"The King Is Here"

This is a kit that I have been wanting to work on for a long time. This is the "somewhat" new Godzilla kit from Polar Lights. This kit is not to be confused with the old Polar Lights Reissue of the old Aurora kit of Godzilla from the 1960's. Nope, This is all new tooling and a great likeness of the more modern incarnation of Godzilla. The kit has a surprising amount of good detail for an injection molded kit. The Plastic pieces are very detailed in most places, but somewhat soft in others, mostly in the base and buildings. Most manufactures would chose to produce a kit like this in vinyl or even resin but, to keep the price point down, styrene is a great choice. So Kudos to Polar Lights for making a kit that anyone can afford and build with moderate skill. Also, this kit is very big! It stands almost 18 inches tall and is about 15 to 18 inches around including his tail. I chose Godzilla to be my first Spotlight Gallery article because it's a great kit, was a lot of fun to build and most people just plain love Godzilla!

This kit consists of around 50 pieces and a foldout instruction sheet. I divided up the build into two phases, the Godzilla and the base separately. I decided to start with Godzilla. Since this is an injection molded kit, all of the limbs are molded in halves. So basically a lot of work went into removing the seams, a tell-tale sign of a styrene plastic model kit. I wanted Godzilla go have a very organic look so a lot of putty, glue, sandpaper, and elbow grease went into removing all of the glue joints and seams. This process is critical to make any model appear more realistic and less toy like. So off to work I went with the putty sandpaper and Dremel Moto Tool. Once the basic figure was completed, I began the painting.

Painting Godzilla was a little bit different than I usually do. I started with a base coat of flat black. I usually use a white primer but, here I thought the black would help render Godzilla's skin tones a little more realistic. I painted on the mouth, teeth and eyes with natural reds, off whites , yellows and pinks. Then a nice wet coat of some gloss coat finished off these areas. After this, I concentrated on Godzilla's skin tones. I chose about 5 different green and blue colors. I then dry brushed the colors onto him from darkest to lightest colors, while blending the blues and greens together. The rear fins were all left off until painting was completed because they would be almost impossible to paint once installed. I chose a silver/white haze over the top of the fins with just a slight dusting of some clear red on the tops to suggest Godzilla's "radiating" body. Once these were painted, they were glued into position. The fins really break the monotonous green skin tones and add visual interest to the piece. The finger and toe nails were painted with an off white and dirtied up with some clear yellow and a wash of some brown paint. Now Godzilla Looks alive and ready to start stomping!

Now I switch gears to the base. Basically it looks great as it is but, for me its not good enough. I glued all the buildings together as sub assemblies and glued the two base halves together. These were all covered with black primer as well. I then hand painted the two buildings with various stone, concrete and brick colors, again, to add visual interest. All suggested windows were painted black with a brushing of some gloss coat over them. With the base, I chose to use more earth colors. Basically just browns and tans. I then dry brushed the entire base varying the color and intensity in different areas. The railroad tracks were hand painted with brown ties and gunmetal tracks. With these steps done, I then glued the buildings onto the base and set them aside to dry. The Military tank was painted with a deep green color and the tracks were painted black with silver accents. I wanted to make the base more cluttered with debris from Godzilla's destructive path so, I used model railroad ballast and sand of different coarseness and spread it around the base and along the building bases to add a little more realism to the scene. This was then cemented in place with some scenic cement. The last thing I did on the base was to include the nameplate. I chose to paint it in a dramatic "explosive" color scheme of alternating red, yellow, orange and white airbrushed to blend in with each other. The dramatic use of color on the nameplate draws the eye to it and adds a nice change over the more natural colors that make up the entire piece.

With these steps done, I got out my airbrush and shot some natural tones onto Godzilla's feet and the base to unify the scene. This step is important to make everything in the scene look more natural in appearance. Finally, I glued Godzilla to the base and added the whole piece to a nice wooden display plaque and, there ya go! I hope you enjoyed this spotlight article on Godzilla. Feel free to email me with questions or comments.

Alan