Halloween Nightmares: The Brain

This is the most recent release by USGarage Kits Halloween Nightmares line called The Brain. Though it resembles the monster in the “Fiend Without A Face” film (my favorite 1950's B film BTW), it also has elements of “The Brain From Planet Arous” and Audrey from “The Little Shop Of Horrors”. For this reason, painting this bad boy proved to be a bit of challenge since it has tentacles, the 'spine' tail and a mouth that looks something like a Venus fly trap. Because of this, I decided to treat each element separately (color wise) and blend the appendage junctions in a way that wasn't too visually jarring (hopefully).

As I've stated numerous times, these resin kits are by far the cleanest castings I have ever worked with and that includes 'regular' plastic model kits. I found one tiny seam on the tail of the Brain monster and no bubbles to speak of on anything else. A bit of filing was needed on various pieces to get a better fit on the insertion tabs but that is to be expected. Detailing is fabulous and I would like to see the sculpting process just to get a clue on how he does it Troy McDevitt sculpted this kit.

As is the case with these kits, no assembly instructions are included although the box art helps with this should you get any. This kit had no box art since I ordered this directly from GarageKits who ship using USPS boxes with the components in Ziploc bags and/or bubble wrapped. They did have a unpainted build up on their site (https://garagekitsuscolors.com/products/the-brain.html ) which helped immensely in me trying to figure out the limb placement on the Brain which was confusing.

The little girl sculpt seemed more cartoonish to me than the others in this series for some reason, possibly do to her massive Afro hair style and slightly out of proportion body parts. She's still cute nonetheless.

With no box art I had a free hand in my color palette. The Brain, aside from its multi-species aspects, was something I had dealt with before in my “Fiend Without A Face” dioramas & bust constrictions (https://www.oneeffgeof.com/426297882 / https://www.oneeffgeof.com/438418058 / https://www.oneeffgeof.com/441672875 ) so I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do. I went with reds, pinks & gray tones along with a 'wet' look. I added the drool coming from the fly trap mouth by letting a blob of clear cloth adhesive solidify in an elongated drop.

The little Trick or Treater cat girl costume coloration is primarily based on some photos I got when I Googled 'girl cat costume', the results of which were almost exclusively black and pink.

This kit had no pumpkin looking on which I took as something of a trademark since there is one with the other kits. It did have a cat head candy receptacle which was very much like the one used in the “Frankie and his Little Bride” kit along with a small mask which isn't meant to be worn (from what I could tell).

This is a great kit albeit a bit pricey in my view considering it is one of the smallest in the collection. The build up, on the “challenge meter”, was pretty basic as was the painting although I would recommend doing most of it BEFORE assembly, particularly the Venus fly trap mouth which is pretty complicated with its many nooks and crannies. 1/6/2020