Something old, something new, something borrowed, something Blue

Continuing the work on that JP Velociraptor model kit, as well as the third raptor joining the set.

All three have now started getting painted. I decided to seal the hip seams on the model kit raptors before attaching them to the bases after all, as I think painting them first will be easier than trying to fit the brush between plants. I also removed the Battle Damage feature from the Battle Damage Blue. There are probably different ways to do it, too, but this way worked for me:

I opened the "wound", and covered up the surface of that red plastic inside it with epoxy putty, then closed it and let the putty harden for a day. I don't have a photo of that workstage because I didn't want to take off my gloves or touch the camera with dirty gloves, but you can see some putty peeking out from the top of the patch in this photo I took when I left it to cure for the next 24 hours.

The next day I placed putty around the wound patch, stuffing it between the edges as much as possible, then left it again. I could probably have done both of these steps in the same work session, but the idea was to have the patch be at least mostly fixed in place when I start adding the putty around it, since the mechanism is designed to open by lightly pressing on the patch.

With the patch firmly kept in place by two layers of hardened putty, I finally cut off the little nub meant to act as a handle for closing the patch. Then I added one more layer of putty, to blend the edges of the patch and smooth the nub stump. The raptor will have stripes on her flanks, so those should help hide the seams further if this doesn't completely.

(For a safer alternative in materials, glue and air-dry clay would probably work as well. Of course many glues come with their own safety concerns that should be taken precautions for, but I suppose you wouldn't need to use it for very long at a time, and after gluing the patch in place the subsequent work of actual sculpting could be done with the safe to handle air-dry clay.)

The raptors are going to be the three from Jurassic Park: The Game - or, Leader, Swiftdive, and Treeclimber, as they're known in my raptor fic. The Battle Damage Blue will be Leader, raptor A from the kit will be Swiftdive, and raptor B Treeclimber. Previous repaints of members of the pack they will be joining can be found here: a big group of their kids (and great-grandkids), and a grown-up granddaughter (who has some family resemblance to her grandmother, it seems, since they're both customized from Battle Damage raptor figures).

More on all of these guys at my raptor OC page, if you're curious, or confused about who is whose kid again, perhaps. And I also have a page where I've collected pictures I've drawn that are related to the fic (warning for blood and animal death in some pictures, as well as spoilers for the fic).

As for the post title? Well, the model kit is old, the bases I made myself are new, the model kit was already mostly assembled by someone else when I got it, so I kind of borrowed their labor there, and one of the figures I'm using is a Blue. Which is sort of fitting, since these three are raptor-married to each other. They don't have much use for sixpences or shoes, so omitting that can probably be excused.