AMT/ERTL Alien

This is the second regular sized figure kit I built. The few hundred WH40K figures I did were “miniature" figures.

The kit was miserable. I have never had a model fit poorer than this. The seamlines went right across much of the detail and the pieces didn’t fit well at all. Even the box art shows off the fit problems where the pieces don’t meet right. If a professional couldn’t fix it, what was I goig to do? All I could do was to use copious amounts of cement and clips to tork the pieces into place as best I could. When that failed, I puttied the hell out of it.

To make matters worse, the kit was short a piece: the clear plastic piece which goes over the head. The detail on the head is cool, but it’s supposed to be under a clear gloss shell. I wrote to AMT/ERTL and they said to take it back to where I got it. I got it on ebay. Thanks guys.

I didn’t spend a lot of time on this kit. Although I love the subject and think it’s a good representation of the movie costume, the pose wasn’t great, the detail soft in places (like the hips) and the model itself was poor. Also, my youngest son fell in love with it. When my back was turned, it would disappear from my workbench and menace Woody and Buzz by the coffee table. I knew I was going to be making a toy as much as a model and reaffirmed my desire to finish it quickly.

Not committing myself to strive for perfection is very liberating. So much of a modeler’s time is spent on that last detail, striving toward the unreachable goal of perfection. If you decide to take the kit more or less as it’s given you, you can spend half the time and get 80% of the result. It’s a fulfilling pay off. I think about every third kit should be approached in this way. It’s strangely rewarding.

Most of the time on this kit was spent in assembly repair. For painting, there really wasn’t much to do. I hosed it down with a couple of coats of flat black. After that, I highlighted the detail by drybrusing dark gray over the detail. I painted the teeth silver (like the movie) and then hit it with enough gloss coat (Future floor wax) until it shined like slime. That’s it. I had a good model. Outside of recarving the seams, I don’t know what else I could have done to improve the model. The coats of gloss coat means that it can be handled frequently which is good for my son, but not so good for a certain Space Ranger I know.