The Swamp Witch from "Legend" (1985)
Here's a Dimensional Design model kit sculpted by Miles Teve based on the 1985 fantasy film “Legend” directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Cruise. It is essentially a quest type of film populated with all sorts of mythical creatures with the Swamp Witch (aka Meg Mucklebones) being one of them. Here's a link to the Wikipedia article about this film for the interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_(1985_film)
The resin kit has six resin parts comprised of a head, two hands, the main body and legs, nameplate and the base as well as a number of frayed strings or yarn for Meg's dreadlocks and a couple pieces of green lichen. I found the general quality of the kit as being fair with Meg being the best element though there were a number of seam lines and bubbles to take care of. The base had some issues such as parts of the rippling water peeling off the base itself and the log lacked definition in where it met the rocks and other surface items. This presented a challenge in painting the overall scene but something I had dealt with in the past. I had toyed with making my own base but I put that idea on the back shelf for the time being.
As is my wont, I decided to add a few items to spice up the scene. I 3D printed a human skull on my resin printer from a file that I downloaded fromThingaverse. As luck would have it, I happened to find a few sticks in a parking lot that had pale green and gray lichens growing on them. I placed two of the sticks in the foreground of the scene along with a large piece of the gray lichen on the cast log in the rear. I had some half pearls in my stash so I used a number of them as breaking bubbles on the water. I found the title card that had come with kit kinda ho hum so I made my own. I found a font to my liking on the Google machine which, by using some computer razzmatazz and a resin printer, I created what I thought to be a fine replacement for the original.
Box art for this kit. My version is greener which I think is in keeping with the film.
The paint scheme was pretty straightforward for the witch since I had several screen shots of Meg with her basic color being green. I used several shades of green to give her a blotchy and slimy appearance and semi-gloss black for her claws and nipples. I sealed the final paint job with clear gloss from a rattle can which gave her a nice wet look. I attached her hair with clear PVA glue which was a sticky process and a bit frustrating because her hair wanted to stick to me more than to her but I got through it with much cursing. Because she's anatomically correct in every way, I used some of her hair to mask some naughty bits to spare the faint hearted.
There were several five inch long paper ropes included with the kit that took me a while to figure out what they were for. I presumed they were for the stringy weeds that were draped over her body as seen in the film. I ended up fraying them with the wire brush attachment of my motor tool and stripping out long strands which I dyed with watered down green craft paint. While still wet, I placed them around her body primarily at her elbow crooks and between some of the fingers. Again, I'm not sure what their purpose was but the final result looked pretty good to me.
Meg Mucklebones in all her slimy glory
I repaired the peeling ripples of water using a clear UV resin and I painted the water areas a semi-gloss black. I used a medium brown for the fallen tree and dark tan for the exposed wood. The rocks were various shades of gray with a general wash on black to bring out the details of them and the tree's bark. I added some green ground foam for moss and some tiny yellows that had fallen off a tree in my backyard for color and texture variety. Finally, I did a two tone color scheme on the title card with a flat green for the lower half of the letters and an iridescent white for the upper.
This was a pretty simple kit to make although I have two complaints. One being the peeling water issue which I fixed with resin glue and the seeming inability for DD's resin to except a coat of paint. I have found this to be true for almost all of the Dimensional Designs kits I have built. Though I pre-wash the parts to remove any release chemicals from the resin surface, paint just doesn't want to adhere. Primers don't work either so you'll find that even the slightest abrasion or scratch will take off the paint. Still, they have a nice line of kits generally that I think most would find fun to build. 12/31/23
A brief video showing Meg's appearance and her subsequent demise