F.A.O. DIRECT

Customs by John Bodin ("jbodin" on most message boards) e-mail jbodin@sbcglobal.net Web Address ???

The Question:

The Question started out as a Jurassic Park Alan Grant figure; the details were removed with a Dremel tool, then the shirt, tie, pants, and jacket were sculpted-on from scratch using Sculpy and Super Sculpy, with multiple bakings during the overall build-up. The trenchcoat was sculpted on using SuperFlex Sculpy, and here again the sculpting was done in stages with multiple bakings performed during the build-up process.

Deluxe Amazo:

The Deluxe Amazo figure started life as a Bruce-To-Batman figure from the recent 6" The Batman animated toy line. I got the inspiration for this one from Bill Burns of billcustoms.com; Bill made an animated-style version of the Silver Age Amazo (the one with the bare chest and the green-striped pants) using the Bruce Wayne figure as the base, and while looking at his handiwork I realized that you could easily do a properly-sized JLU Amazo using the same base figure. This was a fairly easy custom which required only minor modifications to the base figure -- the "wrinkles" near what would be the pant cuff area were Dremelled smooth, and the ends of the "shirt sleeves" on the forearms and the detail work on the boots were filled and smoothed using Kneadatite epoxy compound. The head and face were Dremelled smooth and used as a base for the Amazo head, which is a scratch-built sculpt made out of Super Sculpy. The wings were cannibalized from a JLU Hawkgirl figure, the "plug" that connected the wings to the body was shaped into a rough circular shape, and a hole was drilled into the back of the Bruce Wayne torso to make the wings removable. The mace is scratch-built using a plastic "missile" projectile accessory from my fodder pile, a marble, and Super Sculpy. Everything was then sprayed with gray primer, the red eyes were painted on using nail polish (don't tell my wife), and then everything was sealed with Dullcote.

Phasing Martian Manhunter:

The Phasing Martian Manhunter is a blatant rip-off of Casimir's original recipe (you can check out his legendary customs at the Inanimate Objects site) -- it started out as one of the semi-transparent "invisible" Martian Manhunter variants; this was sprayed with Dullcote to provide some texture, and then it was painted using extremely thinned-down acrylic paint (which was brushed on, not sprayed). The end result was sealed with Dullcote to help preserve the finish.

Captain Cold:

I never really intended to do a JLU version of Captain Cold -- he hasn't actually appeared in any JLU episodes, and even though next season will feature the Legion of Doom, it doesn't look as though the good Captain will be part of the Legion. There is a distinct lack of villains in the JLU line-up, though, and when I spotted the generic Wild Arctic Polar Mission Survival Mission action figure for $0.99 at Big!Lots, I immediately said, "Hey, THAT head would be perfect for a Captain Cold custom," and the rest is now history. I used an Elongated Man JLU figure as the base and did a head-swap, and I also borrowed the gun, holster, and right hand from the Wild Arctic donor figure. The icicles on the upper torso and shoulder areas were sculpted on using Super Sculpy; the belt, glove cuffs, and boot cuffs were also done using Super Sculpy, and bits of cut-up straight pins were used for the three vertical belt details on the front and rear. I masked off the "face" area using Silly Putty to retain the facial details -- even though the stocking cap and the goggles aren't precisely on-model for Captain Cold, I thought they seemed appropriate for the JLU animated style and decided to keep them as-is. I then sprayed it all down with gray primer, followed by several coats of satin white Krylon Fusion. The blue and yellow portions were then painted using thinned-down brush-on acrylic craft paints, and Dullcote was used to seal the finish.