Customs by

Mike – Minesurfer (on-line)

e-mail

ginngrr@juno.com

Web Address

none

Belts and pouches: Made from elastic bought at fine fabric stores everywhere. A snap was sewn on to the elastic. The elastic was colored with pens. The pouches were made from the same elastic then sewn into place on the belt with gold strands from a curtain tassel. Legion symbol was
printed from a CAD program and glued to the belt.

Legion Flight Ring: Made in a CAD program and glued to the appropriate finger.

Paint: All figures were primed with Krylon gray primer. Areas to be finished in bright colors were then primed again with white primer. Acrylics were used and the figures sealed with Dulcote. For shiny finishes, decoupage glue was used as a sealer.

Stands: All stands were treated the appropriate icon. The symbol was made in CAD and decoupaged to the stand. Stand was sealed with Dulcote.

Apparition: This is a repaint of the Alpha Flight Aurora figure. Several lines in the original figure were filled in with model filler and sanded smooth. The cape is hand sewn with wire for poseability. Her touchstone came from an X-Man kneed pad and is sewn onto the cape.

Chameleon: An Alpha Flight North Star figure was used as a base for good ole Reep. The head is from an extra SMOS Lex Luthor I had lying around. The collar was made from toothpaste tube and glued on his body. The antennae were made from the little bendy ties that come hold action figures in place on their bubbles/cards when they are shipped. The antennae are expoxied into the head.

Dreamer: This is basically a repaint of a Alpha Flight Snowbird figure. Her mask thingy was removed which left a big hole in her forehead. I filled it in with clay then sculpted bangs over the top. The bangs are a prime example why I stay away from clay in my customs. Even with all my custom on stands, some still try to escape (my fancy way of saying they fall off of my shelf). I have glued her bangs back on at least twice. The cape was hand sewn with wire along the bottom only. Her shoulder “ pad” and gauntlets are made from sculpey.

Gates: Brood from the X-men line is about the only viable base figure for Gates. This is one of the few recipes (maybe the only) that I didn’t come up with on my own. The Brood figure still needed some heavy modifications. I removed his head and wings. His tail was modified from a two-pronged end to what you see. I cut his bottom two sets of legs short then cannibalized the left over parts to make his hands/claws. I managed to keep wrist-like articulation though. The shirt and hood were hand sewn and have an almost web-like elastic and snap structure keeping them on the figure. The head was sculpted from Premo clay. I used a wooden ball with a styrene corner glued to it as a base for the sculpt. The styrene corner supports the beak and then the cheeks, eyes, and brow were built up. This one intimidated me (as I never saw myself as a painter, scuptor, or seamster) but all in all I’m pretty happy with the way he turned out. I plan on adding a few more sets of legs in the near future, but I wanted to finish a few other figures for the con.

Invisible Kid: Boil and pop one Archangel head and put it on an Alpha Flight North Star figure, that’s about all there was to this one. Painting his eyes turned out to be a pain, but in the end, I’m pretty happy with the look of this one. The head band is just small diameter elastic that was colored with a sharpie wrapped around his head and tied off in back.

Saturn Girl: One of my earliest figures here. The head is from a Battle Blasters Rogue figure. I loved the ponytail look for Saturn Girl. Once I removed the bangs though, I knew I was in trouble because there was a huge hole in her forehead. I was going to go without bangs, but I couldn’t get her forehead/eyebrows to look right. So I sculpted bangs back on her. I’m waiting for her to make an “escape” attempt so I can resculpt them. Snap joints hold her head and right arm in place. The torso and legs are from one of those cheap KB Rogue reissues and the arms are from a Jean Grey figure. The Saturn symbol was created in CAD software and decoupaged in place.

Sensor: The humanoid part of this custom is a longhaired Storm figure. My wife found the snake on-line somewhere. I cut away the legs of the Storm figure, sanded the nose down and epoxied her to the snake base. Since the snake base is super poseable, I decided to spray paint that part. The humanoid part was painted with acrylics.

Shrinking Violet: I used an Alpha Flight Aurora figure for Violet’s base. I didn’t want her to look exactly like my Apparition figure so I removed the original hair and sculpted new hair. Other than that, this is a basic repaint. Small Violet was made from an Avengers Six-pack Wasp. Scaling the belt down was pretty much the biggest challenge on this figure, although painting the small scale was no picnic either. The hair is sculpey.

Triad: Three Battle Blaster Jean Greys were used as the base figures for Orange, Purple and Neutral Triads. Pretty much all repaints after you scrape away the silly little face diamonds around her left eyes. These figures were completed before I discovered the model filler, other wise I would have filled in the lines on her legs.

XS: The perfect base figure for a female speedster with a ponytail is Shard from the X-Men Missile Flyers line. I cut the ponytail to length, colored it with a sharpie, and tied it in place with black thread. The “ M” over her right eye was scraped off with an exacto knife. Her boots were sanded down so they looked like high top sneakers (I didn’t want a speedster with floppy boots or gloves, they just don’t make sense). I sanded her calves down so they would be more like runners’ calves. After that it came down to a repaint.