Friday, October 5, 2012

Humpty Dumpty Dummy!

Top notch flight instructor, Larry Baily of Arizona, had us build a nice figure for him back in 2008, and named him 'Max Mach'. He dressed him in a pilot's uniform and the character that he developed for him was that of a retired airline pilot. Pretty cool. Here's a nice pic of Max and Larry ........


You never know what kind of mischief these figures are going to get into after they leave our shop here. I guess Max decided he wasn't having enough fun lately, so he decided to do his 'Humpty Dumpty' impression, and had a great fall! Well, he fell off of a chair onto a tile floor in any case. Ouch!

Fortunately, he was made well enough not to end up in a bunch of pieces on the floor. He did sustain some damage however, and Larry was eager to have me give him some attention, so brought Max to the shop. I fixed some mechanical issues inside the head, and decided it would be best to repaint him. Here's Max sans hair and mustache getting a coat of primer and paint.......


The tricky part of this is that Max is a well established character for his owner, Larry, and is very important when doing a total make over like this, that the figure look pretty much exactly as he did before. Fortunately I had some figure making notes from when I originally made him, and some good reference photos. Here's how he turned out.....


Well, I was happy with how he turned out. But what about Larry, and his lovely wife, Sandra? For them, was Max as good as new? Here's a couple pics of them when they came to pic Max up......


They were quite pleased, and as you can tell, Max was back to his old wise cracking self! But Max did promise not to do any more 'Humpty Dumpty' dummy flight maneuvers any time soon, and that he would mostly try to behave himself! Larry and Sandra said they'd keep a close eye on him as well.