The She Creature

(from The She Creature - 1956)

 Manufacturer: Billiken

Sculptor:  Unknown

Material:  Vinyl        Scale: 1/6

The kit comes in a mossy green vinyl and stands 12” when assembled. There were quite a few parts by the time you add up all the antennae and claws and such but the assembly was easy. The parts were a good, tight fit with little to no gaps. The casting was excellent like most vinyl kits. And like all Billiken kits, there was no base.

So, I being of the mind that a figure needs something to stand on, I had to design and scratch build a base. A beach scene was the obvious choice since in the film that is where we see her so often. In those scenes she is usually ambling among the sand and rocks but that didn’t really grab me. And besides, there’re always opportunities to do rock bases. So I decided to create a beach scene with a beat up old fence, weeds, shells, muddy footprints and even some old bottles that some trashy tourists left behind.

I used a standard wood base from the craft store. I glued down styrofoam and covered the entire surface with Durham’s Water putty to create the dune and wet sand. The grass is the usual scenic material for dios. The fence is balsa wood strips I hand wired together using a small gauge wire. I got the shells at a store at the beach along with a little nick-nack that had a plastic bottle that just happened to be the perfect scale for the dio. The other bottle is a reshaped bottle from my parts box that used to be on the Aurora Dr. Jekyll kit. I added little faded out labels to give them more realism.

As for the painting, I hand brushed or airbrushed the entire kit with acrylics. For some additional comments on the film and the painting of this kit, please refer to my build up of the She Creature Bust. There I touch on some film issues as well as paint reference. The biggest difference, obviously, is the scale. I was able to get more detail and layers on the bust than on this smaller version. I’m extremely happy with both.