cusT0M

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Works in Progress

Here are a few pictures of figures that required a great deal of work and turned out to be some of my favorite customs!
The first of these figures is She Hulk and Abomination!

She Hulk

I was very happy with how she-hulk turned out. She was probably the most sculpting work I had to do for a custom female character, but it was well worth it. She-Hulk is always a very strong, muscular character, so having a chance to sculpt muscles on the figure while still keeping her smooth and feminine was a challenge but also a very good learning experience.

Abomination

Abomination is probably one of my favorite pieces to this day because of the detail I was able to sculpt on him, and the way his paint job came out. I basically had to resculpt the entire outer layer of the figure in order to give him his "scales", and this was one of the first figures that I attempted a complete facial resculpting. It was an intimidating idea at first but I really wanted Abomination to look cool and also mean like the character.

Sculpting the mouth was also a valuable learning experience on how to form the features of the face, and starting with a rather monstrous figure made it easier to experiment with rigid lines and details on the face.

cusT0M Featured Figure

Here's a custom that I had a great time working on, and I really enjoyed how he turned out. The character is called "Anti-Venom" from the spiderman comics and I also designed a set of webs for this custom figure.

His paint job came out very dynamic and I like the contrast between the white and black parts of the character.

To get the lines of his costume drawn out, I used a thin, fine point paintbrush and a little dot of water mixed in with the paint to get a smooth line across the contour of the detail of the figure.

Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy!

Monday, April 23, 2012

The Custom Process

Here's a quick breakdown of the usual steps it takes to make a custom action figure

The first step is to get an action figure to use as a "base". The base for Cyborg was a character called Cyborg Superman (Step 1). This superman figure is already a factory made piece that I began sculpting the new costume on. I removed his cape, added a different head, and gave him a gun on his arm.

The next few steps involved a great deal of sculpting new details and adding the costume. His backpack was made of cardboard, glue and tape. I also added some wires for extra detail. (Any gray area of the costume is the clay I used to sculpt on the figure)

Once the sculpting is done, I clean up the figure, sand down any rough spots and then paint a basic coat of gray paint over the whole figure as a primer coat (Step 4). The primer coat of paint helps me to see any mistakes, if there are any, on the figure before I begin the final paint job. This usually helps if there is a rough spot on the figure of if there is something missing that I did not notice before. Once the primer coat looks good, the figure is then ready to be painted

Cyborg was a lot of fun to paint. He is mostly silver which gave me a chance to add a lot of black paint in the lines of his costume to make the silver really stand out. Silver paint can be a pain in the neck to work with sometimes due to the metallic color, but once it drys and a layer of clear gloss has then been painted over the entire figure, the colors really stand out!

Here are some more views of the new custom figure!

Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy!

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Custom 6 inch DC Universe figures

And here are my custom 6 inch dc universe figures.

Batgirl

Spoiler

Recently, there has been a high demand for Green Lantern related figures because of the new movie that came out last year, as well as many new Green Lantern comic books/characters that emerged in the past few years.

As one of my favorite superheroes, Green Lantern related characters were a lot of fun to work on.

There were a variety of different colored "lanterns" that appeared in recent Green Lantern Comics, which gave me a chance to make some interesting looking characters.

Sinestro

Red Lantern Guy Gardner

Blue Lantern Hal Jordan

Original Design: Red Lantern
This character was not from the Green Lantern comics,
but I thought it would be a cool idea to make my own
Red Lantern design.

Green Lantern Brik

Yellow Lantern

Orange Lantern Hal Jordan

White Lantern Batman

White Lantern Sinestro

And here are some more DC Comics related custom figures.

Aquaman

Ambush Bug

For these Lex Luthor figures, I originally painted the Lex on the left, but I then decided to modify him and

give his armor a battle damaged look. I also added the eye-patch that the charcater features in some artwork. I think this modification made Lex look better and more detailed.

Lex Luthor

Modified Lex Luthor

Catwoman
This catwoman custom was a lof of fun to work on, and gave me a chance to make more of a soild display piece, rather than a standard action figure custom. I came up with the idea of posing her on a rooftop base which would create for a very nice and dynamic piece for the character. I also made her whip out of a poseable wire so that you could pose the whip in any position while on display. I thought it gave a nice touch to the overall piece and that the mixture of her laying somewhat flat, the long rooftop display and the whip really balanced the piece out.

Custom 6 inch Marvel figures

Here are some more custom marvel figures. All of these guys are about 6 inches tall.

Mimic

Destroyer
Inspired by the villian in the movie "Thor"

Black Panther

Unmasked Black Panther
This was my second Black Panther figure, this time with a new staff, an alternate unmasked head, and a very cool looking base.

Firestar

Cyclops

Quicksilver

Cable

Ultron

Sharon Carter

Deadpool
This deadpool has more of a comic look with a suprised
expression that fans of the character really love.

Daredevil

Deadpool 2
This is another Deadpool custom I worked on about a year ago. This deadpool had more of a 'meaner' look to him and I also added some extra weapons to make him look more dangerous.

Custom 12 inch DC Comics Figures

Here is the collection of custom made DC Comics figures I have made over the years.

Cyborg
(See "The Custom Process" for a more detailed
look at Cyborg)

Catwoman

Deadshot

Black Manta

Mr. Freeze

Gorilla Grodd

As you look through this gallery, I thought it would be cool to note that I used the same basic figure for most of these characters: This 12 inch Flash figure (seen below). Flash had a very basic costume, so I was able to sculpt just about any new costume over the figure and change the head/face to create the new character. I must have bought over 30 of these basic flash figures in order to use him for each of these custom figures.

Original Flash figure made by the company Mattel

If you look closely at some of these guys, you can see how I changed the flash's costume to make the new figures. Luckily, a lot of these characters had masks and boots just like the flash, so it was easier to make the transformation.