Well, what can be said about the Hulk?  In the words of my son Ben  “ He is this guy that when he gets mad he grows into the Hulk.  His arms rip his clothes and his back rips his shirt and he helps the good people.”  Well there you go.  That is the Hulk in a nutshell.

 This kit was a gift to my son.  He got it when a member of our local model club won it in a raffle.  Being that the winner was a WWII Mustang guy and not that interested in figures, Ben was given the kit. 

 So began our journey into father/son model building.  I would be minimally involved in the build since Ben wanted to enter it in the regional competition.  I would be only an adviser.  I had to put aside my ideas of how to build it and just let him do it.  Not as easy as it sounds.

The kit contains twenty parts all molded in white.  All parts are well molded and dry fit well.  You will need to use some putty to fill some of the seams.  To give you an idea of how simple the kit is, the Hulk figure consists of only twelve parts and they assemble in such a way that the average modeler really doesn’t need instructions.  The people at Aurora were really thinking with the beginner in mind when they engineered this kit. 

 The instructions are very adequate and are well printed.  In other words the instructions make an easy build even better.  Another good thing about the kit is that it is all molded in white.  This makes painting a snap and the colors seem to look a little more vibrant.

 Well for some reason Ben wanted to do the feet first and so he did.  Each foot is a two-part component and he got both of them together without incident.  Next he did the arms.  Like the feet, the arms too consist of two parts each that went together with no hitches.  The torso and legs came next and once again they are just two pieces each.  Now the cool part here is that if you put the arms on the torso you will have four components that are all one basic color.  I.E. the feet and the upper body are green and pants/legs are purple.  Pretty cool huh.  Like I said the Aurora guys were really thinking.

 There are two smoke puffs on the stand that consist of two parts each.  Once again no problems here, they went together great.

 Now to work on the seams.  I gave him a flex-i-file sanding stick to smooth down the seams.  At this point I just told Ben to get the seams smooth and that we would add the putty later.  He was able to get the sanding done in about three or four nights.  That is, after homework and Sponge Bob cartoons, just so he wouldn’t wane in the finer things.

 Time to putty.  Basically all I did was put a big blob on the workbench and Ben took his finger and worked the putty in to the seams.  After the putty had set for a minute, I gave him a cotton ball with a little fingernail polish remover and he wiped the seams smooth.  After he let the putty cure all the way he took a very fine flex-I-file and worked the seams.  The cotton ball and fingernail polish remover ensures very little sanding if you don’t get carried away.

 At this point Ben painted all of the components.  Then the paint was sanded or scraped off the parts to be glued and the kit was assembled.  Ben had a hard time holding the parts in place until I showed him how to use tape to hold everything in place till the glue dried. 

 The stand has eight parts and four of them make up the smoke puffs.  Ben put the puffs together and then painted all the components for the stand, and once completed he assembled it and placed his Hulk on top and was ready for the contest.

The painting was good for a newcomer to the hobby.  All of the component parts can be painted with one base color.  This simplifies painting considerably.  So this is what he did.  He painted the upper body, feet and knees Testers Beret Green.  He then added some Yellow to the Green and dry brushed to give it a more three-dimensional effect.  Those are my words.  Ben just says dry brushing makes it look cooler.  He worked very carefully and it paid off. 

 The most difficult part of the whole process was masking off the knees before painting the pants and even that was really straightforward.  He mixed Insignia Blue and Insignia Red to get the shade of Purple he wanted and I got the old airbrush ready for him to paint the pants.  At this time he had more paint on his hands then the model, but that’s OK.  I stuck everything on dowels to help prevent fingerprints and old Ben worked hard to keep from touching the parts, not a small feat for a seven year old.  He dry brushed the pants with the same purple and a little white mixed in and it worked quite well.

 The stand was painted Earth from a spray can and the rocks were painted on by hand with RLM66 Model Masters.  He then ran over the rest of the stand with RLM 66 and a dry brush, this brought out the little rocks.  He mixed some white with the RLM 66 and gave the whole stand a very light dry brushing. 

 The smoke puffs were painted white and then dry brushed with white.

 The hair was done with a black paint pen and the eyes and teeth were done with a white paint pen.  He took a little thinner to the RLM 66 and white used to dry brush the stand and dabbed it into the Hulks mouth and viola he had defined teeth.  Now he was ready for the final assemble on the whole thing.    

Well, the day of the big contest we packed all of our stuff and off we went to the Model show.  He entered it in the Preliminary Armor & Figures category and got a trophy 1^st place. 

 Well for the first little while he slept with the plaque and now it is proudly placed on the wall of our living room.  He can’t wait to enter a model in the next contest but somehow I don’t think that his Glossy blue and red Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 21 Zero has the same chances his Hulk did.  But it will get entered. 

I think that this kit is about the best beginners kit you can get.  It is simple and is very easy to paint.  

May 2006

Benjamin and Kyle Bodily

 The Movie and some Comic books