Earthworm Jim

Steven Van Dyck
This weekend I created the base for the figure. This is necessary because it will topple when the backpack is used. On the back of a piece of plexiglass I painted Jim's arch-enemy Psy-Crow. The lines were painted on and then filled in with the airbrush. A white Tamiya coat and some tests were done on the figure. Some sanding was done near the arm and head seams, that were filled up with CA after they were fixed with superglue. The figure is printed hollow and some layering remained visible.

Villiers de Vos
Very creative.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Villiers. Now Jim starts to come along.

Dominik Weitzer
cool!

Dash Rendar
Very cool! Always nice to see video game related models.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for the comments. Today I had quite a letdown in this project. It could have been completed, but at the last minute I managed to completely destroy the base plate with my painting on it. This was caused by my inexperience with the product of choice to thicken the transparent plate, Green Stuff's UV Resin. I thought this would behave like Still Water and level itself before hardening after about 5 minutes, so I added nearly 100ml at once to the base in broad daylight. Big mistake, the heat had warped the plate and before I had 1minute time to find a leveling tool the glob had completely hardened. In retrospect I should have added the resin out of reach of UV light and let it harden more slowly inside the house, using the UV torch I had. It seems also the paint is attacked, though this could be due to the heat as it is an acrylic water based product.

But no need to worry for the future of Jim's project, I instantly found another solution to present him. Living near a DIY store I picked out an interesting design of LED ceiling lamp, that could just as easy be put upside down on the table. An inlay with a smaller transparent plate seems possible, just have to check the operation temperature of this lamp. I could attach a simple cord with wall plug and maybe a switch. The solution came so simple that now the only thing to do seems to replace the painting, I don't need any resin here.

Such a mess, I could sell this a an abstract piece of art.

Dash Rendar
What a pity, but at least there's a solution already in sight. That LED lamp looks pretty cool as a base, actually!

Steven Van Dyck
The scale figure did not yet acquire his new base, but now I've taken Jim to a whole new level. I decided to replicate his costume in 1/1 and use it to perform some cosplay at the FACTS 2024 event. In fact I already wanted to do this in the fall 2023 edition, but corona prevented this for me. Last weekend it worked after all. The materials I used for this are a rubber mask of a grinning banana, a can of PUR, a bottle of moulding latex, a morphsuit, two chemical gloves, some styropor shapes, a toy gun, a white backpack, a drill holster and a dog collar. The water gun was a broken toy from the second hand store but I repaired its function and restyled it to look as much like Jim's gun as possible. My first styropor collarpiece broke, so I decided on the dog collar, but it was not painted with Tamiya like the mask but with Motip. This appeared not survivable during the show, maybe next edition I'll find a yellow one. Surprisingly many people recognized the character, but I suppose for the children I was just an alien stumbling around...