Though the kit was cleverly executed, I was not that impressed as a whole due to the almost fair quality of the castings. I estimated I spent 8 hours(!!!) cleaning up seam lines, micro bubbles and the like. Some of the parts, in my view, just weren't the effort to clean them up specifically the truck, cop car and associated figures. Since these particular parts of the kit were roughly HO scale, I went on eBay and easily found HO scale replacements. Included with the kit were clear orange pieces representing the fire on the building and tree. Though a nice try by Mike, I wasn't that impressed with the intended effect so I decided to go with flickering LEDs in various parts of the scene

                                     The box art for this kit                                                             My take on the same kit

     Since the film was shot in black & white, I could use just about any color paint for the kit. I painted Joe's fur a dark chocolate brown and dark gray on the exposed skin. I happened to have glass eyes which fit perfectly.

Because Joe's teeth didn't cast at all, I ended up using small nails for his fang replacement.

     The building was painted terra cotta on the brick work and I rubbed in dry plaster of Paris for the mortar. I gave this a light coating of Dullcoat to secure the plaster. For the top where the little girl stood, Ietched two lines roughly ¾ inch from the edge of the platform and applied 'concrete' texture paint on the inside surface next to the edging I had just made.

     For the tree, I researched 'Ponderosa pine' on Google to get an idea of the coloringI might like for the bark. I ended up giving the tree a base coat of dark brown for the “cracks” in the bark followed by dry brushing the whole tree with a dark tan to bring out the nice detailing done by Mike. Though all the limbs were dead or bare, I decided to addmore branches from my stash. Also, I added foliage to a few as seen in the film. I soaked some Woodland Scenics dark green ground foam in Mod Podge and made a few thick flat clumps on a plastic sheet for easy removal. Once the foam dried out, I mounted it on some coarse screen painted flat green coated with fabric glue to give it support beneath. When that surface was cured, I flipped the supported clump and did the same to the underside. Next, I drilled some small holesi n the ends of some of the branches that I inserted stiff wire to support the clumps.

A very brief video showing the completed final build along with a forced perspective view.

     The lighting was a little tricky and took me some time too figure out. My goal was to have flames at the base of the tree and fire just beneath the little girl where the narrow part of the building is. Since both strings of each display had quite a few LEDs in each, I figured that I would need two 9 volt batteries wired in series. This arrangement drains the batteries fairly quickly but I needed power not duration. I dugout two battery holders from my stash and secured them on the backside of the building along with a small toggle switch to be the on/off switch. Each string (in order) had a 470 ohm resistor (to protect the flickering LED), a flicker LED (like in the tea lights you get at the dollar store for a buck) to give the fire effect, aceramic LED for the primary background light source and a three footstring of LEDs of which I random painted each LED clear red, orange and yellow. All of these would flicker and hopefully give the effect I was looking for. I tried different materials for the flame effect and ultimately used 3D resin. I downloaded a few flame .stl files from Thingaverse and resized them using the printer's slicer. I had to do some grinding and cutting for the best fit after which I spray painted the flames with clear yellow for the base and orange for the top.

     The next step was to attach the tree with Joe in it with the wrecked building. This was a little tricky since Joe's extended hand rests atop the building roof where the little girl he is attempting to save. I secured this using my new go to adhesive called oily glue. It is similar to ACtypes of glue but is a bit thicker and cures in roughly half a minute. For more stability, I drove a screw nail up from the base into the tree trunk. This may have not been necessary but I'm a belt and suspenders kinda guy.

     The last step was to add the miniature items to the base to further enhance the forced perspective nature of the build. This would be to add the cop car,the truck Joe came in and a few figures of policemen and others. I found some HO scale police figures and people on eBay to portray the arrest scene. I also added some debris such as N scale brick rubble,glazed windows and few small pieces of wood to look like fallen beams and the like.

     This build up took more time than I anticipated primarily do to the lighting effects which I am moderately happy with. However, the paint job came out pretty well and I am especially pleased with the tree bark and foliage. 9/1/2024

Complete video of the entire orphanage rescue scene from the film.

Be sure to turn on your PC speakers!