Filling Gaps

I've recently come across a great technique!

I can't take credit for it, so want to draw your attention to JinSaotome. He's a fellow customiser, and chances are that if you've found me online, you'll know about Jin. He's considered one of the greatest action figure customisers.

Anyway, I like to be a bit experimental in the techniques I use, but Jin came up with a great technique that I'd never have thought of: http://www.angelfire.com/mech/jinsaotome/WorkspaceSetup/GapFill.html

This is saving me a lot of work when getting rid of engraved details on figures. As Jin says, this technique is great for those times I don't want to wait over 3 hours for putty to cure.

Thanks Jin!

The Fwoosh: Featured Custom of the Week

I'm delighted that Doppelganger has been selected as Featured Custom of the Week over at The Fwoosh.

The Fwoosh is my main go to for action figure chat and to see what other customisers are up to. It's a great resource so I'm always happy when I get some recognition there.

I've had quite a few of my customs chose to be the Custom of the Week, but still it's always nice when something you've put a lot of effort into is chosen.

For the full article, pop on over to http://thefwoosh.com/2010/12/new-custom-tuesday-1272010

Here's the bit about Doppelganger.

This week’s featured custom is warrack’s Doppleganger:

Doppleganger is not what I would consider a classic character, but warrack has created a truly classic custom based on a recent Clayton Crain redesign of the creature.

The base choice of the super skinny Spider-Man was perfect for this character.  I love how seemless the extra limbs look.  It looks like all the poseability was retained as well.

The web work on the costume and the webbing on the base are both fantastic.  As if that weren’t enough, warrack also added an articulated jaw and a removeable tongue.  Check out some close ups of that feature and plenty of WIP shots on warrack’s thread by clicking one of the above pics. (Links removed)

Carnage returns

The Carnage custom figure that I was asked to make earlier this year has proven to be very popular. He might even challenge Spider-Carnage for being my most popular custom.

Anyway, here's Carnage again. He follows the same recipe as the original but with his axe hand replaced with a claw with tendrils emerging from it.

Doppelganger

I've been snowed into my house here for over a week, so have had plenty of time to finish up a custom I've had lying around for ages. He started off as being a custom of The Void from Siege, and I was using the McFarlane Spidey body and extending the arms and body, but then I ended up hating Siege and The Void was beaten in a stupid way, so he just sat in a half hacked up foetal state for months.

So, anyway, with the recent release of the new Carnage mini-series this guy reappeared for a short time with a redesign by Clayton Crain that really clicked with me. I just wanted to make a figure of this guy all of a sudden.

Doppelganger was created during the horrendously awful Infinity War. Evil versions of Spidey were all the rage in those days, so he stuck around for the equally awful Maximum Carnage, before disappearing into obscurity.

Doppelganger has an articulated jaw and a removable, bendable tongue.

I also rustled up a base for him using ML2 Hulk's base with a wire and hot glue web over the cracked wall.

A lot of Spider-men went into making Doppelganger here.

Recipe:

Body: McFarlane Spider-man

Neck: Sinister Six Spider-man

Arms: McFarlane Spider-man (times 3)

4/6 hands: McFarlane Spider-man

2/6 hands: Ultimate Nightcrawler

Head: Moonknight

Jaw: Quicksilver's finger articulation

Toes: Blackheart

Claws: Flosser tips

Teeth: Toothpicks

Sculpting material: Milliput 

Paints: Games Workshop

So yeah, there's a lot going on as far as parts are concerned. It took a lot of work to get all of those arms onto that slim body while retaining the articulation. I wanted all of the arms to at least have the shoulder joint partially set into the body to create a more organic look to it. There were loads of moments when I thought I'd gummed up all the internal joints, but luck was with me, and it came out okay.

I had to build out the back a little for the last couple of arms so that they wouldn't interrupt the ab crunch.

I added in the Sinister Six Spidey neck as I think it gives him more articulation for monstrous crouching poses and added a magnetic link to the head. I don't really know why I did this to be honest, but I may come up with alternate heads for him one day.

I wanted to capture his new face design from the Carnage miniseries, but everytime I tried, it came out too sympathetic looking and that wasn't the overall look I was going for. So I ended up mixing the original design (Spider-man mask style composite eyes) with the new design (multiple eyes) and also brought back the clawed 3 fingers.

Randomly, I decided on a Moonknight head. I sculpted the eyes and cut off the lower part of his head. I gave him a moving jaw using the joint from a fodder hand I had lying about (sorry Pietro, but you weren't using it anyway). The teeth are all toothpicks which I whittled down and glued individually, before covering them with milliput. I also popped a little magnet in the back of his mouth so that I add a 90's style tongue (in a little homage to the old Toybiz Doppelganger figure).

I added Blackheart's toes to him and kept the articulation. I also added an articulated.... heel toe... I dunno what it's called, but he's got it.

So that left the paint. Let me tell you, if I hadn't been snowed in, there would've been no way I would've chosen to sit down and paint all those webs. BORING! Fortunately, the redesign of Doppelganger showed him having a kind of tattooed web pattern across his body, that wasn't as exact as Spidey's costume, so that let me keep it a bit rougher than a tightly designed costume approach would.

Zombie Giant-Man

Phew, just managed to get this one finished before Hallowe'en so he can join in with all the flesh eating.

Here he is, Zombie Giant-Man!

Zombie Giant-Man is over 13" tall and is made from the Marvel Legends Giant Man figure. Most of the work on this figure went into his face. You see, I added an opening and closing mouth to this figure so that he can get into lots of undead gnawing japes!

I cut Giant-Man's head just below his nose and had to rebuild it all.

I started with adding the zombie teeth for the upper jaw and then constructed a couple of hinges underneath his head. I attached a swinging jaw here and was able to build up from there. I kept the side flaps of his mask so I could attach them later and hide the joing of his jaw and the hinge mechanism.

*grumble*

Buuuurrrrrp!

I was also asked to add in a removable cranium. I sliced the top of his head off and hollowed out the cap and part of his head. I sculpted in a rotten green brain and covered it with some gore. The cap attaches back to the skull with a couple of hidden magnets.

Whatever you do, don't look down. It'll fall off.

Gah, what did we tell you!

Finally I added in some hot glue to the gory areas and painted it with clear red paint to create a nice bloody gore effect, painted the blue areas of his costume as black, and worked a lot of black washes into the costume to dirty it, and then spattered the white areas with clear red to create a bloodied look.

Auditioning for the new series of The Zom-Cosby Show

Watch out Giant-Man! You're behind you!

He also has an accessory: a load of guts for him to chew on! These are made from electric wire wrapped around some wobbly, jelly Star Wars toy and then coated in hot glue and painted with clear red.

Braaaaiiiins! (or whatever this issssss!)

Only a beer soaked robo-tramp stands between you and the zombie superhorde!

Coming soon...

It's almost Hallowe'en, so hopefully I can get this flesh eater finished by then. Here's a sneak peek.

Lady Octopus

Here's my latest custom. This is Lady Octopus. She was a short lived super-villain who replaced the familiar Doctor Octopus when he was killed. He got better of course, and she retired or had to give him his tentacles back.

 Lady is made from a Marvel Legends Maria Hill figure. I love this figure. It's such a nicely proportioned female body with hardly any sculpted details, so is easy to build from. I sculpted the gloves, boots, shoulder pads, thigh guards, bra... thing... and the octopus motif. It was quite simple, but I'm actually really happy with the octopus motif. It's got a nice flow to it and stands out well.

I sculpted her crown and then built her hair up in layers. I tried to make her hair curl and separate against her crown, to suggest octopus tentacles. I did made some subtle changes to her face, taking out the upturned corners of her mouth so she wasn't smiling, and creasing her brow a little.

The major work on this figure went into the tentacles. The problems involved with these were as follow:

1.  Lady Octopus has 4 pincers on each tentacle. Doctor Octopus toys only have 3.
2. Doctor Octopus toys with moveable pincers have a sucker design along the tentacles which Lady Octopus shouldn't have.
3. Inserting the tentacles into the back of the figure will likely get in the way of the articulation.

So the solutions were nothing very creative, but just necessities:


1: So each Doc Ock came with 12 pincers. I needed 16. So I had to buy a couple of Doc Ocks. Lady also has a very sharp, pointed end to her pincers. I had to cut off the end of the pincer and replace it with flosser tips.

 

2: I had to use a horrible Doc Ock toy to get better tentacles. These were a little chunkier than I would've liked, but they kept the general look of Lady's tentacles. In the image below, you can make out the more modern tentacle with the sucker design on the right, and the classic one on the left. Using the classic one meant sculpting an end onto the tentacles and then attaching each pincer, one at a time onto them. It was quite tedious.

 

3: I just had to be very careful with the drilling and glueing. There were times when I thought I'd arsed it up, but she retained all articulation by the end of it and the tentacles were anchored soundly.

 And so, a paint job later, and Lady Octopus is ready to ensnare Spider-Man.

Hope you like her.

Coming soon...

Yeah, I've not done anything on the customising front for a while now, but I'm hoping to get back into it. Here's a sneak peak of something that I've been working on, on and off (mostly off) for months.

The Sorceress of Grayskull

I recently picked up some of the MOTUC figures. It made me get really nostalgic and I decided I needed to make my favourite character from the Filmation series:

The Sorceress

I really wanted a classic animated Sorceress as I couldn't really understand the Egyptian influence on her design from the newer series. I also didn't like that the new Sorceress put up with He-Man's transformation in that new series. All those lights exploding out her doors and windows. She could've been on the toilet or anything and suddenly, "By the Power of..." and she gets blinded, takes a spill and gets found with her kecks down the next day by bloomin' Orko.

At least the old Sorceress had the decency to go to bed in full make-up with her bird hat still on (see the Secret of the Sword). Now THAT'S class.

Anyway, where am I? Ah yes...

Teela-Na here is made from MOTUC Adora. I don't have any WIP shots or anything as... well no excuse really. Just couldn't be arsed.

Her wings are from X-men Classic Bird of Prey Angel. The wings extend much further than they did in the cartoon as I wanted them to be a little bit more impressive and less like a granny shawl. Speaking of granny fashions though, Adora's big knickers certainly came in handy to make the feathery skirt thing! I added some sculpted wings on her back that fold in and out to fill in the gaps between where the wings end at her elbows and her main body (just to preserve the effect of it being a cape thing she's wearing).

Everything else was sculpted.

I did add ML Spider-Woman's out of scale hands so that the Sorceress had more appropriate gestures. This also added another point of articulation to her wrist.

Anyway, hope you like her.











Man-at-Arms and the Sorceress may look like star crossed lovers here, but they're actually in telepathic commune, figuring out ways to further live in denial that they had it off with each other and neither of them is overly fond of the arrogant spawn.