Mighty Marvels Malevolent Mutant Master of Magnetism... MAGNETO!

Hey All!

I hope this posting finds you well. My newest custom is Magneto in the Marvel Universe scale. I've been wanting to do this ever since I first saw this figure. I could not have been more disappointed with Hasbro's 1:18 scale offering of Magneto. He has always been one of Marvel's most powerful and imposing figures and his use of the stumpy Daredevil body and lackluster cape made his plastic countenance a poor representation of this malevolent monarch of mayhem. I replaced the stumpy torso with that of Namor the Submariner, cut the cape from the collar portion and glued said portion to the figure. The cape was made using the same technique as was used to make my recent Dr. Strange custom. The Magneto offering is the subject of a tutorial explaining the cape technique which I will be posting very soon. Watch for it... and as always comments and critiques are welcome and appreciated!

Repaints... My favorite pastime!

Hey All!

Truly, nothing makes me happier than a great sculpt with a poor factory paintjob! To my reckoning it's a customizers dream! Nothing pleases me more than the excitement of releasing that poorly painted bauble from it's plastic prison and using paint and brush (and pastel) to release and enhance the beauty of the sculpt!

Todays offerings are a good example. Taking a break from heavy modifications and sculpting after my Doctor Strange custom, I decided to do a few simple repaints. Very easy... Very satisfying... and very good at gearing me up for the next big project.

First up is Face from the A- team. These figures are great, but the head sculpts (which are decent representations of the movie actors) suffer from some pretty horrific paint apps. I have all 4 members of the team, but Face is the only one I've had a chance to paint. The head sculpt is a great portrait of actor Bradley Cooper and I couldn't wait to paint him up.

Second on the card is the Marvel Universe Enchantress. This one bugged me beyond belief. She's supposed to be a goddess of seduction and yet she was completely ugly. A simple repaint brought out her beauty and her penchant for evil.

Thirdly is the Marvel Universe Absorbing Man. I can't think of a figure that needed a repaint more than this guy! Terrible! At first I was not impressed with his ugly mug and funny boots- he sort of reminded me of Popeye. After repainting him, however he has become one of my favorite figures and in my opinion the best offering of the character to date. He took a little bit more than just paint, though. I scarred him up with a carving tool and an exacto knife to texture him up for his concrete effect. I really enjoyed this guy- he was a complete pleasure from start to finish!

I hope you enjoy them! Let me know what you think!

Earth's Sorcerer Supreme... Dr. Strange!

Hey All!

Here's my newest. He started out as a Marvel Universe Iron Fist figure. He has a modified Broken Arrow toys head cast (I sculpted the hair and mustache), a belt/ sash from a Hand Ninja, and a skirt from an Obi Wan Kenobi figure. The tunic detail is sculpted with Fixit Sculpt and the cape is made of Fixit Sculpt, styrene, a bedsheet, and some white glue. The technique was a real breakthrough for me as I have been struggling over how to craft rigid, realistic looking capes for sometime now. This technique takes an important aspect of super hero customizing that I used to find very limited (I really hated hunting around for capes for these figures and never being able to find one that worked the way I wanted) and opens the door up wide to limitless possibilities. If there is interest I will do a tutorial on how to make these capes when I work up my next custom.

I'm really happy with the results here... this is by far my favorite custom to date! A very special thanks to my lovely and talented wife who introduced me to the technique for the cape and to her and her dear friend April who helped me troubleshoot it and who put up with my cursing and my tantrums when it wasn't working out. I hope you enjoy him and as always... comments are welcome and appreciated!

The Enigmatic... TASKMASTER

Hey all!

I'll tell ya'... the Avengers don't have very many cool arch enemies. I mean, the different incarnations of the Masters of Evil and the Lethal Legion gave them a fair challenge. Ultron rocked. But the Plant Man? The Grim Reaper? Egghead? The Space Phantom? Baron Zemo? C'mon... are these the challenges that no one super hero can face? I think not. The Taskmaster on the other hand... now that guy was cool! He could duplicate the athletic and martial abilities of the Avengers AND he looked scary as hell! Add to that a complete arsenal of duplicate weapons and you've got one hell of a cool villain! So cool in fact that after George Perez co- created him he left Marvel for DC and re- created him over there (except this time they called him Deathstroke the Terminator)!

Anyway, I've been working on this guy on and off for sometime and only just got him finished. The head was sculpted over a year ago, but after months of switching out bodies I finally settled on Captain America. This base is the alternate reality version so not only did all of the torso detail have to be sanded off and the abdominals resculpted, but I had to sculpt the boot cuffs and glove scallops as well. He was a lot of work, but I enjoyed him thoroughly. I hope you do as well! Comments are always welcomed and appreciated.

Older customs

Hey all!

Just taking a break from working on my newest custom (a Marvel Universe Taskmaster! I'm really stoked about this one!) to post some of my older work. You may have seen these posted at forums like Hiss Tank and Marvelous News, but I thought it would be prudent to give them a permanent home here on the blog. Included are a battle damaged Iron Man with custom base, a repainted Hulk with a new head, and the Hercules figure that was the subject of an earlier painting tutorial. I hope you enjoy them and as always, comments are welcomed and appreciated!

The amazing... SPIDERMAN

Hey All!

I've been lazing out a bit lately when it come to customizing. I have a couple of projects that range from moderately to very involved lying around in various stages of finish that I can't bring myself to wrap up. When that happens I tend to whip together a quickie repaint or head swap to warm me up and sort of get things rolling again. This time it's a Marvel Universe Spidey.

I was never happy with the Marvel Universe offering of Spiderman. He's kinda' dumpy looking and he has a head like a lightbulb. Not to mention that every variant I have of the figure needs a SERIOUS repaint. I was eagerly awaiting the new 3 3/4 inch Spidey line with high hopes that a better version of the character would be made available. Unfortunately, those hopes were dashed to bits upon seeing these terrible figures first hand. I purchased the "super posable" variety hoping that I would be able to do some custom magic to help it along... but after removing it from the package I realized that there was little that could be done to salvage this pitiful piece of plastic. The head had some merit, though. It resembles the head from the Marvel Legends Showdown version from several years back, which I always admired. I decided to swap it with the Marvel Universe body and give it a repaint to see if it helped a bit. I also used some Aves Apoxy Sculpt to beef up his lats under his arms so he looked a bit more muscular.

I painted the entire figure over and rather than wash and drybrush the webs (which is the factory technique that makes these figures paint work look so terrible to begin with) I used a detail brush to carefully paint the lines in with thinned black paint. The entire figure was sealed up with Dullcoat for that perfectly flat finish.

I'm a lot happier with this version even though I'm still not crazy about the body which is still a bit funky to me, but I think the sculpted additions help a bit. The comparison photo shows my version and the original. Comments are always welcome.

THE MAN CALLED... CYCLOPS!

Hey All!
I thought that the new Secret Wars 2 pack Cyclops was a great attempt at a classic character from my youth. The only problem was the terribly sloppy and inaccurate paint work and his stubby arms. I swapped out the arms below the shoulder joint with a pair from Union Jack and returned the hands that came with Cyke then gave the entire figure an accurate repaint. I'll tell you... these new Marvel Universe figures are a customizers dream! They are so easy to work with and there is not ONE of them that doesn't leave room for serious improvement (save for maybe Sunfire, who is actually very well done). The price point is a bit out of control at almost 10 bucks a pop for these little things, but prices are through the roof on everything these days. Whatayagonnado...?

I'm really happy that it looks like the Secret Wars line is going to pretty much produce most of the early 80's X- Men team that I grew up with and with a few custom additions I can round out the corners with some of the other members that don't have figures slated just yet. I'm looking forward to working on those and sharing them with you here. I also have a Spiderman repaint with some slight custom modifications and a Ka- Zar figure in the works that I'll be posting soon, so stay tuned! Thanks for looking!