Sylvain Rivest’s Frankenstein

I’m sending you a few snapshots of the Moebius kit of the Frankenstein monster, that I got from you, along with LEDs and connectors .    What I did was to reconfigure the display to get it as close as I could to the 1931 movie,  I decided to use the door as is,  but the rest had to be built .

The walls were sculpted from balsa foam ( 1” and 1/2” thick planks ) to imitate the original movie set, painted in light sea gray , then dry brushed using the same color mixed with titanium white oil paint.  Then the joints were darkened using pastel chalk (reduced to powder , 1/3 burnt umber and 2/3 black , applied with a red sable brush.)

The walls were constructed so that I would be able to create a passage way behind the monster.  This hallway was designed to be lighted from the top, hence the display built with a canopy to hide the LEDs and the battery pack (2 strips of 6 lights each with 2 9 volt batteries.)  A window was cut in the ceiling then built up with plastic strips (to cast shadows) and covered with a piece of orange tinted plexiglass .

The wood floor was made using 1/16′ x 1” basswood strips.  The grain was carved out using a scriber then lightly sanded and painted using enamels and oil paint wash (my usual mixture consists of equal parts of burnt sienna , yellow ocre, and burnt umber , all thinned down to a milky consistency, applied and then wiped off .)

The figurine was modified.   I didn’t like the skinny legs ( just look at the picture on the box ),  and the straight forward pointing boots , so I decided to start by increasing the distance between the legs, beefing them up using epoxy putty, and finally I splayed out the boots and angled them to give the figurine a forward leaning stance .

The head was reworked as to change the shape from too triangular to a more rounded top edge , then I proceeded to increase the height of the forehead and recreate the hairline.  Painting was straight forward using fleshtones, slate gray ( humbrol’s has a greenish gray tint ) with the edges feathered .

Aside from the modifications , I consider this model a great depiction and very well presented by Moebius.  I just wanted a little bit more of the original setting from the movie and that model allowed this very well, then the old Aurora kit that i did back in the sixties.

Sylvain Rivest