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Rat Fink
brainchild of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth
Manufacturer: Tornado Designs
Sculptor: Unknown
Material: Polystone
Scale: no scale
The Ratfink was created by visionary automotive designer and
builder, artist, genius, etc. – Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and in Ed’s
‘words, he was the evil cousin of Mickey Mouse’.
We lost Ed in 2001 but RF has lived on, more popular than ever. As a
tribute, in 2006, Tornado Designs created this piece and distributed
it to 83 artists to build and paint in any manner they saw fit. The
pieces were then collected and published in a book called “Rat
Fink’s Revenge”. After seeing this book, and being a Fink Fan since
childhood, I really wanted to build one of these great kits. It is,
by far, the best rendition of the Fink ever produced.
The kit was nicely packaged in a labeled box and packed in
form-fitting Styrofoam with the accompanying, slipcased book, poster
and numbered COA. It came in 5 polystone pieces – the body, 2 feet,
a tail and a nose.
I have never worked with polystone before and I’m not sure I ever
want to again. The closest thing I can compare it to is porcelain
resin. This kit is just like any other hollow cast resin kit and
suffered from some of the same issues. There were spots as thin as
tissue and when you sanded them, or even touched them in some cases,
the surface broke through leaving a hole. There was a connector of
material between the arms and the torso that had to be ground away.
I don’t know if this was intentional or not but it was on both sides
to double my pleasure. Grinding poly-stone is not fun. It’s harder
than regular resin, doesn’t smooth well, creates a lot of dust and
will eat up a Dremel bit in no time. After the usual prep work of
washing, sanding, puttying, more sanding and priming, he was ready
for paint.
The entire kit is painted in acrylics using my airbrush and hand
painting the details, many of which I don’t think really show up in
the photos. The clothes and skin have multiple layers of colors to
give them more depth. I applied has several washes of varying colors
on the fence for aging, there are oil spills on the ground and much
more.
Since the kit came without a base I had to create one so he wouldn’t
be floating out in space on my shelf. I decided to create a scene in
which Finky is up to no good, vandalizing a fence in a parking lot
with the declaration that “ROTH LIVES!”. I built the fence out of
balsa wood , cut and nailed together. The grade was Aves putty
covered with dirt and scenic grass. The asphalt was made using
textured modeling paste.
I must admit this base was one of the more fun
projects I had done in a while.
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