Project Grayskull part 1 - in the raw

When I first went to Gary Con in 2018, I saw Reid San Filippo's fabulous GM screen fashioned from a Castle Grayskull playset. Once that idea gets in your head, there's no getting it out, so I did what all "geniuses" do – I stole it. (The idea, not his GM screen.)

Though I didn't know it at the time, Reid's project was still in the beginning stages; he has since added a lot to it. He also did a far better job of documenting his process than I have. But I'll try to make up for it with a detailed narrative for others who want to follow in his/our footsteps.

In case you don't know anything about it, Castle Grayskull was a central icon of the He-Man toy line and cartoon (c. 1982-83). The castle is a major source of power but neither He-Man nor his archenemy Skeletor live there. Which confuses me a little ... and here is where I admit I've never watched more than 10 minutes of the cartoon. 

I don't know if I would have ever acted on the idea until a friend of mine actually bought the castle and shipped it to me. (The shipping, as I understand it, was 2-3 times more costly than the castle!) 

Here it is in its virgin state. Well. Maybe not virgin, but rather lovingly used. All the shelves, stickers, figures, accessories, etc. were missing. In these photos I have scraped off a half-sticker that was left inside and washed the whole thing down to remove any major surface dirt. The sticker was surprisingly hard to remove, despite using Goo-Gone and a razor blade. I wasn't fully successful.

I want to take this slow, so even though I have already nearly finished this project I'm going to write about it on a once-a-week basis for a while. I hope you enjoy watching it be transformed.

The iconic front: case closed

The exterior: case open/drawbridge up

The interior: case open/drawbridge up. Note the brackets for shelves at the midline (both sides) and at tower level (on right).

The top: case closed. Note the awkward "holes" - you can also see them from the case closed front (above) and back (below) views.

The back: case closed. It cracks me up how the black paint was just "striped" on with no regard to the actual contour of the sculpt. I love the two shades of green though (lime and mint?). I kept/replicated those for my paint job (next post). I like to think of them as the ghosty-greens.