Ah, pirates!! Our fascination as a culture with pirates has been going on for a very long time, but the image of the pirate as we've come to accept it began in the late nineteenth century, when Howard Pyle published his first illustrated pirate story. Through the remainder of the 1800's and into the early 1900's, he continued to produce illustrations that would undeniably shape the archetype of the pirate as we know it. With the birth of the film industry, Hollywood played a large part in keeping the interest in pirates growing, with films like Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, The Black Pirate, The Crimson Pirate and many others, all feeding an ever growing hunger for tales of swashbuckling adventure. In 1950, Disney released their film version of Treasure Island, and Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver pretty much locked in the image of how a pirate should not only look, but sound.
By the mid 1960's when the Aurora Model Corp. was on their dizzying climb to greatness and looking for new properties to use as subject matter for their kits, pirates found their way into Aurora's kit lineup. Two model kits were produced under "The Bloodthirsty Pirates" moniker: Blackbeard and Captain Kidd. Both kits featured some of the better figure sculpting to be found in any of Aurora's kits, as well as somewhat more complex and spacious bases.
I didn't know about these kits when I was a kid. Like so many of Aurora's most interesting figure kits, I didn't learn of these until I was in college, and Aurora nostalgia was starting to gain some traction, with vintage kits being sold through a few collectors. When I saw an image of the Captain Kidd kit, I was immediately fascinated with the pose and overall design. It looked like a museum setup, which was very much in keeping with the way Aurora was advertising their kits at the time. The idea was to create a "mini museum" in your home using Aurora's wide variety of models.
By the 1990's, Aurora nostalgia was running pretty high, and the market for buying vintage kits was getting quite hot. Prices for originals were going up all the time, and some of the kits were very hard to find complete, if at all. Captain Kidd seemed to be one of those kits. If I ever did see one for sale, it was either in less than perfect condition, or very expensive. Still, I kept my eyes open, hoping that someday I might get lucky...
Fast foward to the 2000's, and Aurora re-issues had become common, with some very desirable and previously hard to find kits now becoming available to all. Blackbeard was re-released, but Captain Kidd was nowhere to be found, and by this time I was doubting that I'd ever get my hands on one. But... like my incredible find of an original Aurora Penguin kit at a crazy reasonable price, Wonderfest delivered good fortune to me yet again when I found a bagged, COMPLETE and undamaged Captain Kidd kit for sale at a very affordable price. I didn't think twice; I immediately purchased it.
As soon as I got home from Wonderfest, I began the work of restoration. This was, after all, another of my "grail kits", and I was not about to put off getting it restored. First up was stripping the remnants of old paint from the kit. Then I'd get a chance to really look over the detail and decide how I wanted to do the paint up. Here's the kit as found at Wonderfest:
And a closer look at the base before I had removed some of the smaller pieces:
Here's the kit after soaking in Castrol de-greaser to remove the paint (which came off very easily):
As you can see in the pic, I also did a fair amount of disassembly for ease of painting. All the small items on the base were what I was most interested in getting removed so I could paint them as separate pieces. Some of the original pins for the pieces broke, so I'd be creating new pins out of metal wire.
The box art illustration for the kit was pretty good, and offered some good reference for painting, but I wanted to get a little more input on possible color schemes, so I decided to go back to Howard Pyle's early illustrations of pirates. This also was in keeping with the now definite idea of building this kit as if it were a miniature display for a museum. So, I started combing the internet for images of Pyle's pirates, and that's when I made what I consider to be a very interesting discovery regarding the design of this kit.
Among all the bold colors and dynamic poses of the pirate paintings, two prints with a more limited color palette caught my eye. They were of Captain Kidd, specifically, and the more I looked at them the more I was convinced that the powers that be at Aurora or the sculptor, or both had used these two prints as a template for the design of their figure. The outfit is very much the same, as is the look of the character, right down to the profile of his nose.
With a color scheme firmly in mind, I set about the task of sanding down seam lines and filling in gaps. There were a few spots that required a significant amount of work, but for the most part the engineering on this kit was really well done, and so fit was very good. There were a few corrections I wanted to make, though, the first being the blade of the saber. Whether the original builder didn't fit the blade correctly, or the pin and slot arrangement was slightly off, I don't know, but I didn't like the way the blade was sitting on the hilt. I decided to remove the blade, sand down any remnants of the original pin and fit it with a metal pin that both increased durability and allowed the blade to sit properly.
The other major modification was something that I didn't consciously become aware of until after I had done the painting of the figures face and neck. I'll get to what that mod was in a little bit. After I had set up the blade, I saw to re-pinning a few other pieces that had broken off and no longer had a plastic pin. Oh, I did also open up the end of the gun barrel, drilling it out so it looked more realistic. After completing all repair and sanding/puttying work, the entire kit was given a coat of Tamiya fine grey primer.
I was now ready to start painting, but instead of completing the figure first as I usually do, I decided to complete the base. I think all the small details and items on the base were the deciding factor, since it just seemed like it would be fun to track down photo references for the items and try to make them as "real" as possible. Almost all of painting was done using either Speed Paint from The Army Painter (excellent for wood and leather surfaces), or Monument Hobbies Pro Acryl line of paints, which I have to say are simply AMAZING. Whether brush painting or airbrush, the are unmatched, in my opinion.
I started in with the wooden structures: the barrel and the sea chest. I forgot to take wip pics of the barrel; I just got wrapped up in creating the textures of both the wood and the rope. I did remember to take a pic after I completed it, though:
With the sea chest, I had the opposite problem: I took a pic at the beginning and then promptly forgot during the process of painting. Here it is with a first coat of speed paint:
You can see that after just one coat, the paint has settled beautifully into the surface detail. You've basically already got a pretty good mid tone, wash and highlight paint all in one. I did do a little additional highlighting using the dry brush technique and one of the Pro Acryl paints, just to bring out the detail even more and give it a little more color complexity. The metal bands were painted using one of the Army Painter's non speed paint colors. Both were given a matte clear coat with Krylon matte Crystal Clear.
At this point, I decided to tackle the "sand" base and figure out a way to bring out the molded in lettering of Captain Kidd's name. I didn't want to do anything too drastic, and wanted the color of the base to suggest a Caribbean beach, so I used a couple of ivory tone paints and washed them with a light sepia tone. For the name, the same sepia tone was dropped into the molded impressions and allowed to build up to a darker tone. Visible, but not overly so.
The shovel handle, pick axe, and piece of driftwood were also done with speed paints in different tones.
The small money bags were done in a dark ivory with a medium brown wash to suggest a burlap material.
At this point, I once again neglected to take wip pics of the other small items (skull, seashells, scorpion). I did use photo references for each, looking at Caribbean shells that resembled the pieces in the kit, and finding a species of scorpion that is indigenous to the region, as well. All were painted with Pro Acryl paints and various washes. I do have some pics of them attached to the base:
I did attach one of the clumps of sea grass to the base, deciding to wait on fixing the larger piece to the base until after the figure of Captain Kidd was attached; I wanted to insure there would be no difficulties in positioning the figure because of the grass. I do have a couple of wip pics of the grasses, also done in Pro Acryl paints:
With the base effectively finished, it was time to move on to Captain Kidd, himself. I laid down a base coat of tan flesh on his face and hands.
The technique I used to build up the flesh tones could take its own entire entry to explain, so I'll just say that after laying down the base coat and running over it with a thinned down bit of flesh wash by Pro Acryl, I built up the tones on top of the base coat using very, very thin washes dabbed on in small amounts at a time. I used tones of red, green and yellow to get the effect I wanted. I was pretty pleased with the it, too, but something about the figure kept bothering me... and this lead to the second major modification I made to the kit.
I never felt the coat, collar and "undershirt" sculpt looked right. And the bow just seemed thrown in. What was it attached to? It just didn't look... right. So I went back to the Howard Pyle art, and looked at a few pics of Disney pirates, trying to figure out what wasn't working on the kit. When it hit me, it seemed so obvious I didn't know why I didn't pick up on it right away. First of all was the "undershirt". No self respecting swashbuckler ever wore anything like that in any of the pics or paintings of pirates, and how exactly did it relate to the sculpted puffy sleeves on the figure? It made no sense, so it had to go. Then I realized that the coat itself should not have a collar. All the coats worn by pirates in films and images were collarless long coats; any visible collar was from the long sleeved shirt they wore UNDER the coat. So, of course the collar on the kit MUST belong to the puffy sleeved shirt he was wearing. The bow, I think, relates to the scarf Captain Kidd is wearing in one of the Pyle prints. It seems like the sculptor kind of lost their way working through the layers of clothing and how they should relate.
I knew what I had to do to make it all look right. The molded in undershirt would be sanded down, some subtle contouring would be sculpted into the area to suggest a bare chest. The coat had molded in piping which, on the front of the coat, extended up onto the collar to indicate it was part of the garment. I filled in the existing molded lines on the collar, and scribed in new lines to make it seem the coat continued under the collar and the collar was part of the shirt being worn under the coat. I also decided that the upper part of the coat should have had buttons sculpted in to show how the coat stayed closed. So I sculpted new buttons using Apoxy Sculpt, trying to mimic the somewhat "loose" sculpt of the existing buttons; and I scribed in new buttonholes like the ones on the lower part of the coat.
The main complication here was that I was going to have to MATCH and BLEND the existing flesh I'd painted with the newly revealed chest/neck area. Here are some pics of the area after sculpting and contouring. You can also get a close look at the existing molded piping in the collar that I had to fill and smooth out. You can also see that I've scribed in the new piping and made it look like the coat continues under the collar:
The next set of pics show the primed neck area, and the smoothed out collar. Also you can see the buttons and buttonholes I've added to the upper part of the coat, and a shot showing both the new buttons and the old ones. Again, I tried to match the style of the original sculpt, which was a bit "loose" on the detail:
In the next series of pics, you can see that the primary coloring of the coat, trousers, socks and shoes and the hat are more or less finished. The coat and trousers were given a base coat of coal black, then dry brushed with blue black and brown black to bring out the surface detail and give the garment a tonal color shift towards blue or black. You can also get a good look at the face with the completed neck area, as well as the altered shirt collar.
The gray toned socks and brown shoes were definitely influenced by Wyeth's work. The deep red piping was added for further visual interest.
These next pics showcase the flintlock pistol. I scoured the internet for a gun that looked exactly like this one, but didn't find one that matched. I did find a number of pistols of similar design, however, so I do think the sculptor did their research before setting to work on this part of the kit. Colors were done based on two different pistols that shared some of the same detailing.
I looked for pics of pirate cutlasses, also, and again didn't find an exact match, but some that were close enough. One interesting note about the sword hilt: it's monogrammed, but instead of "W. K." for "William Kidd", it's "C. K." which, I guess, stands for "Captain Kidd". Odd, and normally I would have filled in the detail since it doesn't really make sense, but I didn't want to cover over some of the charm of the original kit.
These next few pics show the figure very near completion, with piping painted in, bright gold on the buttons that were sculpted and added. The shirt was painted in a cream color and given a light wash of sepia tone to suggest a bit of grime and to bring out the sculpted detail. Again, you can get a good look at the newly sculpted chest area. Overall, I think the result is very effective, and gives him the proper look for a classic pirate.
All that remained was to paint the figure's hair in a tone of black that had a little sheen to it to suggest hair, then glue on the cutlass blade, attach the figure to the base, and glue on the last tuft of sea grass.
And here are pics I took of the kit after it was complete. I wanted to use a lighter colored background to offset the dark colors of the clothing, but didn't realize until after I'd taken the pics and broken down my photography setup that I might have wanted to use a different color backdrop. This one makes the sand look a little more blue/gray than it actually is. You can take a look at some of the wip pics to see what I mean.
All in all, this kit really lived up to my expectations, and I was thrilled to get a chance to put together an original Aurora model. I think my own "mini-museum" is coming along quite nicely! Thanks for following along, and remember: keep building!
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