Moebius Models The Dark Knight Rises Catwoman with Bat-Pod "COMPLETED"

I was going to light it but decided against it because the lights I ordered aren't what I was wanting and it'll be too much of a headache trying to "hide" the wires anyway.

The side walls of the tires look fine even after pushing over the rim ribs.

I thought you were going to light it too, noticing that you drilled out the head lamp lenses out of the munition cluster parts

Yeah, I went ahead and tried just pushing it straight on. No real problem there. The ribs on the wheel did make the slightest bit of an impression on the side of the tire but it actually disappeared.

The holes for the lights were already there. The pieces in the kit for the lights are molded black like the rest of the kit and you have to paint them silver to look like lights. Makes no sense whatsoever. They made clear lenses for the lights on the Tumbler. No reason why they couldn't have done the same with the 1/18 Bat-Pod. I have two of the lenses left over from the Tumbler that I didn't need when I installed the lighting. They'll be perfect for the lenses on the Bat-Pod. I'll just have to modify the existing pieces to accept them.

Here is one of the headlights supplied in the kit and one of the leftover lenses from the Tumbler kit. I was going to trim part of the black piece down and attach the lens to it. I lost the black piece when it went flying out my tweezers. Oh well, maybe I'll find it someday when I clean the house. But, I doubt it.

I painted the rim around the lenses black and attached them as is. I think this way worked out as well or better. 

With the cannon assemblies and the headlights attached.....a couple more baby steps forward.

This is gonna look badass! The Carpet Monster scored on you!

The Carpet Monster scored one on me but I think it's a blessing in disguise. I think the lenses look better this way.

Made more progress today....a lot more than I expected to make.

The rear wheel assembly isn't glued to the frame yet. Just a little test fitting fun goin' on.

Looks good.Can't tell it's a larger scale.

I'll take some more pics later that will show it's scale better. My biggest concern is painting the figure. It's a BIT bigger than 1/35 scale so it will be a challenge to paint and get it to look right, especially the face. But, that will be a good thing because I have some old larger scale vinyl figure kits from Screamin' and Horizon and others that I haven't built. I've NEVER built any of those large scale figures before so hopefully this 1/18 Catwoman will be an adequate introduction to larger scale figures, at least as far as the painting goes.

Time to give an update on the progress.

I decide to take a break from the Bat-Pod itself and work on Catwoman.

It was necessary to paint the hair first since once the head is glued on it would be impossible to paint the underside of the hair. No detail or highlighting will be applied to the underside of the hair since it won't be visible once the figure is assembled. All that was needed in that case was to paint the underside the dark base coat so that no bright unpainted areas would be visible. 

For the dark base coat I created a mix of approximately one part black, one part chocolate brown, and one part flat brown and then brushed it on.

I then dry brushed the hair, first with flat earth, then with beige brown, and finally with flat brown lightened with white. The look isn't exactly what I was going for but I guess it's decent. I guess there is just a limit to how much realism you can build into a model. Then again, it may just be that I don't exactly understand just how to achieve that realism. Oh well, at least I'm trying.

I sprayed a base coat of flat black on the rest of the figure. I'm going to go over that with a mix of black and a really dark blue...possibly intermediate blue...to hopefully break up the monotony of an all black figure and give the clothing a little more color while still retaining the appearance of a black outfit. I'll go back over the gloves and boots with black to hopefully add some subtle distinction from the rest of the outfit. I'm really just trying to give the whole outfit some character and to keep it from being dull. I'll finish it with some subtle highlighting to add to the depth.  Hopefully it will all work out.

I'll add the head to the torso after the dark blue/black mixture has been applied. There will be a seam where the head attaches that will have to be filled and sanded so painting the face will be handled just before the figure is attached to the Pod.

That's my plan, anyway.

The hair looks excellent.

Thank you. I think I'm just to picky and critical of my own work. But, I'd say a lot of us on here are the same way.

I got a little carried away at finishing this thing and forgot to take more in-process pics. Sorry! Most of the pics I could have taken would have been the finishing of the figure and most of them would have been unnecessarily redundant, anyway. So I'll just show here what Catwoman looked like when I first started painting her and then you'll see how she looks in the 'FINISHED' photos.

After priming the figure with grey enamel primer from a rattle can I painted the body first rather than the face and head. I wanted to attach the head before painting the face because there was going to be a seam half way up the neck that would need to vanish before painting the flesh colors. So I had to paint the body first because once the head was attached the hair would get in the way of painting the back plus with the head attached it would be impossible to paint the underside of the hair.

I was initially going to try and give the black outfit some character by mixing a little blue paint with black to give it a slightly different shade than the boots and gloves, hopefully making the whole outfit a little more interesting while still giving the impression that it is black overall. This didn't work the way I'd hoped so I went back over it with black. I ended up going over the boots and gloves with some satin clear coat to try and give some subtle definition. 

To paint the face I used the following Vallejo colors: Flat Earth, Red Leather, Rose Brown, Basic Skintone, and Light Flesh. I probably didn't need all these colors but, oh well. It came out looking okay. Actually I am pretty happy with it. It came out looking better than I expected. The fact that the goggles cover the eyes made it easier to paint the face in the sense that I didn't have to worry about shading around the eyes. 

Before I go on to the finished photos I thought it would be a good time for another 'What the f@#*? moment compliments of Moebius Models.

The tubular peg, or whatever you choose to call it, in the photo apparently serves no function whatsoever to the finished model and it isn't  found on the actually vehicle. I didn't realize this until the finishing stages. I almost cut it off before attaching the figure but I would have had to fill the hole and then file it down and I was afraid in the process, because of where it is located, that I might cause a domino effect of damage to the almost completed model. So, I decide to leave it. If you build this model you may want to consider removing it early on. I have no idea why it is there.

Well, I'm calling this one done. 

Overall it isn't a bad kit. It was fun but by the time I reached the last stages I was pretty burnt out on Moebius and Batman having built the Batmobile Tumbler prior to this one. This kit is much easier to handle when compared to the Tumbler. About the only aggravating part for me was the figure both in painting and attaching it to the pod. Painting it was only aggravating because I don't have a lot of experience painting figure, in particular, faces. Attaching it wasn't all that hard to do it's just that once I got it on the pod and glued the handle bars down I discovered that one of the hand grips was sticking up just slightly higher than the other one. I attached it according to the instructions. Because of how the figure goes together there wasn't really any other way to do it. The locators on the ends of the arms are shaped a certain way so that you can only attach them to the body in one position. This in turn doesn't give you any play in the arms so it's a little harder to get everything to line up perfectly when attaching the figure and the handlebars to the vehicle. 

All in all I'm pretty happy with it. It makes a cool looking model. 

Hope you like it and feel free to ask any questions or offer any constructive criticism. 

Thanks!

Jim

Well done.

Thank you. I may have to work out some kind of display to put it on like I want to do with the Tumbler. It's not as eye catching, in my opinion, as the Tumbler is. It would be even less to look at without the Catwoman figure. It's still a cool model though.

nice finish. The 1/25 scale version has that useless peg thing as well. Did you sand the tire tread? It looks realistic

I couldn't figure out why that peg was there. The only thing I can imagine is that it had something to do with the molding process.

I did sand the treads. I started out with a fairly fine sanding stick but it wasn't giving me enough of a worn look so I used one a little more course. Maybe 400 grit. I don't really know.

I may go back and dull cote the hair. It's too shiny. Over all the whole thing came out looking pretty decent.

Thanks for the compliment.