Video Carnage

As an experiment, I've made a video showcase of Carnage and posted it on youtube.

Give it a watch and let me know what you think!

Part One:




Part Two:

Carnage and the "If the professionals can't do it, then surely I don't stand a chance" syndrome

I think I've talked about this guy before in my Spider-Carnage post. You know, the love child of a fraudulent journalist and an alien body stocking that joined up with a serial killer? Yeah, you know the one I'm talking about now.

Carnage is accessory central, but I'll get to those in a minute. I have to say that I really love this custom. Big headed to say that, but I was suprised how well he turned out. I've always seen Carnage as being something that couldn't be done in toy form. Every toy of him that was released was just... not quite right. They never seemed to match his colouring or the way his face looked. I sometimes think the face thing was because they can't put sharp objects on toys but then I also think that's nonsense. We get swords and stuff with toys all the time!

Anyway, I have to admit that the lack of an accurate factory made Carnage didn't instil me with great hope over being able to make this guy. I suppose I should show you an image or two from the comic:

            
Carnage has a red body basically. There's a black strip running down the centre of his body and black strands branch off from it and divide and join up again along his arms and legs. It didn't seem like that big a deal, but for some reason, toy companies don't do the same paint job on their figures.

 See?

Anyway, as I said, I was put off by this and really didn't even think to attempt an accurate version. I thought he might turn out looking a bit stupid. So I tried the following paint job first of all, and I was actually quite happy with it:

I painted his entire body black. Then added layers of dark red on the raised areas, and full on red on the veins and stuff. Like I said, I was happy with this, but while it was a certain take on the character... it wasn't the classic Carnage.

So yeah, I went ahead and totally repainted him. It was actually really difficult. It may just be red and black, but it was really time consuming to paint all the little strands and branches of the black pattern. It's probably just not easy to get factory workers to do the paint job consistently, and that's why the toy companies go for another paint style. Anyway, it was decided to go forward with the proper design, and here he is!

Carnage is made from a Marvel Legends Iron Fist figure.

It seemed a little bulky for him at first, but the sinewy muscle tone on the body helped in the end and it was nice to work with something different. To get the texture of his body I drizzled and dragged hot glue over him

His forearms are from SOTA Guile so that his hands can change using a peg and socket set up. His normal set of hands is from ML Sinister Six Spidey. I used these in my Spider-Carnage custom, and used the same techniques here. He has alternate hands, the claw added to an Iron Fist hand, and the axe made from random crap I have lying around.

The extra hands are from designs in the comic:

His head is from a recent Carnage figure, more for size than anything else, as I resculpted every part of it, adding teeth and a wide open jaw.

He also has an unmasked head partly covered in alien goop.

 I was delighted how the head came out. The face is pretty much unchanged from the figure I took it from. It's from a Street Fighter Adon figure (actually the same head that I used to make Drax, back when I first started this blog). I just widened the eyes to make him appear more psychotic, changed the hair and adjusted the mouth ever so slightly.

The final touch to Carnage is his tendrils. There are 5 magnetic points on his body that are hidden beneath the sculpted detail. I made bendable tendrils from electrical wire covered in hot glue, and attached magnets to the end of these. They can snap onto his body easily to add some alien craziness to his poses.

So that's Carnage. I'm really proud of how he turned out and I've used a lot of what I think are advanced techniques to make him.

Hope you like him!

Quick Customs and Proper Lighting

Most of the customs I do involve a lot of sculpting. It takes a lot of time. Action figure customisers do use recipes though. If one customiser finds a good way to make a figure, then they can share it with others. I used this approach with one of my quick customs below.

As I said, I do a lot of sculpting, but these customs use really minimal sculpting. They just use body parts from different figures that once assembled together, make a new figure.

I've also made a light tent. I was disappointed with the photos I was able to get of Jem. She was made in the darkest months, and I was really annoyed that I couldn't capture her 80's colours well in photos because of the lack of decent daylight accompanied by good weather for taking my photos outdoors.

I got a cardboard box, cut holes in the side and covered them in a white bed sheet. This helps diffuse any light any thus, not create shadows. I've just got a coupla crappy bulbs from a coupla desk lamps so the light isn't so great, but I've found out how to balance the colour of those bulbs so that the camera reads it as white. The difference in the photos I can take is amazing. I'm still perfecting it, but I'm getting there!

Anyway, here's my customs of Iron Man and the Red Skull: