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.
