Say Hello To Figaro! & My Little Water Baby

To celebrate the release of the new Pinocchio remake I decided to dedicate Septembers models to the adorable little fan favourites Figaro and Cleo! Although the models were a bit more complex than I expected and I ended up running majorly over schedule due to the entire project being cursed from the start they've turned out exactly how I imagined and I'm really excited to share all of the photos I've been taking!

The first model I made was Cleo and with her being a goldfish naturally I decided to test out all of my different shades of gold for the clean variants. I wanted to do a spin on the golden statues found around Disneyland (finding them all is top of my Disney bucket list) so we took a mini road trip down to the most Fairytale town I could think of, the lovely little seaside town of Portmeirion. Its a picturesque little town on the coast of Wales modeled on Italian architecture, the houses are bright and colourful and all look like beautiful miniature castles, there's also enchanting music playing as you explore certain parts of the town and even a giant Chessboard to add to the Disneyland atmosphere! It turned out to be a really amazing day sat in the sun painting the finishing touches on the models and then exploring the village to get the perfect photos. 

Unlike the Disneyland Golden Statues which are one shade of solid gold, I decided to use a few shades in order to separate the different parts of the models, I also modeled some bases for Figaro and Cleo to stand on that mimic the Disney Statues, of course I had to add in a poison apple twist. To paint them I used Arteza metallic acrylics for the majority of both models. 

For Cleo I used Golden Hour for her eyes, standard Gold for her face, Bronze for her pupils, eyelashes, lips and upper stripe and Aztec Gold for her lower stripe. For her fins and to paint both of the Stands I used Vallejo Polished Gold.

For Figaro I used Golden Hour for his eyes and snout, standard Gold for his face, Copper for his pads, Bronze for his darker parts and for everywhere else I used Vallejo Polished Gold.

These models were so exciting to paint and I absolutely love the bronze colour on the darkest parts of the models, the golden shine is beautiful and it works really well to distinguish between the different parts of their bodies. The photos turned out really well too and I can absolutely see these mini statues as a collection in themselves, for me at least for now having 3 of each model is definitely enough.

Of course a model of Cleo wouldn't be complete without her signature Fishbowl, so for the ornamental variant I decided to make her one, and what better way to fix her in place than by doing a super complicated layered resin pour! that I've never done before I might add. Find out how well that went in the next post! Spoilers, it actually came out looking great and I am insanely happy with the end result. 

I chose to base the overall model on the scene where Geppetto makes Figaro give Cleo a kiss before bed, I love his grumpy little face he's absolutely adorable and the best thing about the whole film in my opinion. I also wanted to include Cleo's iconic fishbowl swoosh and eyelash flutter since that's what she's mostly known for, so I decided to combine the two poses for the overall model. 

It was quite difficult fixing Figaro's pose against the fishbowl without making him look like he belonged in a boxing ring as a standalone model, so I settled on making him appear to be padding at something in the air. He was originally modeled to be 21cm tall but I decided it was too threatening to have him reaching directly into the tank and I wanted the model to remain a nice size so I opted to print him slightly smaller at 19cm to avoid both issues. Side note, he still came out massive but the overall model is about the size I imagined and I'm really happy with it. 

Cleo's shape has a lot of thin parts and motion to it, which made her a lot of fun to model but made the ornamental's a challenge to say the least! I love how she turned out though, the patterns look so pretty and just add to her overall look so well. I used Arteza metallic's to paint the models and stuck to their original colour schemes with the exception of painting the ornamental patterns with gold and silver. For Cleo I used Canary Yellow for the main part of her face and lower stripe, Tangerine Orange for her upper stripe, Pearl Gold for the base colour of all of her fins and I used Vallejo Polished gold for the ornamental's. I also used Strawberry Red for her lips and Space Gray for her pupils.

For Figaro I used Space Gray for his body and claws, and Pearl White for his snout, paws and underbelly, for his ears I used Hot Pink. I used Golden Hour for his eyes, which is a nice yellow gold colour, I mixed a tiny bit of this with Pearl White to paint the main part of his face, the Arteza paints tend to mix quite well together since they all have metallic pigment in them which makes the colour range quite limitless. I chose not to paint the white ornamental's since I've yet to find a colour that works on top of the white, I tried silver on a previous model but it just makes the white look grubby. Nonetheless I think the ornamental's still look really nice unpainted and stand out just as much so they don't always need to be painted.

Despite the difficulties I've had with this particular project I couldn't be happier with the way the ornamental models have turned out, there is something incredibly Disney about the fancy patterning that adds a really enchanted look to the overall models. These two have fast become my new favourites within the collection so far and I can't wait to see what comes next. 

For the patchwork models this time I used the darker colours to bring out the darker and smaller parts of the models and I think it worked really well, particularly for Figaro's nose and pupils and Cleo's lips. I tried to keep the paint colours on both models similar to each other since they're in a pair and I spaced them out to make sure the same colours didn't intersect. I also tried to keep the complimentary colours next to one another, which serves to make them appear brighter and more vibrant and just adds to the overall aesthetic. I don't tend to use the darker colours for the ornamental's as this completely ruined one of my older models that I had to then repaint, so i tend to stick to the rule of lighter on top of dark. I like to just experiment with these though and see what i end up with.

For Figaro I used Royal Purple, Hot Pink, Lilac, Rose Quartz, Sky Blue, Tangerine Orange, Lime Green, Golden Hour, White, Electric Blue, Strawberry Red, and Pink in Arteza acrylics and Polished Gold and Silver in Vallejo Game Colours. For Cleo I used Sky Blue, Royal Purple, Pink, Strawberry Red, Quartz Pink, Electric Blue, Lilac, Lime Green, Tangerine Orange, and Hot Pink. For the photos i decided to take most of them together since they come in a pair, and I also threw in a bit of wool for Figaro to play with as that's the pose i was going with. I always love how these photos turn out they're so colourful and unique! The models are a lot of fun to paint and I'm really enjoying seeing this little collection come together, Cleo and Figaro make great new additions and I can't wait to see this expand over time. 

I'm a big fan of the original Pinocchio movie, I've watched it at least 3 times over the past month and a half for research and I still have Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee stuck in my head. The story is amazing and the Pleasure Island donkey scene is just classic trauma inducing Disney, its definitely one of the better classics for me anyway. I've also watched the remake a couple of times now and I can honestly say I really enjoyed it, the new take on Geppetto losing his son had me tearing up in minutes, I really appreciate how they keep the remakes so close to the originals but change just enough to still make it interesting. I don't really like the changes they've made to Cleo but Figaro was really cute and I was so happy they kept his iconic walk when he tries to go with Pinocchio to school, they absolutely nailed it!  For future models I'm planning to do Honest John and Gideon and also Jiminy Cricket at some point. I also love the idea of making some of Geppetto's wooden clocks as well with the scenes from the different Disney movies so that might be something I explore further down the line when I eventually plan to expand the page, more details about this to follow in the next few months.

What do you think of the latest remake? leave a comment in the section below! and follow my page on Instagram @poisonappleprints for updates and more photos of Septembers models coming next week! also don't forget to check back later for the full resin pour tutorial for Cleo's Fishbowl!

As always thanks for subscribing, see you in the next post later today!

Harley