To the Museum! (The Broken Ear)

The Broken Ear (French: L’Oreille cassée, originally published in English as Tintin and the Broken Ear) is the sixth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from December 1935 to February 1937. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who pursue the thieves of a South American fetish identifiable by its broken ear. In doing so, he ends up in the fictional nation of San Theodoros, where he becomes embroiled in a war and discovers the Arumbaya tribe deep in the forest.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

Be honest, when you hear the words “The Adventures of Tintin” this is the first image that pops into your head?

I bet though that the “Tintin grabs his coat, runs down the stairs, and sets off with Snowy on another adventure!” idea would be hard to pin down to just one album. I mean, doesn’t he do that at the begging of EVERY album?

Even though it only appears in one small panel in the album The Broken Ear, this scene just screams “Tintin” so loudly to me that I couldn’t help but include it in my Tintin 1/72 project – even though it took me a while to figure out exactly which album it comes from.

The build:

Of course, there’s no really all that much to report in terms of the build itself.

I didn’t have to make any adjustments to the 3D model itself. In fact, the only 3D modeling I did was to build the accompanying staircase – which itself isn’t much more than 4 boxes, 4 posts, and a banister connecting them.

Probably the hardest part of the entire project was sanding the base down flat. Unlike my “main” 1/72 projects, where I use a selection of wooden boxes that I stocked up on when I had the chance, for the mini “side” projects I use the related wooden chopstick rests. They’re both made from the same kind of wood (rubber wood from Vietnam), but the chopstick rests are raised on both sides. Nothing a little sanding… ok… a lot of sanding won’t fix.

I did almost get caught out on the paint job though. I’m so used to seeing Tintin in his plus-four trousers with white socks, that painting them black almost seemed wrong.

Anyway, a bit of brown paint for the suite, some tan for coat, and boom… all done.  It’s just a tiny little side project, I think it was a roaring success, but feel free to let me know what you think.