Lanthanotus' customs - updated for sleeping rex

[Lanthanotus]

When I first encountered this T.rex figure, I was intrigued by it's overall appearance - though I did not like all of it's features - and the fact that I have never heard of a company named Arbaton before. When googling for the company name and the model, I just found Bullyland as the manufacturer. Appearantly Bullyland offers a 31 cm long version of this model while mine just measures around 20. Whoever made the original, the one I own is of high quality but had already experienced a ton of rounds in the rough house, so not only it's paint job had suffered a lot, but also some body parts weere severed by abrasion. Somewhen i need to write a review for the blog of this overall nice figure, but right here I just want to tell a bit about the custumization....

As you can see here the model suffers from ridiculously big halluxes (though they are not required to keep the model in it's bipedal stance) and awkwardly positioned hands, where the palms actually face outwards (!). Also the feet's claws are too long imo and so I cut short and reshaped them aswell as the halluxes and also repositioned the hands with hot/cold water.

For the paint job I used Gamesworkshop colors (Empire, Chaos, you name it) and tried to give the creature a mostly dull color with camouflaging stripes allover. The underside was intended to be brighter, but during painting I deceided different. The throat flashes some bright red and the side of the lower jaw a sandy yellow.

I'm sure no Martin Garrett, but being my first repaint of a dino model (and my first colorisation of a figure in more than 20 years) I deem it not too bad, but if you feel different, I'm keen to read your comments }:D

[Dobber]

Very nicely painted

Chris

[earth108]

Interesting color patterns and I like your photography setup.

[Jetoar]

Really nice work  .

[Lanthanotus]

Thanks all for your comments,... need some training before going for the Papo Dilophosaurus.

[Bokisaurus]

Very WWD, nice.

[Mamasaurus]

Very nicely done! I love that flash of red at his throat 

[Lanthanotus]

So now as the review is online I want to show you the reason that made me buy that Schleich Spinosaurus. As there's an incredible lack of Ouranosaurus figures and an especially abscence of decent ones (the Battat version is virtually unobtainable here) I thought of making my own. While I am also working on a Sculpey one, I thought the Spinosaurus would make a comparably decent one. Here's the result, just cut and carved, nothing added but a bit of paint, but I kept the original paint job as I wanted to preserve the anachronistic charme of the odd Schleich model.

[Halichoeres]

It's an improvement!

[pylraster]

looking forward to them then!

[Derek.McManus]

Nice conversion! I like that you retained the original colour scheme!

[Lanthanotus]

Thanks ,... in person it doesn't look as polygonal, but I refrained from smoothing out all the carves too much.

So here's what I also did,....

... CollectA surpasses more and more competitors in my opinion, however I mostly do not like their recent paintjobs and choices of colors and also the ammount of feathers at certain body parts seems unfitting or even illogical to me, but for what do we got scalpels, primer and paint?!

Any feedback and criticism is appreciated.

[Flaffy]

I would've bought your versions in an instant! 
Overall the colour choices are natural and makes the animal look elegant.
Love that deinocheirus, your paint job does justice to the sculpt.
I was a little disappointed when i saw deluxe feathered rex and deinocheirus's original colour scheme, the colours just don't go well together on an aesthetic point of view. 
I don't like the feather mohawk on both the dinosaurs, especially the t-rex as it is bright red and is very distracting, the green and the white on the neck is an interesting choice, but definitely not my cup of tea.
My biggest complaint for the original deinocheirus was for it's head colour scheme, the small white lines are unnecessary. The original head of the deinocheirus is a weird mix of blues and reds, i just wished that they go for one or the other. (probably due to sloppy paint job, the original promo pic looked a lot better, but still weird choice of colours)

Thanks for repainting them!

[Rain]

Awesome work, I really love how the T rex turned out. It does the sculpt a lot more justice than the goofy paint job it came with 

[Thylacosmilus]

I have to admit it's far superior to collecta color pattern. Well done!

[ceratopsian]

Both are very pleasing colour choices.  I also like the way you have changed the bases from dull beige/brown.

[Lanthanotus]

Sorry for the partial bad quality in advance my camera seems to have difficulties to focus lately....

The Safari rearing Apatosaurus is a very nice figure and I did'nt know about its release in two different color schemes until I found it on ebay a few weeks ago. However, the figure suffered from a ridiculously shaped head with the left half of the face being significantly londer than the right which was disturbingly noticable in the position of the eyes. I reshaped the left side of the face carefully and repositioned the eye (not perfect, but reasonable enough), cut out the weird block of teeth and rrecolored it, using the chance to reposition the nostrils aswell. I also painted the additional claws to give the animal the right ammount of nails in the front and back.




CollectA, a company I rate very high among the dinosaur producers these days, however, most of their figures have one or more "flaws" I feel the urge to "correct". Here it's the eyes (formerly just tiny black "beads") and most of all the tiptoe walking stance with awkwardly large claws. I reshaped them to make the toes longer and the claws shorter. It's a bit crude, I may improve this somewhen later. I colored the feet brown as stained from mud, the claws are a hue of brownish gray.




And another CollectA, an unusual figure and a must have for all collectors in my opinion, but the flat, deep set eyes and the gaudy colors gave me eye sore. The head crest was reshaped, aswell as the antorbital fenestrae, the eyes were repositioned to the posterior part of the former antorbital fenestrea. The colors were completly changed obviously, the color scheme is a mix of own ideas and illustrations by Mark Witton.

[Mamasaurus]

These customs are great!  The new color schemes for the Collecta tyrannosaurus and deinocheirus are especially lovely. Yellow isn't a color you normally see on ol' rexy. I love it, and how you painted it is colorful, but natural.

[Lanthanotus]

This time the pictures are better, at least way sharper ....

... so here's two of my latest customizations. I removed the Papo Allosaurus' ridges a year ago already, right when I got the figure. Those were removed with scalpel and each remaining scale rounded with the knife aswell, nothing added, not painted. Just a few days ago I tried Fixit Sculpt for the first time, amazing stuff. I hate that almost all theropods nowadays have no lips covering their teeth. No discussion here (see here for that), but in my view, those teeth were hidden inside the mouth. This customization worked well for the Allosaurus due to the fine and rightly scaled sculpt of jaws and teeth, so once the mouth is opened the lover teeth row is still visible and not completly hidden behind the added lips....






... other than in this case, where the upper tooth row is quite large and the lower jaw is not set as deep into the upper jaw once the mouth is closed. I bought the figure with the sure plan to modify is, the original sculpt can be seen here), clown feet, heavy overbite, bare teeth, eyes deeply set into the skull. Toes simply got cut and glued (weirdly enough the figure stands more stable now), eye sockets were filled and new eyes formed and most notably the lower jaw got lips. I did not remove the TipToi tag as is holds the code for information about the dinosaur and I may obtain the electronic pen once if I deem it an approriate toy for my son.

[Lanthanotus]

I recently ordered the Tamiya Mesozoic Creatures box which includes several juvenile and small adult dinosaurs aswell as a crocodilian. I choosed the set as I wanted to check out the quality of the models and it's the cheapest of the sets - and it includes a 1/35 Archaeopteryx. It's a tiny monochrome dark olive figure that comes in two parts, so painting is somewhat "mandatory", I also added some Fixit Sculpt to the upper legs and front of the wings, inspired by a photo I once saw here on the blog. Yes, Archaeopteryx is supposed to be all black, but I found that too dull, and after all, who's to say there was just one Archaeopertyx species and all were black?