Dung Beetle Knight

Kingdom Death is a company that started out selling a boutique line of 35mm resin figures that people either loved or hated. Their wildly successful Kickstarter campaign for the Kingdom Death: Monster game also drew controversy for alleged sexism and misogyny.

Personally, I like their figures, and found the charges of sexism to be a straw man almost entirely based on personal bias.

Regardless, the only model I own is a collector's edition Dung Beetle Knight from the first production run, and I don't really have plans to buy any more of their figures (due to their size).

The model consists of the Dung Beetle Knight and its food collecting ball.

I was originally going to build the model OOB, but there was something about the bars across the eyes of the ball that didn't sit well with me.

I studied the original illustration, and while it appears as if there are literal bars across the eyes, I decided to interpret the bars as areas of more intense light emitting from within the ball.

Instead of trying to pull off painting light effects, I decided to just wire the model up with LEDs instead.

I wanted light to emit from inside the mouth and through the nostrils as well, so a total of four holes were drilled into the model.

To drill the holes, I had to break the model apart
because I had already glued it together.

Clear beads painted with Tamiya Clear Yellow (X-24) were installed in the eye sockets. The beads were epoxied in place so that the hole through the center of the bead appears as a vertical bar.

Because I had to remove the integral base to make an opening in the bottom of the ball to accommodate wiring, I decided to make a new base for the model using clay.

I made a thin layer of clay and allowed it to dry. I put the thin layer on top of a thicker base layer of wet clay, and rolled the ball over a section of the clay to crush the dried layer.

I'm going to try and cast this piece in resin to make it a little more durable for drilling and installing a battery holder underneath.

Now I'm off to do some research on how to get the proper iridescent shades when painting up the knight.