by Roger Sorenson

Tsukuda released a handful of kits to accompany Hayao Miyazaki's movie Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984. In this kit, the Pejites had captured the baby Omu to draw the Omu swarm against the Tolmekian army in Nausicaä 's home valley. Nausicaä manages to free the Omu but, bleeding and enraged, it tries to rejoin the Omu swarm across the acid lake. Covered in Omu blood, Nausicaa tries to calm the Omu as it pushes her backward into the acidic water. Her cry of pain finally calms the Omu.

This is pretty much a stock build of the polystyrene kit which included the Omu figure (70 pieces), the Nausicaa figure (6 pieces), several harpoons, a gun, and the fox squirrel Teto (2 pieces). I added a few extra harpoons using kit sprue. I assembled the figure with Tenax and filled seams & gaps with green putty thinned with Testor's liquid cement. I brushed over the putty with liquid Testors to smooth it and give it an organic texture. I didn't need to do any filing or sanding of the putty.

The Omu is painted a base color of Model Master (MM) field green with several washes and stippled layers of MM olive drab, SAC bomber green, and Tamiya acrylic black. I painted the harpoons with MM Metallizer gunmetal and superglued them into holes drilled in the Omu body. I filled around the harpoons with thinned green putty and painted over it with a 1:1 mix of Tamiya transparent blue and intermediate blue for Omu blood. I lightly airbrushed the eye domes with a 5:1 mix of Tamiya transparent blue and intermediate blue with a bit of Metallizer steel mixed in. I painted a spot of Acryl pearl white onto the Omu body where each eye attaches. I used superglue to attach the eyes to the body.

In the movie, Nausicaä wears a pinkish dress which turns a uniform blue after the Omu bleeds on her. I opted to make it appear a bit more messy, painting her dress over with the Omu blood mix and then adding streams of differently-shaded blood mixes running over the dress and down her legs. A few additional pieces from the kit - a gun and the fox squirrel Teto round out the kit.

For the base, I sculpted green florist's foam and glued it to a piece of Masonite. I covered the foam with Durham's water putty and sculpted the Omu trail, Nausicaä's footprints, and other details into it. I topped it off with a layer of crumbly Durham's, mixed using about ¼ the usual amount of water. This became the track of sand churned up by the Omu's 51 legs. I used a water spray to moisten it so it would dry and adhere to the base and sifted some dry Durham's over the wetted surface to provide additional texture. I painted the base with various earth tone colors. The base color is MM Dark Earth. Darker washes (acrylic black) and highlights of ochre and wood finish off the paint job. Additional drizzles and patches of Omu blood finish off the display. The water is polyester resin with a light tint of blue added. I ran a rim of Sculpey around and under the base to contain the resin as it set. The splash spray is clear styrene melted and "taffy-pulled" into splashy shapes. I pressed these into the nearly-set resin around her feet.

Image: From above

Image: Front view

Image: Left side

Image: Nausicaä, before placement

Image: Splash

Image: Teto