I have always liked the Peanuts Gang. In 2015 when the "new" CGI movie came out I was in a fairly bad place emotionally, and the antics of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and his friends were a bright spot for me. Watching Charlie Brown navigate a school year trying to get up the nerve to talk to the Little Red Haired Girl while Snoopy, his ever loyal beagle engaged in various antics and gags served to remind me that there was some joy to be had.
Maybe a little heavy to put on a kids movie but whatever works, I guess. To this day, the Peanuts gang makes things a little lighter for me. Every Christmas I play the soundtrack to "A Charlie Brown Christmas", and the kids and I often watch the Apple TV Snoopy series together.
So, when we were at Joann's craft store's going out of business sale and they had a model kit of Snoopy and his Bugatti, I had to get it.
The kit itself is quite simple, more of a toy than a model. The kit features very few parts and comes with a stand so that when you take it off the car will engage a small electric motor that takes two "AAH" batteries and will drive while a lever mechanism turns Snoopy's head back and forth.
The box proclaims that no glue nor paint is required, but we're of course going to make this harder than it needs to be. The kit comes molded in three colors: red for the body work, black for the internals and white for everything else.
The kit is not very detailed, with no interior details of the car except for a steering wheel (molded in white), a square shaped Snoopy Body (white) with arms extended to reach the steering wheel, and Snoopy's head molded in two halves that snap together, and his racing cap (with goggles!) molded in black that snap over the head.
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| Mine was in better condition, but not by much. |
The kit also comes with a separate "nose" for Snoopy and his scarf molded in red. The "interior" of the car is simply a plastic deck which has a bench seat backing molded into the red plastic, but no other details are provided.
The kit also comes with several peel and stick decals, more "stickers" than decal really, and I decided to only use the racing numbers.
The radiator on the front of the car is a sticker as well that goes onto the housing to look like a hand drawn grille.
Unfortunately I neglected taking photos of the build process, which I regret but we'll talk about them anyway.
To kick things off, I gave the entire kit a coat of Monument Hobbies' Pro-Acryl white acrylic primer using a .7 needle in my airbrush at about 30 PSI. Mixing this with two to three drops of Vallejo Flow Improver helps with tip dry and worked well.
After it dried I noticed several missed panel lines on the body so I sanded those down and put on a second coat of primer.
After that, I intended to paint the car body with a few coats of Chroma-Air Transparent Red but I decided it would be best to do another coat of "red" primer/sealer since I had it available to me. So, using the same settings as before I sprayed the body and chassis (as the front of the body past the radiator is part of the chassis) with the red sealer, this time from Autoborne, the Createx line of primers.
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I was so impressed by the coverage and color of this primer, that I decided to keep it as the body color and not paint any extra red paint. I then put a coat of AK Interactive Super Gloss Finish 1K, applied the race number stickers and finished the body work off with a couple more coats of the clear coat.
I painted Snoopy's scarf with the red sealer as well, and then using Tamiya X-18 Semi-Gloss Black I painted the wheels and chassis, masking off the red body work areas.
For Snoopy, his body and head were fine with the Pro-Acryl white primer, so I left it and painted the "leather helmet" flat brown from Tamiya (XF-10).
At this point it was time to do the details. Snoopy's Bugatti is an interpretation of the Bugatti 35b Grand Prix race car, which auctions today for around 3 to 5 million, so of course someone let a beagle race it.
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| "I bet that thing can go 55!" |
The "spokes" of the wheels are molded in white and snap into the "wheel" that is completely covered by the tire, so no reason to pain the wheel any color other than black. However, I did want to do something with the spokes, so I painted them chrome with "Fusion Foil" I saw on a YouTube video that was available on Amazon for $12.
The you-tuber had some great results getting a chrome foil look from this stuff which comes with an applicator brush in the bottle cap. The feedback was to "glob it on and it'll form up like magic" and this stuff did not disappoint in real life. I "chromed" out the wheel spokes, the radiator housing, Snoopy's google hardware and the long exhaust pipe that runs the length of the car (molded in white originally).
I painted the front of the radiator black, and detailed Snoopy's eyes, nose and eyebrows with Pro-Acryl Satin Black by hand using a brush.
To add contrast details I outlined this mouth and teeth (and cheeks!) with an ultra fine tipped black gundam panel liner pen from GSI Creos.
I then painted the lenses of Snoopy's goggle lenses grey, and the square hub piece of the wheels "bronze" by Pro-Acryl. I'd have preferred more of a brass color for this but the Bronze looks really good against the chrome, and sometimes you use what you have on hand. :)
Finally I used some "coal black" Pro-Acryl paint to paint the "interior deck" that Snoopy's body rests on, and "ATOM-20058 Leather" paint by Ammo Acrylic Colors for the seat back. I used "MIG-0317 'Wood' by Ammo for the wooden steering wheel (the spokes of the steering wheel are chrome). All of which was hand painted by brush.
Finally, I didn't want to use the sticker for the radiator grill, so I bought a sheet of small plastic mesh at a hobby store, cut it to size and painted it black, then glued it to the front. My intention was to improve the realism of a fictional car being driven by a cartoon dog by giving it some visual 3D elements beyond what the kit provided.
Assembling the kit only took a few minutes, and I left out the "stand" completely as I had build the kit to be a static display piece and not the toy, plus I didn't really like the display stand and wanted to place it in a display case.
Overall, I like how it turned out and I'm quite happy seeing Snoopy and his Bugatti on my shelf when I walk by!
Obligatory Finished Photos:
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| Zoom Zoom, motherfuckers. |
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| The Clear Coat came out really good IMO, I could have polished it for more shine. In person it is very "wet" looking, which is the goal. |
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| The Fusion Foil was very impressive, and looks fantastic in person. |
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| I don't like the join lines where the head goes together, but I didn't spend the time to putty it and sand it either, so that's on me. |
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| Oh Good Grief! |
BONUS!
I purchased a brush holder for my brushes to rest in after I apply brush conditioner to them after cleaning, simple thing but makes dealing with brushes a lot easier.
