Here's the ever popular attention getter:
Venom
I don't know about the rest of you, but I've always felt let down by the official Venom figures. They just didn't fit my image of Venom. But how are toy companies meant to know what's going on in my head!? I want the moon on a stick!
My idea of Venom is from his early days. I actually first heard of Venom when I played Spider-man on the Megadrive/Genesis. So really, all I knew was that he was this deadly, black Spidey with a mouth. He seemed so sleek and deadly, so I wanted to capture that. As I learned more about Venom, it was clear that he was physically imposing so I had to capture that too. And from there, it was all about the mouth. His wicked grin in his first appearance is iconic of course, but the first comic image I saw of Venom was from when he first got his slimy tongue and distended jaw.
I've not really been a fan of Venom's evolution into a power set that seems to rely more on the morphing powers of the symbiote and all that tendril good stuff. I like my big, sleek, deadly, big mouth Spidey.
Anyway, here he is:
Venom is about 7" tall and made from a Shocker Toys The Tick figure. I bought this figure just out of curiosity and I liked the height and scale and just really wanted to try some differently engineered bodies to customise with. I changed his forearms out for SOTA Blanka's and replaced the lower legs with those from a Spider-Man Classics Stealth Venom.
I sculpted over the Tick's head and you can see some of that work in the WIP shot below.
So it's all Milliput (on top of the Tick's original head), with toothpicks for the teeth and a piece of electrical wire coated in hot glue and magnetically attached to the back of the mouth. The tongue is bendable and removable. I just noticed that I didn't take any shots of him without the tongue, but you can see that in the WIP or on my Youtube channel if you want. I am very happy with how the head came out. It's exactly the look I wanted to capture. I surprised myself with this one.
He has two sets of hands; 1 clenched in fists, and the other open claws. These are SOTA Blanka's hands but I sculpted over the nails to make sure he didn't have that detail.
The symbol on his chest and back was time consuming as it is all hand painted.
He also has 2 alternate heads.
The first is, as I mentioned above, from that iconic first appearance with the evil grin:
I wasn't too happy with how this head came out, but I don't intend to display him with that head most of the time. I found it hard to capture the kind of bulbous, cartoony grin in three dimensions, but I think I took a good shot at it. This head was made from the alternate head that came with the Tick.
His other head is Eddie Brock.
This is Eddie from his early appearances. He had this receding hairline and wicked, thick, black eyebrows (despite his golden blonde hair). I rooted through my fodder box for a long, long time, but just couldn't find any ML or DCUC, or even SOTA heads that looked right on that thick neck. Finally I came across a figure that I'd not given a second glance to since I got it in a job lot auction, the Hulk Movie Punching Hulk:
This head was exactly the right size to suit the neck and body. The face was detailed enough to look serious but not emotion specific enough to be angry. I had to resculpt the brow and the hair and of course, repaint it, but I couldn't believe my luck when I found this in the fodder box.
I hope you guys like him. Despite not being fond of the symbiotes and the evil Spider-men as characters... I sure do seem to make a lot of figures of them. I think they're neat designs make good figures, even if they don't translate into particularly great characters for stories.
My next custom is this big bruiser:
POST
Post was an X-men villain who also ran as one of the Heralds of Onslaught. I don't pretend to understand what his mutant powers are, or why he's called Post. I just assume it's all down to him being a product of the 90's.
His size fluctuated in his few comic appearances, but I was asked to make him more in line with his first appearance in X-men #50 where he was shown to be able to grip Cyclops in one hand. So I went ahead and used the Marvel Legends Icons Hulk as the base figure. I did think of using Pitt, but I'd worked with him before, wanted something new, and just generally didn't think his proportions didn't suited Post.
I cut and sanded all the unwanted detail from Hulk and resculpted the lower face. The goal was to capture a kind of sadistic grin and I was happy with how it came out.
A major part of Post's look is his rocky, plated body. I looked for lots of corner cutting ways to get this done, but in the end had to just get down to it and sculpt the rocks. I had to be careful to test, at every stage, that the rocks weren't impeding the articulation.
With the rocks out of the way I moved on to working on his weapons. Post has all kinds of heavy weapons that usually arrange themselves around his shoulders. I tried initially to do this with magnets, but the weapons were too heavy for the concealed magnets, so I went with using pegs and sockets. They are all interchangeable so can be arranged in pretty much any sequence. The weapons themselves are from all kinds of sources, from GI Joe to MacFarlance fodder.
The last things to tackle were the floating plates that surround him. I'm not quite up to the level where I can enchant my customs to defy gravity, so had to make do with clear plastic rods to hold the plates up. Rather than have the plates be solid clay, I sculpted around plastic spoons. I asked the customer what 5 X-characters he would like to appear on the plates, and he chose Savage Wolverine, Cable, Onslaught, Dark Beast and Holocaust. So I printed out images of these characters (trying to get them all done by the same artist to maintain a consistent style) and glued these to the plates. I then hand painted the circuit effect around them.
And that's Post. A hard slog, but that goes with the territory of making a big figure. You can always check him out in more detail on my Youtube channel.
This is Dormammu in his Indefensible costume, made famous in recent months by Marvel vs. Capcom 3. I really like this costume and have made a custom previously of him in this style. This custom is far more controlled than the old one, and I've slightly altered some of the costume elements to suit some general ideas I have about the character.
His skirt... thing... I dunno what it's called was more armoured in the original design, but I opted for a more robe like style. I just thought this sat well with his sorcerous background. The robe is attached to either leg just below the hip joing, so it rotates and moves freely along with the leg.
Dormammu is around 8" tall and uses the ML Blackheart body as a base. My fodder bucket kind of dictated his choice of footwear as well, but I quite liked using ML Bishop's boots. His arms are from Annihilus with some articulation from Blackheart added in.
The centre loin cloth kinda thing was made from a couple of ML Maestro loin cloths, and the belt was also from Maestro. The loin cloth was painted silver and then coloured with clear red to create what I think is a really nice, glossy deep contrast with the flat black of the rest of his costume.
The shoulder pads are from ML Face Off Red Skull and his wedding train is a ML Sentry cape. He's also got a couple of ML Iron Fist's accessories to be his Power of the Creator/Destructor moves from MvC3.
The head was quite a challenge. I think this is the famous Dormammu dilemma: Just how are you meant to capture that fiery look?
In my previous custom I used hot glue. I was happy at the time with that, but I just didn't feel that the hot glue was capturing the fiery feel. It was a little too... blobby. I did consider sculpting, then casting the head in clear resin and using dyes to colour it, but I'm really not that skilled in making casts and the amount of mould locks that the fire would create was just too much for me to deal with.
So I went the 'old fashioned' route and just decided to sculpt it. I started by shaving off all the details from Blackheart's head and trying to capture that Jack O' Lantern style face. It was hard to get it looking menacing rather than happy, but I think I got there in the end. For the fire I started out with a very general fire shape. I worked up from there in stages, sculpting on smaller tongues of flame. Once that was done, I sculpted the collar and added the spikes made from flossers.
While the Indefensible costume doesn't make much of the spikes around Dormammu's head, I've always liked that aspect of some of his other costumes and added them back in. It served as a good armature to keep the flames from drooping as well.
I sculpted the flames going up the spikes and kept twisting the head this way and that to make sure that it still had clearance to articulate. It took a lot of hours of waiting for milliput to dry before adding the next layer, but it worked out well I think.
I wanted a contrasting backdrop for his head and noticed in the Indefensible comic that there was always a plume of smoke coming from his head, so I thought this would suit well. I sculpted in the smoke in a lattice fashion. It was one of those situations where you just have to trust it's going to turn out okay, as it just looked like a coiled dog turd at first. Some hours of sculpting later I was quite satisfied. I painted the smoke dark red and then dry brushed greys on top. I think it made it look like there was fire inside the smoke.
Finally the head was painted with various reds, oranges and yellows.
He was quite a lot of work, but I'm happy with how he turned out.
This is the brand new Venom, Flash Thompson. When I first clapped eyes on the redesigned Venom I was seriously not impressed. It looked like a cash in on Deadpool (urgh) but then when I found out who was under the mask/symbiote, it really interested me. Flash is Peter's original enemy. Flash idolises Spider-Man. Flash wants to do what's right, but is the symbiote going to be able to twist his hatred of Peter into hatred for Spider-Man?
I just think it'll make for some interesting reading.
Anyway, here's Venom.
Venom is made from a ML Face Off series Punisher. The vest, arm and shin guards are sculpted, and all of the straps and belts come from various figures, with HML Ultimate Nick Fury being a major donor.
The main head is a ML Moon Knight with the eyes sculpted.
The whole thing was sprayed black and dry-brushed with dark silver on the guards and vest. I kept it very dark, but felt that he needed some other tones to break up the black. The emblem was hand painted. I think the design of the new Venom is great as it uses the straps of the tactical vest to carry the spider emblem over onto the back of the costume.
His guns come from various sources. A pistol can be stowed in his front holster and the holster on his right leg is for his 'multi-gun.'
The multi-gun was something seen in Venom's first appearance, and I don't think it's been seen since. I suppose it's a bit of a kooky idea so it might've been shelved, but it's here for this figure!
The multi-gun in the comic can change or transform into a variety of weapons as Flash needs them. My multi-gun uses magnets and various fodder pieces to change into different guns.
I created 4 simple black tendrils that slot in under the straps of his costume, or can just be wrapped around him. These can be used for posing but are really there to recreate a scene from the comic where Flash wielded several weapons at once.
Venom's hands also swap out and can be replaced by clawed versions for those times when Venom needs to get up close and personal with the baddies. Again, to recreate scenes in the comics, Venom's head can be swapped with a more traditional look. This was also made from a ML Moon Knight.
There's also another alternate head, and this one is of Flash Thompson himself. I used a DCUC Aquaman head for this. Usually I feel that DCUC and ML don't play well together as the styles clash, but for Flash I thought the square-jawed look of DCUC helped to capture his jock stylings. I resculpted the sideburns a little further down his face to mimic the comic look.
To compliment this look, Flash has an additional saluting hand.
And the final addition, or subtraction if you want, from this figure is the removable legs feature. Flash had his legs blown off while serving in Iraq. Flash has been seen since then in a wheelchair and with the remnants of his legs wrapped in bandages. So I've tried to capture that here. The bandage style caps for his upper legs are sculpted and attach with magnets. Xavier has also hired his wheelchair out to Flash for the purposes of these photos!
So that's my version of Venom.
I hope you guys like him.
