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.