Nice Little Llama (Prisoners of the Sun)
Prisoners of the Sun (French: Le Temple du Soleil) is the fourteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised weekly in the newly established Tintin magazine from September 1946 to April 1948. Completing an arc begun in The Seven Crystal Balls, the story tells of young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and friend Captain Haddock as they continue their efforts to rescue the kidnapped Professor Calculus by travelling through Andean villages, mountains, and rain forests, before finding a hidden Inca civilisation.
– courtesy of Wikipedia
The finished model:
The story:
If I’m being honest, this probably would not have been a scene that made the cut as part of my 1/72 scale Tintin Project. Having said that though, a) my project is very thin on representation from Prisoners of the Sun, and b) this one was a request from another fan, so here we are.
I can’t take any credit for the Llama model. I got it off Cults3d.com and modified it a tiny bit (who ever heard of a warrior riding an armoured Llama anyway?!). Fans of the books know this is the scene right before Captain Haddock gets sprayed in the face with water by the Llama – a running joke throughout the album. I actually wanted to depict that scene, but the request was specifically for this panel, so who am I to argue.
The build:
Like most of my Tintin “side dish” projects, there’s nothing much to talk about from an actual building perspective. I did modify the the Llama model ever so slightly – mainly just removing the saddle marks and resizing the head and turning it slightly to make it closer to the scene.
The bigger challenge was changing the pose of my Haddock model. The half crouch with the hand up to touch the Llama’s face was a bit difficult to pull off correctly, but in the end, I think I matched it pretty closely. As I said, this was a specific request from a fellow Tintin fan, so if he was happy, I was happy.
Not much in it from a painting aspect. The llamas were both brown and Haddock was in his usual all black suit, blue turtleneck and brown shoes – been there, done that. Even the dab of black paint for the eyes – using the sharp end of a pair of very thin tweezers instead of a brush – was accomplished on the first try.
In the album, Haddock makes a new friend… so good enough for me. Feel free to tell me what you think though!
