Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

These are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle miniatures by Dark Horse Comics, they were made in the mid 1980's.  They are 15mm miniatures, very small compared to the usual 28mm miniatures I usually paint.

These awesome miniatures were created by Dark Horse to represent the characters in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic by Dark Horse.  If you are familiar with the comic series from the 80's and 90's, many of these characters may seem familiar.  The Triceratons, Fugitoid, Terror Bears, and many others are represented as miniatures.

To keep with the familiar look of the Turtles, I painted them in the colors of the cartoon, since the comic books originally had them all with red bandanas.  The only way to tell them apart was by looking at their weapons.  The owner of these miniatures wanted them to be easily distinguishable from a distance, so I painted them in the familiar red, blue, purple, and orange.  Also the color of their skin is different in the cartoons, so I matched it.

Painting these miniatures was extremely enjoyable.  I had many of the old Dark Horse TMNT comics on hand, so I was able to find good reference material for them.  These miniatures are very characterful and have lots of nostalgia for those of us that grew up watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Saturday mornings.  For the full collection, visit the Gallery.

Star Wars Jabba the Hutt's Throne Room Diorama

This is my first Star Wars Diorama, Jabba the Hutt's Palace.  This is a vintage model kit from the early 1980's, and as you can tell the miniatures are a bit cartoonish and comical.  The poses are a bit dated...about 90% of them have their hands on their hips!  But I think this adds to the appeal of these old kits.

The kit was easy enough to build.  The characters were snap together, and most of them were a single piece.  No small bits to fiddle with.  Every one of them stands on their own little base.  Assembly of the Throne Room was very simple and straightforward.  It didn't take long to build.  The base is a light and somewhat flimsy vacuum formed piece of plastic, but adding the walls makes it much more sturdy.

I found reference pictures from the internet to find accurate colors for the figures' paint schemes.  Every one of these guys has a name and was part of the movie, no generic aliens here.  So I did my best to be accurate when it came to getting them painted.

I loved this project and I really do like the diorama, although it could use an extra dozen figures to bulk it out a bit, and maybe a few more guards.  But all in all, this was an enjoyable and easy project to do.