very fine tipped brush I added in some fine red lines to the whites, not too much since I didn’t want Unc to look like he’d been up all night. The final touch was a gloss coat of Future Acrylic to put the gleam in the old guy’s eye.
The base was mostly a matter of drybrushing grays and browns over a flat black basecoat. I picked out the gnarly vines and branches in brown and green and at my son’s suggestion did the nameplate in Bronze. The lettering was filled in with a deep red and outlined with a mixture of light green and yellow to give it that oozy feeling. Of course I couldn’t leave the metallic finish of the nameplate shiny and clean, so I gave it a wash of brown just to tone it down a bit.
Old Uncle Creepy had a counterpart in Warren’s companion magazine, Eerie. His name not surprisingly was Cousin Eerie, a rotund, ghoulish looking fellow. Needful Things also produces a wonderful cold cast rendition of him as well. If you have fond memories of these fine magazines from the 60s, you’ll want to pickup these excellent representations of their memorable and slightly sinister hosts.
© CreatureScape 2006
Online ISSN: 1546-6140