Toro, Toro, Toro!: Cretaceous Creations 1/18th Scale Torosaurus
If you asked me what my favorite dinosaur is, I would tell you that it is probably Allosaurus, but if you looked at my collection of dino models, you'd think I was crazy for ceratopians. Triceratops, Pentaceratops, Syracosaurus, and of course, Torosaurus, including this mountain mover from Cretaceous Creations. Therapods get all the attention, but when you consider that a Torosaurus had a head about the size of a VW Bug, you have to be impressed. As the sculptor, Shane Foulkes, told me regarding the inspiration for this model, "no animal that has ever existed could have survived a full impact blow from this beast." Agreed.
So, let's talk about making Shane's resin kit into a monster-piece of a dino. The kit comes in nine main parts plus a three part base (not shown here), all cast in solid resin by Alchemy Works. The cast is very clean and while the joining parts need some filing with a moto-tool for a tight fit, the quality of the kit and detail is excellent. Also, the limbs and horns have posts to make the assembly easy. In fact, the the horns have two differently shaped posts so that you can't put them on upside down or backwards. Little things like this make Cretaceous Creations kits a joy to do.
Pinning the kit: The kit does need to be posted (or "pinned" as some people say) between the neck and body. There are a few ways to do this, but in this case I used a method that is reasonably easy and reliable. First, mark the main body of the kit at a visual center point and drill a hole as seen in frame #1 below. Take a nail, coat hanger or piece of dog wire and match it up to a drill bit of equal width, marking it at the halfway point and at the end point as seen in frame #2. This will be your post.
In frame #3, you see a cotton swab clipped to measure half the post distance and cleaned off a bit. Next, you insert the swab in the drilled hole and apply a wet coating of bright paint (#4). All you have to do now is match the body and the neck and a red dot will appear where you need to drill the second post hole (#5). Cut the post, insert it and secure it with a bit of CA glue (superglue) and you are ready to put the head on . . . but not right now.
At this point, with a big kit like this (the Torosaurus is about 18 inches long and the weight of a small cat), I like to prime the pieces individually before assembly. Priming merely refers to a light but thoroughly applied coat of sandable auto primer, typically gray, that allows paint to adhere better and go on evenly by making the surfaces a uniform neutral color. I use cheap stuff but other people swear by Krylon (which I have never had luck with). Anyway, priming is a very important step and after washing the kit in grease cutting soap, I hit the unassembled pieces with a coat of primer from all angles and let it sit over night.
Assembly: Putting the pieces together is pretty easy overall, but you should test fit and trim out the pieces with a hobby knife and/or moto-tool to get a good results. Also, take a few minutes to trim flash (excess resin) off with a hobby knife (the primer will expose it). Once the kit is cleaned and fits well, I use a combination of adhesives. Near the center, I apply a coat of Gorilla Glue which holds incredibly well, but takes time to set up.
On the outer edges, I apply some CA glue (i. e. superglue) in a thin line and hold the pieces together. You can spray an "accelerator" called "Zip Kicker" to make the superglue work almost instantaneously. Just put glue on one part and kicker on the other before pressing them together.
Now, there are two parts I did not assemble right away--the head to body and the lower jaw to upper. Regarding the head, I need to prepare it for some glass eyes, which can be done while the other connections are drying. Basically, the kit is sized to take 4 mm glass eyes with a little modification. I have a collection of eyes lying around; these are simple red bird eyes from Van Dykes Taxidermy suppliers. The procedure at this point requires cutting out the raised eye ball with a pair of wire cutters like these Xuron "Rail Nips" (below left). Then using a 9/64th inch drill bit, I slowly removed enough resin to allow the eye to be a little recessed into the head (below right). Just go slow and it should be easy.
Another thing to do while the glue is setting is paint the inside of the mouth. Once the kit is assembled, you won't really be able to get in there. Using an airbrush with a fine detailing needle (a Sotar 20/20 from Badger), I laid in three coats of paint in the following order: Freak Flex Jezebel Pink (a hot pink); Badger Rose Flesh (a muted tone) and Createx Fleshtone (a high, almost white pink). Around the edges, I laid in two colors to feature prominently in the head--Tamiya khaki and Tamiya smoke. Finally, I coated the inside of the mouth, top and bottom, with a modeler's favorite, Future Floor Wax (accept no substitutes!) The effect of this is to create a basically pink mouth--don't use red folks because it does not look natural most of the time. Also, because the Toro is essentially beaked, only the region around the tongue should be pink.
Seaming: Back to assembly while the paint sets. Even the best dino kits have seams that need to be covered. In this case, the seams are not too difficult to manage with a two part putty and a latex texture stamp (which disguises seams by duplicating the pebbly texture of the dino's flesh). I am using two Alchemy Works products here: Wonder Putty and Repliscale.
Wonder Putty is a two part compound that you mix by kneading it together with equal amounts of the A and B parts. Then, you can roll it into little threads as thick or thin as necessary to press into the seams and hide them. Remember making Playdoh snakes when you were a kid? Anyway, you don't need a lot of putty for even a big kit most of the time.
To seam the kit, apply a line of putty in the gaps. For areas where you will not be using a texture stamp, like the horns and under the chin where the flesh pattern is not pebbled, use a hobby knife or similar object to cut lines in the putty to match the lines of the model. Relatively speaking, the putty line is a horizontal line you are breaking up with vertical features as seen in the photo of the Torosaurus' chin.
But what about the latex stamp? The basic procedure is very easy and can be demonstrated in four stages. #1: After you have laid in a line of putty between the pieces, mix up the two part latex in an old jar lid with a skewer or popsicle stick. #2: Apply the mixture to a representative part of the skin detail. #3: Peel off the texture stamp which has made an impression of the skin. #4: Firmly press the stamp against the seams until the lines are covered. Let this sit for a while (24 hours is best) and then reprime the seam areas.
Painting and Finishing: If you are new to dinosaur modeling, one thing to understand about the painting process is that while the following technique yields good results, the look will change a few times and may freak you out a bit. Also, I have gone back over stages a few times to get the results I want, so remember this is not a rigid process. However, the basic approach can be laid out in the following stages.
Base Coat: I used Badger's Freak Flex paints for the first base coat. Gargoyle Gray for the underside and horns, and Poisonous Plague Yellow for the top (Freak Flex has cool names). After that, I used Tamiya's Khaki to mark distinct points on the kit--the bony ridges, the feet, and the area around the jaws and nostrils. For the circular depressions of the frill (future eyespots), I put in a circle of Eye of Ogre Orange and surrounded it with Khaki.
Mottling: Since skin is full of variations, particularly in animals as camouflage, the next step is to airbrush in lines of various dark, complimentary colors. In the picture below, you will see lines randomly patterned in with Tamiya Khaki and a heavier application of Khaki on the creature's back. This is applied everywhere but the face and underside.
Detailing: The next step is to give the kit a sense of personality with some finer, darker lines and features (see below). For the head/frill, Tamiya Smoke is applied along the bone ridges, the beak, the toes and most importantly around the eyespots and in wavy lines emanating from the spots. In the center I applied a heavier dose of Smoke. Why not black? Well, actually Shane Foulkes himself introduced me to Smoke, which is more or less a transparent burnt umber and will not overpower a kit like black will. You can use black, but you must apply it VERY thinly with a fine detailing airbrush.
Before we go into the final stages, I want to address airbrushing. First, the airbrush I am using is an expensive detailer, but you can use a general purpose brush to make fine lines if you are patient by blowing out most of the paint until the line is fine before you apply it to the kit. Second, operate it at a relatively low pressure--10-15 psi for controlled results. Canister style compressed air can be adjusted by feel. Third--and this is important for newbies--at this stage you may find yourself going back over work you have done a few times to correct mistakes, clean up lines or make changes. That is normal.
The Horns: For the horns, I tried a couple base coats before I settled with an undercoat of Khaki, a top coat of Gargoyle gray for 3/4 of the horn, a tip coat of Bleached Bone, and an application of Createx's transparent dark brown around the horn base. You could apply a coat of Future Floor wax to make the horns glossy, but I find it looks unnatural.
Sealing: After you have gotten the kit where you are reasonably content, seal it with Testors Dulcote and let it dry. The kit will get really wet and change colors, but it is okay. Spray outside, but DO NOT DRY IN THE SUN. It will ruin the kit. This seals the work you have done and prepares it for the oil wash.
Oil Wash: A wash is simply an application of a thinned paint solution that helps blend the kit and "tone down" the colors. Dinosaurs were animals and giants like Torosaurus were probably not very colorful. To get this effect, you can use an oil wash or an acrylic wash, but oil is probably better. Basically, you take a small amount of oil based artist's paint--in this case, burn umber--and thin it out with mineral spirits at a ratio somewhere between of 1:10 (shown here) and 1:20. This solution will seep into the cracks of the kit and give the surface a sense of realistic depth.
The wash is still wet in the photo to the right, but after a while it flattens out nicely. I let it sit about 10 minutes and then start gently wiping off the surface to reclaim some of the color. If it dries up too much, just put a little mineral spirits on your wiping cloth. Some of the details may come off if the kit is not thoroughly sealed, but you can always go back and address details. In fact, after the wash I went back, redid the horns and strengthened some of the main lines; then sealed again and reapplied a thin oil wash.
The Eyes: Now I can't say you can get away with this in every dino kit, but as you'll recall the eye ball is exactly 4 mm and so, I could simply put a little bit of Wonder Putty in the hole to back fill it, turn the kit on its side and position the red bird eye with a hobby knife. I chose red for the color contrast, but there are a wide variety of options. If you wash your hands and leave them a little damp, you can press down on the eye with your finger tip and it will hold long enough for you to drop it down flat.
Drybrushing: Most of the painted details are done with the airbrush, but once the core of the kit is done, you can bring out the highlights with drybrushing as shown above. To do this select a color a shade or two higher in tone than the base colors. For the underside, bony ridges and toes, I used Bleached Bone. For the top side, Poisonous Plague Yellow. To drybrush, take a large brush with sable or high quality synthetic bristles and dip it halfway into the paint. Then, with a rag, pull as much paint as possible off and gently stroke the brush across the kit. You don't want to go too heavy here.
Okay--we're done! As mentioned above, the kit comes with a really nice base, but sometimes I like to have a mobile dino kit to move around the house and freak out the cats. This Toro is indeed a bull, and he should go "anywhere he wants to," to paraphrase the old joke.
To close, let me say that Cretaceous Creations makes kits many people (including me) would argue are among the best in the world. They are well priced and expertly packaged, and I believe that they make excellent choices for modelers who are ready to go from one night glue-and-paint projects to show pieces because they go together so beautifully.
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