Raising Cthulhu

My girlfriend and I celebrated four years together last week.  Our anniversary was Tuesday, but because she's going to school full time and working part time, we weren't able to go out on Tuesday.  Our solution was for me to take some time off on Wednesday (on which she only has half-days), take her out to lunch, take her to the yarn shop to pick up material for a couple more knitting projects, and then hit the local gaming store for something for me.  My gift ended up being the Reaper Bones Cthulhu (or C'thulhu, as the box says), a 9" tall multi-part monstrosity that in my eyes pushes the boundaries of what constitutes a "miniature."

Upon getting him home, I immediately opened the box and began examining the pieces that will compose the beast.

And then did a dry-fit to see how the pieces fit together and where I'd need to fill gaps and file down seams - with a big display piece like this, I really want him to look the absolute best he can.  

quarter thrown down to give a sense of scale.

From what I can see there aren't really a lot of gaps that need filling - the arms are sculpted so that the point where the pieces join together is disguised by a fold of skin, and the neck is pretty well hidden in the forest of tentacles.  The only real gap I can see is in where the tail joins the body, but that should be, knock on wood, a pretty simple fill-job.

The one big issue I'm seeing is that the feet don't quite line up with the base the way they should - right foot has a hole to accept a peg on the base, left foot has a peg that goes into the base for stability, but I find C'thulhu simply isn't quite splay-legged enough to fit right; putting an extra quarter-inch of open air between his ankles would fix this.  The solution to this appears to be to dunk one of his legs in boiling water, reposition, then give him a good dunking in a bath of ice water to reset the polymer.  Seems easy enough, and I'll be giving it a go this weekend, I think.  I'm off work on Thursday for the holiday (American Thanksgiving for those outside the US), and took off Wednesday and Friday to play host for my future brother-in-law, who's driving 400 miles to spend the holidays with us, but I'm guessing I won't get a chance to try this until *after* Gina is done using the kitchen to turn out a small feast.

Color-wise, I've discovered that none of the craft stores around me stock Delta Ceramcoat acrylic paint, which has a lot of the shades I was planning on using.  I'm going to try Wal-Mart, see if they have any, and if not I'll mix my own.  I don't have the money for expensive paints produced for various miniatures companies, I use the cheap acrylic paints from the craft store.