WIP: Animal King Turret (Portal 2)

Salvaging a vinyl DIY turret!

So this was originally my Thor turret that ended in misery. I put it in the bath of paint stripper, which did its job well. The problem was that the turret is hollow and not air tight, so it filled up with paint stripper that just wouldn't come out. So here we are, almost two years later, and I got this out of the closet, and it didn't slosh around on the inside. I bought a replacement turret to be Thor, but I still haven't gotten around to painting it yet. Maybe soon?

Anyways, I had counted this as a loss, but figured if it ever did dry out, I'd do something crazy with it that I wouldn't mind if it messed up, since I already figured I had ruined it. When I discovered that the paint stripper had dried up inside, I commissioned an artist (aslowenfeld over at Shapeways) to render a crown, and had it 3D printed. When it arrived, I put everything else aside, because I really wanted to see how the 3D printed stuff would work and react.

When I first had the idea, 3D printing was barely in its infancy; I struggled with how I'd do a crown with my limited sculpting skills. Here we are a few years later, and practically anything I can dream up can become reality. Technology is weird and awesome and scary.

So the crown got printed, and I got painting! Pretty simple stuff. I primed the crown in regular old gray primer, and the turret in Tamiya light gray primer. Then the rest only took about 2 hours. I started by painting the turret with Tamiya Dark Yellow, just a few quick coats, then some random spots all around it with a custom mix of Tamiya browns. After that, just draw some random "C's" around the spots in black with extremely low air pressure to create the splotchy effect.

Then the crown was simply brushed with Citadel Retributor Armor Gold, and the gems picked out with plain old red and green, then hit with a gloss coat.

And that's it! Hopefully studio shots soon, but you all know I prefer setting up for multiple kits since it takes my bench out of commission when I set up the studio, so I will probably try to finish a few more things before, but here's a quick snap of the finished product!

Thanks for looking!