To The Head Of The Team, Zero!

Starting off with The Nightmare Before Christmas, the first of our Halloween models is none other than Jack's love-able ghost dog with the brilliant nose, Zero. I wanted a playful pose to show off his character, which I think worked out well between the movement in his sheet and incorporating spiral hill into his tail. Zero essentially plays the part of Rudolf in the movie so for the clean variant I made a Christmas scene for the photos and used his original ghostly white colour scheme.

To paint him I used Arteza metallic Pearl white for his main body, space grey for his eyes and mouth and strawberry red and tangerine orange for his collar and nose. I'm really happy with how this model turned out, he fits in so well with the Christmas scene I may even end up using him as a Christmas decoration.

Moving on to the ornamental variant, I designed the patterns to look almost like a fancy rug which I think came out beautifully. I used transparent resin to give him his ghostly see-through appearance and once I had cured and dipped him he ended up looking like he was made of glass, I was actually so hesitant to paint him at first because I was scared it would ruin the model.

The Arteza paints were a little trickier to apply, needing about 3 or 4 coats to completely cover the areas due to the smoothness of the varnish. I used the same colours as the clean variant for his mouth, eyes, nose and collar. I did consider painting his patterns white to make him stand out a bit more but I honestly love everything about this variant the way it is so I left him alone. I was so impressed with how this model turned out I'm planning on making a miniature glass looking set to giveaway on the page down the line so lookout for those! I'll post updates on it nearer the time.

For the photos I incorporated our freshly carved Jack O Lanterns as a little nod to Halloween town, my pumpkin was a mashup of Jack Skellington's normal face and his pumpkin king face. I wanted to learn a new technique this year so I decided to peel off the normal side of his face to reveal the white underneath in order to separate the different sides better. It turned out well in the end and I got some great photos! apparently there are 13 levels of difficulty in pumpkin carving so I can't wait to up the difficulty next year.

For the final variant I swapped out the usual Patchwork colour scheme and created a Sugar Skull variant in honor of the upcoming Day of the Dead festival. For the photos I put together a colourful alter to display the models with some flowers candles and candies. 

To paint him I first covered his main body with 2 coats of Arteza space grey. Once he was dry I then painted over his patterns with 2 coats of Valejo Dead White and then finally a top coat of Arteza Pearl White for the finish. I painted his head with Valejo Bone White which I highlighted with Dead White, I then painted his head patterns with a mix of Arteza metallics. Finally I used space grey for his eyes and strawberry red for both his collar and the inside of his mouth. I think this turned out to be my favourite variant so far the sugar skull asthetic looks beautiful and I'm really happy with how the photos came out.

Although Zero doesn't appear in the movie much he's still a key character and one of my favorite's within the story, I had a lot of fun working on him and I'm really happy to add the finished models to my collection. The Nightmare Before Christmas truly is Tim Burton's masterpiece, its creepy style, unique story and insanely catchy songs have made it iconic and celebrating Halloween just wouldn't be the same without it.   

Also Korn's cover of kidnap the sandy claws is amazing!

What do you think of Zero? Leave a comment below. Or if you make your own share it with me on instagram @poisonappleprints and follow for updates and teasers on next months prints!

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Harley