During the last Historicon, I went through the various vendor booths and picked up pretty much every alligator and crocodile miniature I could find. I had a desire to have a lot of these for various Pulp gaming opportunities. My stash included miniatures from Foundry, DeeZee and Northstar. Quite the menagerie!
I managed to buy a few too many Northstar models. Unfortuantely, these were all the same pose. However, nothing cannot be fixed with a little pressure! Basically, I decided the easiest thing to do was just to bend the tails into different angles, so they looked a little different. It was not too hard, but I had to be careful not to break off the tails. Fortunately, taking my time, I was able to do it.
Since I had so many, I decided to go with a simple paint job. However, first I had to clean up any flash. Generally speaking it was not too bad on most of the figures. However, both the DeeZee and Northstar had a flash line running around the miniatures that had to be removed somewhat carefully with an X-acto. It was not too difficult, but needed a little care.
I grabbed all the different model. This included a few models from the DeeZee prehistoric line. I also found some models that were waterline from Foundry to get a good variation.
I kept the painting simple. Spray painted all the models in a Krylon camo dark green. I then put a black wash over all the models and hit them with a wet brush of medium green and a drybrush of light green. Any teeth I could find were painted white and any tongues red (they should be green or black, but this is for Pulp!). Painted all the eyes black and sprayed all the models with a satin finish. All done. I am very happy with the various models quality of all the offerings and would recommend them all to anyone looking for metal models of alligators or crocodiles for their collects. Now I have enough models for my games! But then……
While at Michaels craft store looking at their Safari models, I found a tube of alligators all painted up for a very reasonable price! If only I had found these sooner, I could have saved a chunk of cash. That’s the way the cookie crumbles! In the end, I have a very nice collected of all different types and poses for my Pulp gaming going forward! However, if you are looking for a small collection at a reasonable price, these are probably the way to go. However, if you are like me and can never have enough, go for both!
- Manteuffel