This my friends is one of the prototypes Bill Lemon sculpted for Aurora that was never produced. Polar Lights as we know had to stop production of Godzilla's Go-Cart, which TOHO felt was disrespectful to the character Godzilla. Still let's hope that we will someday see a kit of the marvelous Bill Lemon prototype. Stay tuned..... 

You might at this point, be wondering why I'm so concerned with colorizing black and white photographs and how this could be connected to styrene plastic models. Going back to the yester years of youth, a fascination with films and all things entertaining. I was pleasantly surprised when Aurora first released figure kits based on motion picture characters. My youth was spent just learning how to build and paint these things and although my imagination ran wild, I still limited it, to following the boxart. Boxart, I learned years later was based on Lobbycards plus black and white Stills. The Lobbycards were 11 by 14 in size and were colorized by some nameless Hollywood photo tinter, whom most likely used Marshalls photo oils or some kind of ink to color these black and white images. These colorists as I call them, must have worked right there on the set at the time of filming. They were limited in the variety of tints and most likely in the time spent in the process of coloring so depending on the film and situation these images could be quickly toned in or highly detailed with more variety of hues. Most "horror" films seem to have been quickly tinted  using the three basic -red, yellow, blue, a limited palette. When you think graphics was labor intensive and detailing time consuming, not to mention the release dates of the motion pictures themselves, you can understand the haste. However these "colorists" remained for the most part true to what they saw.Thus many years later the graphic artist hired to do boxart for models, used what was his best source of that time. James Bama did most Aurora boxart  for the horror figures, he colored the Mummy in shades of blue and white because I suspect, this is what he saw on the few Lobbycards supplied to him to use. Hence my tribute above to his steller masterpiece for The Mummy. Now I finally found the actual photograph that sculptor, Bill Lemon used to carve this prototype model for Aurora and I have colorized it using the greyscale and it was very  different. The Mummy is actually shades of earth tones! The Lobbycard colorist just didn't have time to color it the way it really was so simply reduced it to blue for dark hues and white for lighter hues. Universal Pictures resident Artist when the films were being made was a man by the name of Jack P Pierce. He was a stickler for detail so it's not really a surprise. This makeup genuis spent hours and hours detailing a costume for filming and being an artist painted it as a real mummy might look like. Just knowing that Jack P Pierce spent so much of his life dedicated to his craft, wouldn't you love to see it in full glorious color? Remember I'm NOT proposing willy nilly colorizing but finding out the ACTUAL colours of these iconic films. The purists will argue that it doesn't matter since to film in black and white, they used costumes and makeup to contrast better in black and white, so Superman for instance had a brown and yellow costume instead of red and blue or the Frankenstein Monster was a blueish green to look pale white. The fun is in the finding out...the journey... the discovery. Sometimes the actual colors used are refreshing to what we've come to accept as the "real" color. Where will this all lead me? The Mummy is getting a twin who will be different only by his "true" colors. Stay tuned.....

Here is an early attempt with the pencils. I was pleased with the coffin boxs. There seems to be alot of resistance to colorization of old black and white film, citing conflict with the "artists intentions" but in reality these films were made in Hollywood for public consumption and either do to limiting technology or cost were filmed in black and white. The flip side is that they followed the early German Expressionism movement with the Gothic atmosphere most suitable for such works such as Frankenstein and Dracula. Now however most young people NEVER watch black and white film so the purists are shooting themselves in the foot because if there is no interest in these so called works of art, they will fade away into forgotten history. Coloring these films gives them new life and a whole new audience. Remember they have to compete with CGI technology. Here is hoping Universal Studios and others will try at least one version of this genre, perhaps something which will appeal more widely, like Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein. Time will tell.

Hello again, it's been 5 long years since the last time I blogged here. There have been a multitude of changes in my life. Too much to go into here. The photograph is from Universal Pictures Classic Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. This pubilicity still is for advertising the film but at the time most stills were in black and white and although I love the gothic atmosphere created by black and white film, I've always wanted to see what it would look like in color. I had to translate in the greyscale the corresponding color hues and after many attempts finally succeeded, fairly close. Anyway I'll leave the approval up to you. Do you like this effort? Should I post more? Any suggestions? The coloring was accomplished by Prisma Color pencils, which I had sitting around for years and now finally have put them to use. So for now as Dracula would say " I'll leave you" until the next blog.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN VINTAGE TOYS THIS MIGHT BE FOR YOU.

Here are some examples of my restored Aurora Figure Model kits that I have disassembled and rebuilt and repainted. If you are looking for specific examples of various models released by Aurora please drop me a line and I may be able to help you out. The process I use depends on the form inwhich I receive it. The best case scenario is a boxed unbuilt original, The next is a built original with all it's parts intact and lightly glued together with proper parts alignment. If I receive a build up that can be restored then I will strip off any paint and glue residue. The model is then cleaned thoroughly and disassembled as much as possible without damage. The disassembled model is then re-assembled into components and primered. The seams are smoothed out and any gaps are filled with putty. I then final sand and smooth any areas needing work. Pieces are then painted in components and gradually re-assembled. Final painting, detail and sealing is then done and after that any adjustements are made. I will be posting more here in the coming weeks. I plan on finishing up The Munsters and Big Frankie. They will be posted here on this Blog. Questions? Drop me a line. I do freelance work and can fit your models into my schedule. I have several Monogram and Polar lights re-issues available for sale. Also I do take trade ins. I am looking for a built up Penguin, Monster Scenes Wolfman Johnny Unitas, Jerry West and Jimmy Brown models. Also I'm looking for original Aurora boxes: Apache Warrior, Penguin, Big Frankie, Viking, Chinese Girl, Mexican Senorita, Witch, U.S. Marine and U.S. Army. I would trade for boxes in nice displayable shape.