Work in Progress: KDM Gold Smoke Knight

GSK - First pass at filling the crummy neck gaps.

I still haven't taken new pictures for the King's Man or the Hand (completed this weekend with the Butcher), so I don't have a HotD post to share.  But here's a WIP progress about the KDM figure after them - the Gold Smoke Knight (GSK).

Assembly of the GSK wasn't particularly challenging from a "what do I do next?" standpoint (all the pieces fit in obvious ways), but has absolutely been the MOST challenging KDM model from a "oh crap, this really looks like ass" standpoint.

He's pretty straightforward.  In theory.  Leg/torso pieces glue to the back.  Neck inserts into torso.  Chest/belly glues to all of that.  Then arms and a few trim pieces.  The parts count is low (compared to say - the young survivor) and as a larger figure the parts are nicely scaled up compared to the other bosses.

But, something about my assembly went terribly wrong.  Dry fitting the neck/chest/arms, I realized that if I just plowed ahead I'd have some nasty gaps basically at every mating surface from the waist up.

Yuck.  YUCK!

So, after some trial and error to isolate the problem pieces, I modified the assembly order. I glued the chest piece FIRST, and then shaved the neck a bit to fit down into the resulting cavity.  This let me close the gaps at the chest piece and minimize the shoulder gaps on his right side.  This meant that alllllll of the gap transferred to his left shoulder - maybe 3/16" of nasty gaps.

At this point, my options were maybe to pin the arm and rebuild the gap with filler (which would have added complexity and looked weird), or get creative.  I spent an hour slowly shaving down the interior mating surfaces and removing almost of all of the "locating pin" geometry to get the gap down to maybe 1/64".  Visible, but fillable.

Aha, but what to fill him with?

I've had pretty mediocre results with Green Stuff and I've refused to use it on my models. (Heresy, I know!)  Lately I've been using Vallejo Plastic Putty and Vallejo Matt Varnish to blend in seams (or just choose to leave them unfilled).  This works, but takes multiple passes because the putty and varnish both shrink as they dry.  I've gotten pretty good about eliminating the ponding marks that can happen around the edges of the varnish, but this is still a fussy thing to deal with and every layer means some risk that I'll actually make things look worse.

Miniature Monthly just released a video on filling that featured Milliput, so I decided to try it.  It's still a 2-part putty (mixes like green stuff) but it thins with water so you can brush and blend the result.  I found it reasonably easy to work with, and some of the tools that MM showcased did make things a lot easier.

The picture is the "after" version that's currently curing.  I think the edges are blended smoothly, but I won't be able to tell for sure until I prime.  I can always further blend with Varnish before I airbrush colors.

I didn't take a picture of the seams in the back/cloak but think I filled them in one shot.