GillGill - Monster Hunter Rathalos Wyvern

[Braxus]

Couple folks might remember this kit from 2007. Sculpted by Ryu Oyama and produced by the folks at GillGill. Took a good couple years but was finished in late 2011. While putting it together properly was a challenge, designing the overall support of such a large kit was... well, nerve racking at times. Fully put together, the finished kit is a little over 6ft wide.







The main build-up and paint scheme was done by our talented Resin Head, Rick Cantu (rickdtm). Sure he got a good couple gray hairs from this piece! I uh, mainly did the external support pieces for the kit.

The kit totaled around 80ish pieces or so. Was a pain to put together as some of the pieces had pretty serious gaps in it. To my knowledge, only three of these were ever built-up. Sometime down the line, this wyvern will appear as an article in a future AFM issue. Sure Rick will chime in later on the 'sheer joy' he had working on this piece and berate me on displaying this piece at a local show.

[Braxus]

Some better pics:

[RickDTM]

LOL!! Berate you? I salute you for having the nads to take that monster out!

Probably the most labor intensive piece I've had the pleasure to work on. Each scale was individually airbrushed w/ approx 4 colors per scale. The head and neck section along was over 30 pieces! Each wing was broken up into 3 sections, and then they and the tail (another 3 sections....) had to be mated to the body as seamlessly as possible so that the wings could be removed for shipping. Each wing also has staggered sections of threaded rod through all sections and each wing is full of expanding foam for rigidity.

It was crazy work, but I appreciated the chance to work on something as rare as this.

[good30]

All round STUNNING job, it's one of those item's you just wish you could get to see & study better!

Stu

[gothiken]

holy cow man... I remember this..



rick man...there really are enough words to describe how amazing this is.

so Ill just say..... Masterpiece

Kenny

[adegregorio]

[moonlightdrive21]

Love it !!

[elmen]

Wow!!! Outstanding...
The paint work it´s insane.

[Grim]

That is incredible! The patience it must have taken to pull that off is staggering. What a beautiful piece.

[LOBOREX]

Just outstanding all the way round.

[Braxus]

Most of the pieces didn't fit together right. This was one of the "better fitting" parts if I recall correctly:

[sivousplay]

what a glorious paintjob on a fantastic sculpt!!

jim

[Vger]

It's a great and very impressive job !

A Masterpiece

[thefly]

thats one awsome dragon great job.

[Faust]

That is a stunningly beautiful piece. Very impressive.

[Paintingrod]

Out of this world way to cool great job for taking on that monster project!

[acornboy]

Both sculpt and paints are incredible! This is the best thing I've seen in a long time, absolutely stunning.

-Sam

[Otto69]

Most of the pieces didn't fit together right. This was one of the "better fitting" parts if I recall correctly:

So, basically, it was a scratchbuild

[Simone]

Stunning paintjob!
Bravo!

[Braxus]

So, basically, it was a scratchbuild

The worst sections such as the wing & main body area had ~2 inch gaps that needed to be filled!