The Moon Calf
This creature is one of Ray Harryhausen's animations that appears briefly in the film “First Men In The Moon” (1964). The movie (in my view) is a lesser of Ray's efforts in that it suffers a very slow opening told in flash back by one of the protagonists. Having said that, there a few scenes that stood out for me, one being theCavorite sphere crashing through the roof of the greenhouse when the adventure finally begins. The moon calf shows up about ¾ of the wa yinto the film and, though something of a threat, is quickly dispatched by a Selenite ray gun.
The kit, (a very nice sculpt by Joe Laudati by the way) is simplicity itself being comprised of only five parts; the Moon Calf, a pair of pincers for the animal, a cluster of crystals and the base itself. I had intended to use the parts as supplied but I eventually decided to use real crystals for the scene instead of the cast version.
The very nice box art for this kit
Me being me, I decided to add a little something more to the scene so I came up with the idea of populating it with several Selenites. I added a roughly two inch wide apron to the left side of the base so I would have room for the changes. I found someone at CG Trader, a site where you can hire folks to do 3D contract work for hire. I provided stills from the film as a guide and they came up with four figures that I liked that I printed on my resin printer. Due to their small size (roughly 1 1/8” tall) they were quite delicate and broke easily but I ran off a dozen or so and ended up with five usable Selenites. I also made the ray gun used to subdue to Moon Calf from pieces of resin supports I normally would have tossed out. I resin printed a raspberry (yes, a raspberry) to copy the crystal at the end of the ray gun into which I installed three pieces of fine wire to look like the ray itself. I used fluorescent yellow and green paint for the glowing effect on these parts.
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Shot of the Moon Calf getting zapped. The template that was used for the Selenites. My take on the scene to the left.
This kit is simplicity itself and would be a great place to start for those just getting into the hobby. If I were to make a change, I would have included a few Selenites along with the ray gun they used to subdue the creature. 1/24/2022
I looked at as many photos of the Moon Calf that I could get my hands on to get the colors right but this proved to be very frustrating since just about every photo I got had different coloration. Some would be medium green, a few were light gray or brown. I finally went with a medium green for the back and sides of the creature and a grublike yellowish orange for it's underside. I painted the setae and mandibles a gloss black and the eyes in metallic red with an overcoat of clear red.
The base had many clusters of crystals cast in its surface so I randomly painted them gloss black and candy purple. I had a half dozen or so clear and orange quartz crystals in my stash which I epoxied to the base to add a little more character.