Nightmare aka Vampire Hunter D

My latest is a kit that those with a passion for garage kits simply refer to as a “grail kit” ... a kit that you would expend all energy to acquire. Different collectors / painters / kit-builders have their own grails, for me, Nightmare (1/8 scale) sculpted by the unequaled hands of Takayuki Takeya and based on the phenomenal artwork of Yoshitaka Amano, was very near the top of my grail list. I added the kit to my collection nearly five years ago and finally felt ready to try to put paint to it.

My goal was to emulate as closely as possible the beautiful paintings of Amano and do some justice to the unbelievable detail captured by Takeya. Nightmare is a rendering of Vampire Hunter D, a half-vampire created by Amano and beautifully captured in many acrylic paintings with a wonderful watercolor style. I spent a great deal of time with Coffin: The Art of Vampire Hunter D in an attempt to understand Amano’s work and try to create a composite representation of D that would translate from 2D to 3D. The result is by far my personal favorite of anything I’ve painted thus far ...

I hope that you will like it.
jim