Customs by

Mike – Minesurfer (on-line)

e-mail

ginngrr@juno.com

Web Address

none

Cosmic Boy: I used a Marvel’s Most Wanted X-Man as the base. The head is a Terry McGuiness from the Batman Beyond Line. The shoulder and chest thingies are sculpey. Other than that, a lot of sanding and dremelling went into the legs, arms, and chest.

Element Lad: This was one of my first customs. I happened to have an extra Johnny Storm and Bug Busters Spider-man lying around. I took a utility knife and hacked off Spidey’s head above the neck. I popped Johnny’s head and shaped the peg basically into a cylinder. I drilled a hole in Spidey’s neck to match the head’s cylinder and epoxied them together. After experimenting with super glue in the past, I didn’t have much hope that this would be strong enough to hold them together, but epoxy is great stuff. I haven’t had one problem with it from a strength standpoint. Once the head was on and the neck articulation saved, this became a simple repaint.

Inferno: This is a Generation X Jubilee head on an Alpha Flight Vindicator body. Simple head swap and repaint basically. Her broach is a colored rhinestone glued to a little, textured gold disc used in bead necklaces. It was then glued in place.

Kid Quantum: Basically a repaint of a short-haired Storm. Some day I’ll give her some eyes, but not just yet. The shoulder pads were taken from a Battle Blasters Gambit figure. I had to epoxy some pins (cut paperclips) into the pads. Holes were drilled in the shoulders and the pins just rest in the holes. The hair helps keep the left pad in place. Symbol was decoupaged in place.

Livewire: Hard luck heroes have hard luck action figures. Since I had so many X-Mans lying around, I decided to test things on this one. This was my first boil and pop figure, and apparently I didn’t heat it long enough. The head separated from the peg when I pulled them apart. This became my first attempt at creating a snap joint in order to fix it. As I was sanding the legs smooth, the right leg just fell off. Since I had just bought a dremel the leg got all types of holes and rotary marks in it. After awhile, I fixed the leg with a snap joint. Since I hated the hair on this figure, the head got a little roughed up by my new dremel also. I really had no intention of using this figure at all. Then I discovered model filler putty and a clay gun. The clay gun allowed me to “ sculpt” hair a little easier than I could have without (I am by no means a sculptor). The filler fixed all the holes in the leg. Once I decided I could save the figure, I had once last mutilation to perform… that right arm had to come off. A snap joint made the arm reattachable; add a new paint job, and voila, Livewire action figure.

Spark: Simple repaint of a Strike Force Jubilee. I had to insert a snap joint in the left arm since it fell off while I was sanding off some details.

Star Boy: Simple case here of my eyes being wider than my common sense (whatever that means). The body is a Sunfire from the X-Men Six Pack. I thought dremelling all of the armor scales off would be a breeze. I learned that you couldn’t fit some of those dremel attachments into certain areas without creating more damage than it’s worth. So a smoothing down process turned into a very long battle between filling and sanding until the arms and legs became smooth. The head is a Leon Kennedy from the Resident Evil line and is held on by a snap joint. The bracers are clay and the chest star is decoupaged in place.

Umbra: By the time I got around to her, I was starting to run thin on creative recipes. I had a few Blinks sitting around and I hadn’t used that base before. The problem is that the legs make it look like the figure has to go number one. I cut a cheap KB Rogue in half, just above the waist. I took the Blink figure apart and kept everything from above the waist articulation. When I put the Rogue legs together with the Blink torso, I had a gap. Since the torso had a “male” peg I created a “ female” attachment and epoxied it to the Rogue legs. The “female” attachment was created from leftover, cured epoxied that I kept for some reason. I didn’t know why at the time, but I kept it anyway. When I put the piece together, I was able to create waist articulation. The cape is hand sewn and the chest emblem decoupaged in place. This picture does no justice, but she has a blue dry brush over her black painted areas. For some reason, I can’t get my camera to capture this figure in a good light.

Wildfire: Another figure I put off doing for a while. The comics had just reintroduced this character and his “look” wasn’t set. I purchased a red Power Rangers figure (don’t tell anybody) because I figured that head would be part of any look Wildfire would end up with. I had a head, but no body. Once they stabilized his look in the comic, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of trying to make the custom. By chance I was looking through some figures that were in my “junk” box, you know the ones that you never thought could be used for anything other than parts, and I found an X-Men Six pack Colossus. I started comparing it to the comic drawings and there were just too many similarities for me not to use it.

After epoxying the Power Ranger neck peg to the torso, I had two more challenges to overcome… How could I make his visor (without using clay)? And how could I make his pieces of armor (over his biceps and his “ skirt”)? I tried the old toothpaste tube standby, but it wasn’t looking right. Clay was not an option. I hate loosing articulation in my work. After weeks of pondering a solution, I was ready to shelve the figure until…

I remembered that I had some left over flesh-tone acrylic paint that I had let dry in a plastic paint dish. It had been sitting for months. I peeled the paint away and was left with a smooth, flexible surface. I poured a bunch of calico red acrylic paint into the plastic paint and let it cure for about 2 days (waiting for it to cure properly was the hardest part). When it was finally dry enough to peel away, I cut it into the shapes I needed and glued it to an elastic belt and presto; his armor “skirt” was complete. I used the dried paint for his bicep armor and visor as well.

I decided to “dust” his paint job with black pastel chalk (thanks to Iron Cow for posting that article about pastels at toymania.com). The silver was too shiny for my tastes and since Wildfire travels through space in that suit, I thought a dirtier look was appropriate.

I almost forgot the jetpack… It came from Dr. Octopus’ (from a recent Spider-man wave) metal arm backpack thingy. I inserted a snap into a protrusion on the pack, and the other part of the snap was placed into some epoxy that was spread into the “v” groove created by the muscle sculpt in Colossus’ back.