Glen McGuire

Thanks, O.B.one! And yes, I am going to add water to the base. However, I've never done water outside a bottle before, so I have not figured out exactly what my approach will be. I've found some videos that use paint over aluminum foil that turned out nice, so I may go that route.

Love the hair clip clamps! Such a great idea. Gonna get some of those today.

Thank you Ian, Bob, Mark, Pat and Keith for the comments. The beast stretched me well beyond what I thought my abilities were going in. And double thanks to Keith for his comment early on: That gave me a good laugh but was also extra motivation to try and pull this off!!

With visions of impaled penguins forever floating around in my head, the strangest build log on MSW continues! Thanks again to @gsdpic for bestowing that honor upon this effort! I spent the last week experimenting with paint schemes and techniques for the kraken. Again, I'm trying my best to make something that resembles the Jules Verne description from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He describes the kraken's color as such: "Its unstable color would change with tremendous speed as the animal grew irritated, passing successively from bluish gray to reddish brown." I decided that in my rendition, the beast is pissed off because his prey is inside the bottle and he cannot easily get to it. So I worked on a shade of reddish brown that I thought would display the appropriate level of irritation. Since his color is fluid, I used varying thicknesses of the paint to give slightly different shades of the reddish brown. I also added some subtle streaks of dark bluish gray that are more visible on the close up shots below. Another step was using the same dark bluish gray to color the inside of each sucker which added some depth to their appearance. The last thing I did was add a heavy coat of gloss varnish to give everything a wet, slimy look. After I finished painting the whole beast, my color consultant friend selected the eyes from the 20 pairs to choose from. I liked her decision. I probably spent the most painting time on the open maw that surrounds the beak and tongue. For that, I wanted a shading gradient that went from the reddish brown of the outer skin to the dark, bluish gray of his color when calm. I also redid the tongue completely, making it larger with a few more teeth and changing the color. The previous red just got lost in everything. I also decided to add two more tentacles that will barely protrude above the water's surface (no suckers visible). The first is the long curving tentacle on the near side that goes towards the middle. The second is a short stub that disappears quickly into the water on the far side on the beast's mouth. I want the whole thing to appear as an angry swarm of tentacles fighting with the bottle. Here's what the whole thing looks like from the end zone seats. When my color consultant friend saw it from this angle, she said, "WOW, it really does looks like a giant squid!" The beast is finally done (along with my short-lived sculpting career)! On to the final chapter of this Quixotic saga - the water effects.

Just found your build log for this. I'm on board to watch another interesting project! Do you have a pic of the bottle this will reside in?

Fantastic work, O.B.one!!! I love the floating bottle effect with the base you chose. Well done, sir!

Welcome Joe! You have found the best website on the entire interweb!!

Thanks so much O.B.one! You are just as much help as Knocklouder!!! 🤣

Once again, I have no words!! 😬😬😬

Ladder looks fantastic, Phil!

The final result looks great, O.B.one! Congratulations! I hope you always have adequate space and this does not end up in the bin! This has been a really cool project to follow. I always find it interesting to see someone try new techniques like this!

Interesting, Ian. The only thing I know about "derecho" is that it's Spanish for "right". Never heard of it applying to weather. Thanks, Gary! Yes, I'm definitely enjoying this build. But I think I'm enjoying the comments even more! Particularly this one from Keith... OMG, Keith!! You are kraken me up!! Somebody please make him stop!!!!! 🤣

Such good advice, and for a lot of things, not just ship models! Thanks for the comments, O.B. One. I've been trying to follow the Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea description of the Kraken. It's been years since I watched any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I may have to revisit those this weekend.

@GrandpaPhil Thanks for checking in, Phil!! Hey Pat, I do give thoughtful consideration to all suggestions. Except, of course, @Keith Black and his penguins! 🤣 I've got the biggest live oak in the neighborhood in my front yard (trunk is about 3' in diameter) and somehow it escaped with only minor damage - maybe 6 medium size branches split off. Really dodged a bullet there as it shades the whole house from the afternoon sun. Lost power for 3 days, but no complaints. Things could have been so much worse.

Excellent work on those deadeyes, Keith!

@BANYAN By the way, Pat, I have not ruled out your spear idea yet. I will revisit when I get further along with the Kraken head.

Hey Ian, I got 20 pairs of 20mm eyes to choose from off Amazon for $7. I have not decided on the exact pair yet. Waiting to see what the whole beast looks like after painting to decide which eyes will look best. The nightmares are every night, Gary! As far as this being the strangest build log on MSW right now, that's probably the highest compliment I've ever received!! 😃😃😃 On another note - seeing that you are also from Austin, how did your trees fare after the ice storm last month?

Thanks, Pat! But I think my sculpting career is going to start and end with this thing. I made the mistake of looking at it for too long right before I was going to bed last night and decided the tentacles were not oriented properly. So I broke them off and spent a couple of hours repositioning them, smudging stuff in all the cracks, and smoothing things out. Ugh! The more I work with clay, the more I like wood!

Beautiful work on your Avos, Przemek. Welcome to MSW!!

The crux of this project begins - making a reasonable looking Kraken head and mouth surfacing just out of the water. I decided to start with the mouth. From Jules Verne's description in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, he described the mouth as such: "The monster’s mouth—a beak made of horn and shaped like that of a parrot—opened and closed vertically. Its tongue, also of horn substance and armed with several rows of sharp teeth, would flicker out from between these genuine shears." For the "beak", I cut a couple of triangles from a thin layer of clay and folded the 2 ends toward each other to form the upper and lower halves. For the tongue, I was trying to figure out what to use for the "rows of sharp teeth" when an idea hit me. In 2015, my son and I took a vacation to the DC area and spent a couple of days driving down the southern coastline of Chesapeake Bay. We ended up spending most of a day swimming at a beach near the Calvert Cliffs. My son found dozens of these tiny shark teeth that had washed ashore. We found out later that these were prehistoric teeth and very common for that area. He had kept a bunch of the teeth and I thought they might be perfect for my Kraken. So I picked several of the smaller ones and stuck them in a clay tongue. Next, I decided to get a couple of cans of Play Doh to shape a rough Kraken head rather than wasting the more expensive modeling clay in case things totally bombed. I thought it was passable, so decided to forge ahead and start shaping the real thing. Here's where it is now. I will let it dry and then figure out what it needs to get to its final shape. Definitely some smoothing out. Maybe beef up the "shoulders' where the tentacles come out of the body. The 2 attached tentacles are not tapered at the ends as they will simply disappear into the water.

I would not have notice the shingling boo-boo, unless you pointed it out. Too many other amazing details competing for my eyes' attention. And even if I had spotted it, I wouldn't have thought it was a mistake since it's uniform on both sides of the roof.

Thank you for the comments, particularly the ones that flatter my tentacles. Yes, tentacles. Whew! Thank you to @Keith Black for reminding me to run spell check! Speaking of tentacles, I added suckers to the longer ones sticking out of the base. But I was not quite satisfied. I thought the suckers looked glued on, rather than naturally extending from the body of the tentacles. So back to the Youtube videos where one showed how to fill in gaps and smooth transitions with what they called "slip". Interesting term, I thought. To make slip, you just add water to the clay till it becomes a paste. Then you just spread it on and let it dry. Sounds simple, but It took some experimentation to get just the right mixture. Surprisingly, the clay and water do not mix very easily. Hard to get the lumps out and get a good consistency. The first pic shows a tentacle right after I glued on the suckers. The 2nd shows what it looks like as I started adding the slip. The last pic shows all the tentacles cradling the bottle.

I have no words...🤣🤣🤣

How are you making the blocks and what are your shortcuts?

This was a very interesting build to follow and the final result looks great. Well done, Robert!