6mm Dr Who: Creepy Crawly progress.....

Thought I'd share the progress so far on the 'Green Death' and 'Them!' front, with some shots of how they are all shaping up; still some finishing off to do, but a lot of fun so far!

The plastic, or more accurately, rubbery ants can be seen in varying colours below:

After a quick wash with soapy water, the acrylic colours went on easily enough, but I soon learnt that any handling just as easily sloughed off the dried paint from the rubber surface - so some spray varnish definitely a must here - the larger ant, being a harder, more traditional plastic, was no problem.

I had originally intended a black paint scheme, but found that the large ant came out looking ironically a bit spider-like, so jazzed up the existing red colours with some more banded details on the legs and abdomen. The 'spideriness', however, of the smaller ones when left black with just the eye detailing, led me to try a couple of other colours - a sandy brown and a 'fire ant' red to match the larger one - not entirely sure which scheme I will go with for the balance of the rest - I quite like the exaggerated contrast of the eyes on the black ones, and the reds stand out well -perhaps different colours could denote differing types - soldiers, workers, female drones etc?

These are based on some rectangles of textured plasticard measuring 40x30mm, with the large 'Queen' on a 40x40mm - had to trim the ends of the large ant's legs to fit, but I didn't really want to make the base any bigger - don't think it loses anything in appearance, anyway....... and talking of basing, let's move on to those pesky maggots and the giant fly:

The fly in the original Dr Who episode had bright red eyes and some yellow markings on its back, but I just somehow wanted my irradiated mutant to live up to its name, so went with a wash of green on the wings and the body, with the corresponding eyes - for some reason, the plastic of the eyes wasn't too happy about being painted on, leaving a rather patchy finish, so will have to finesse this somewhat in the near future, and again protect it with some varnish.
The fly had a hole drilled into the bottom to accommodate the standard peg-topped flying stand, but this is looking a little dull, as well as flying a tad too high, I think, so this will also need some more attention.

The maggots themselves were of course in metal, so easy to paint, also with some exaggerated 'greening' to look the part - initially the heads matched the bodies, however at this scale they seemed a little bland that way, so I painted the heads black as a contrast, but again, I think they need something extra just to make them stand out......not quite sure yet what will do the trick.....

The maggots are placed on what is to become my new 6mm Sci-Fi basing standard (more on this in an upcoming post), namely a ubiquitous GW-style round plastic slotta base, mounted on a steel washer to enable magnetic storage.

This can be seen with the recently re-based Time Lord, Companion and Tardis as below:

The ant bases had to be a compromise, as they were too large to really fit more than one insect per slotta base, and I wanted a sort of 'horde' look to them, rather than just being singletons......

A similar treatment to the Doctor's base can be seen here, with the Alien Infestation Squad deployed to deal with some squirming, irradiated chemically enhanced nuisances of the maggot kind:

Finally of course, we have the villains of the piece, namely two intergalactic masterminds in the persons of Kang and Kodos:

These Monopoly pieces are beautifully modelled, even down to some drops of 'slather' falling from their mouths, and have turned out rather well, if I do say so myself....... although the bases still need some attention and tidying up - just was in a rush to show them off and couldn't wait to photograph them!

So, hopefully a suitably creepy, crawly and evil bunch on their way to completion, and if not all strictly 'canon' at least some interesting adversaries to pit against the Doctor and his chums.