jenjen4280

I’ve been customizing action figures on and off for the past three years and following the designer vinyl scene for even longer. In all that time I’ve been meaning to explore the world of mold-making and casting. Initially, I wanted to make a bootleg figure a la Sucklord style. I was going to make a knockoff Rene Montoya Question as she appeared in 52 and call her “the Query.” The cost of the materials, my lack of customizing skills (at that point) and having no experience in mold-making and casting pretty much nixed it for me. As I’ve gotten more and more into customizing, it seems like a lot of the customizers do their own casting. Then last year I found the Alumilite Mini Casting Kitt in the hobby store.

And it sat in the closet for a year because there was nothing that I really wanted to cast. Working on the Chew customs for Custom Con and having Gallus Sapadillo as one of the accessories has really given me the kick in the butt I needed. Since I ended up sculpting a Sapadillo out of apoxie, I figured this would be the perfect thing to use on my first attempt at mold-making and casting.

The kit comes with everything you need to make a one-part mold and cast your original. The object I cast is small, so I ended up with leftover silicone. I could have made another mold for something else small like a head, weapon, body part or something else from an action figure. Setting up the object and container and mixing and pouring the mold takes less than 10 minutes. Then you’ve got to let it cure for 4-8 hours.





I let it cure for the maximum amount of time. After 8 hours, I pulled away the mold support, packed up the clay and used an exacto knife to carefully slice along the stalks of the mold. The mold itself is pretty flexible and you can bend it and just squeeze out your original.

Making a casting takes about as much time as it took to set up the mold. The two-part resin in the pack cures in 3-7 minutes, once mixed. This means you’ve got to work quickly and carefully. I over-poured a bit the first time and completely misjudged the amount of resin I needed. I forgot to mention this: you should heat the mold before you mix your resin and make your cast. Heating the mold helps it cure and helps the resin flow better across the mold. The directions said to heat the mold for 10-15 minutes at 140 degrees F. If you factor heating the mold into the casting process, the total time for casting is around 30 minutes.

I waited the full 7 minutes for the resin to set and squeezed out the cast. Not too shabby for my first attempt! You can see a few details didn’t fill in: the tip of one stalk; the leaves on top; and the bumps on the stalks. The over-pour is evident and something I has to cut/sand off. I can use apoxie to fill in the parts that got missed in the casting process. The original in gray is on the left and the cast in yellow is on the right.



To try to get all of the details to fill in, I popped the mold back into a plastic cup and then poured the resin. I thought that maybe the mold was expanding a bit as the resin cured and perhaps that's why the casting didn't pick up all the details of the mold.

Unfortunately, the cup idea didn't help at all. Next I tried using a toothpick to put resin in the parts that don’t fill in and then I poured the rest of the resin into the mold. This was the most successful technique so far, but still produced a less than perfect casting.

I made one more cast and still did not get a perfect copy. The last cast (casting number four) tore the thin parts on the top of the mold, so there was definitely a law of diminishing returns at work. Here are all three of the four casts and the original – top left is original; top right is first cast; bottom left is where I tried to limit expansion of the mold; and bottom right is where I used a toothpick to fill in the details.





Lessons Learned

1. Next time I cast an object with a similar bottom, rather than gluing the object to a flat surface, I will glue something to the bottom of the original to give it a little height and let the mold flow under the object. I think this would help pick up the small details of the object that got missed when I made the cast. Something like this:



2. Because you’re mixing a two-part resin, you’ve got to figure that when you’re doubling your volume – that is when you pour your part B into its cup – that’s not the final volume of your resin: it’s half the final volume.

3. Don’t over-pour! The resin will expand slightly as it hardens. Don’t under-pour either: try to fill the mold so that the resin level is even with the top of the mold. Really the only problem with over-pouring is that you have more clean-up to do on the cast object and you're wasting your resin.

4. Using the toothpick technique to pre-pack resin in the detailed parts of the mold really works. I think it wasn't completely successful because the resin I have cures so quickly, that in the time it took me to use the toothpick, the rest of the resin began to harden before I could pour it into the mold.

Although I never successfully cast an exact copy of my original, I still feel really good about the few casts I did make. I think that with a little more practice and experimenting with different resins, I'll be able to eventually make perfect casts. And once I do that, maybe I'll make a bootleg “the Query” action figure after all.

Not a bad weekend. I finished: Tony (this was an easy one); Mason's vest; Colby's cyber parts; and the alien fruit which in the comic is named Gallus Sapadillo.

Tony just needed some apoxi over the break in his tie, sanding, and then painting. I also painted his ear the correct, which is to say different, skin tone, and finished his and Colby's FDA badges.



Mason's vest. Oh, the vest! Vexing vest. I made several paper patterns then reproduced the successful one in vinyl and painted it purple. Mason's color scheme is brown and purple. Bleh. Prior to affixing the vest, I dremelled Kingpin's existing vest parts flat, then primed and painted his shirt collar and the part of his belly that will show through the vest. Once that dried, I affixed the vest and got a spot of superglue on the front of the vest. Grrr. Then I tried to cut away where the vest overlapped the shirt collar and the white underneath looked bad because really I should've painted purple underneath so you can't tell where the vinyl ends and it looks like it fits the figure seamlessly. Yeah, it's never frakkin' easy. So I pulled the vest off which screwed up the paint so I had to make another vest. Meanwhile, I painted purple all around where the figure's body will show once I cut around the collar to make the vest look like it fits perfectly. Once dry, I affixed the new vest, changed x-acto blades and cut around the collar and voila! Perfect. Then I glued down the jacket and added faux pockets to the vest. Whew. At some point this week I'll pop the arms back on and this weekend I'll begin sculpting Mason's beard, etc.



For Colby, what I really wanted to do was sculpt a bit of a smile on his face, make his brow look less angry and do all the sculpting of his cybernetic parts. The smile sculpting didn't work and I was fortunate to be able to cover up what little I'd done. I was going to cut out a bit where his mouth would be and sculpt lips. That was a resounding failure. Unfurrowing his brow was somewhat more successful, but I think he still looks too angry. I cut away the furrows and sanded the hell out of it to smooth it and I trimmed a bit off the top of his eye socket and sanded that too. I might shave a little more off and then smooth it over with apoxie. The cybernet parts sculpting went off pretty well. It looks close enough to the comic book. I cut out a bit of plastic and colored it red with sharpee and then set it into the apoxie and sculpted around it. I think it looks pretty good. Unfortunately, I'm not really happy with the base figure and jacket so I might ditch those and use another figure...possibly a Wolverine figure from the third X-Men movie.



I was going to make the gallus sapadillo out of eggs that I got at the craft store, but they are too big, so I ended up sculpting the entire thing from scratch. I did that a couple days ago and yesterday I figured out how to give it the texture it needed - adding a skim layer of apoxie on top and using tools to shape it. It looked pretty good. Then I woke up this morning and realized that I'd made the texture too small. *sigh* So I sanded it all off and redid it. It's drying now. I'm going to try my hand at casting them in resin later this week. I've been meaning to try casting for about a year now and I'm finally to the point where I have something I really want to cast. It would be totally cool to cast a bunch of sapadillos and give 'em to the creators of the comic if they ever appear at the Baltimore Comicon. Unfortunately, the macro feature on my camera blows, so I wasn't able to take a good picture of it.

Goal this week: make a mold and start casting sapadillos!

Now into the third year of its run, Chew is still one of my favorite comic books. I buy it every month and again when the trades are published. After the last Custom Con, I decided I’d do some characters from Chew and give them fun accessories. I’ll be doing figures of Tony Chu, John Colby, and Mason Savoy. Tony’s figure will have the weird alien fruit that taste like chicken; John will have el Poyo and Mason will have a place setting with Tony’s ear.

Tony Chu – Body from a Batman: the Dark Knight Scarecrow action figure with the head and neck cut off and dremelled out; Head from a Star Trek (the crappy new movie) Sulu; sculpted tie that I broke while shoving Sulu’s head in the neck hole; badge from an X-Files Mulder figure; gun from the weapons fodder bin; easter eggs I picked up at Michael’s will form the base of the alien fruit.



For reference: Tony, John, and alien fruit (Cover of Chew #6)



What needs to be done to Tony: Fix tie back; sculpt an FDA badge; sculpt details on alien fruit. It might be cheating/taking the easy way out, but I think I'm going to leave the head as is: Sulu's hairline is pretty close to Tony's.

John Colby – Body from a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Spike figure; jacket from some Terminator figure; head from a Marvel Legends Adam Warlock figure, gun from fodder bin. El Poyo: King of Cocks is a repainted Schleich rooster with a sculpted lucha libra mask.



For reference: Tony and el Poyo (cover of Chew #8)



What needs to be done: Lot of sculpting on the head and jacket; sculpt a badge, and repaint everything.

Mason Savoy – Marvel Legends King Pin figure. The plate and place setting are dollhouse stuff and the ear was cut off a Stargate Atlantis Dr. Carson Beckett figure.



For reference: Mason and Tony's ear (cover of Chew #5)



What needs to be done: Sculpt hair & hat; add monocle; repaint jacket.

I’ve gotten a good start, but the deadline for Custom Con 31 is April 9th and when customizing, nothing is ever as easy or as quick as I think it will be. Gotta go and start sculpting now...

Well, looks like I’ve completely missed the month of January. I’ve got a ton of excuses why, but it comes right down to it, the real reason is that I realized my reviews are crap. They’re poorly written and not at all up to snuff. I’m working on recovering from that realization and trying to figure out how to improve. Plus, I haven’t done much in terms of customizing since the big push for Custom Con in November and the big push for Christmas presents for Booboo.

Anyhoo, I’m dipping my feet back into the review pool with a few recommendations on the webcomics that I’ve come to enjoy as much as I enjoy printed comics. I’ll be posting reviews, one per day starting with Cura Te Ispum. But first, here's how my webcomic week looks:

Monday – Cura Te Ipsum; Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether
Tuesday – Hunter Black
Wednesday – Cura Te Ipsum
Thursday - Lady Sabre & the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether
Friday – Cura Te Ipsum; Hunter Black

And here are the two sites I check every week, but not daily (because they’re not serialized):

Hark! A Vagrant
Emily Carroll’s website

On to the Cura review...

Cura Te Ipsum (Latin for “heal or cure yourself”) written by Neal Bailey and illustrated by Dexter Wee is published online every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday without fail. I don’t say “without fail” lightly: they have not once missed their schedule. The comic launched in 2010. Pretty impressive record, huh?

As the story opens, Charlie Everett is sitting in his bedroom with a gun in his mouth. His suicide attempt is stopped by himself. From there we learn that there are a group of Charlies in the multi-verse that travel to each universe to stop themselves from committing suicide. Each Charlie (or Charlene) is essentially the same person, but each has been shaped by different courses of events in their lives. Their nemesis is the Dark Everett and his group, whose self-loathing is so intense that he’s on a mission to kill the Charlies in all universes.

All Charlies travel through the multi-verse with a pod-like device that opens gateways between universes, however only “Charlie Prime” (the one with the gun in his mouth at the beginning of the story) and the Dark Everett can control where and when (in time) the portals appear/disappear. Initially the story is a cat and mouse chase between the good Charlies and the Dark Everett & company, but the story has since evolved into an exploration of what makes you who you are as the Charlies experience different universes and compare the events in their lives that each of them see as major turning points. That’s not to say that we don’t have fun along the way as we see what different universes exist, but it’s not all for fun either: each situation helps us learn something about what is universal to all Charlies and what is different between each of them based on where their lives have lead them.

Dexter’s artwork is a good match to Neal’s writing. Dex manages to visually convey all Charlies as looking like Charlie, while having different personalities – how they stand, where they stand, and how they dress. And Dex doesn’t ignore the background either – he portrays the story using a variety of camera angles and through varied lighting techniques. Dex’s art could stand in as detailed storyboards for a movie. I should mention that Dex’s art appears to be hand drawn & inked then scanned into a computer, not drawn digitally. That’s especially impressive when you consider that he cranks out three pages a week.

The website layout is straightforward and fairly basic. Clicking on the link to the site will bring you to the current page in the story with links at the top to the Cura store (Store), Neal’s blog (Blog), the comic itself (Comic), a primer for folks who are new to Charlies’ universes (About), and links to other websites, webcomics, and folks that Neal recommends; links at the bottom that allow the reader to move through the story (first, previous, next, last or jump to a month’s worth of pages) and sponsor adds at the bottom. Neal’s blog is about Cura updates, reviews/recommendations of web and print comics, and information on upcoming appearances. He really enjoys engaging with his fans, so you’re pretty much guaranteed a response if you comment on the blog or email him. He’s a really down-to-earth, cool, approachable guy. The store has two trade paperbacks, each of which collect half a year of pages/story; posters; actual pages of art, remember this is hand-drawn; post cards; t-shirts, and buttons. The primer contains a non-spoilery intro to the characters, important places and things in Charlie’s world(s). It’s all pretty typical website content – nothing really shines, but it’s not bad either, although not being hit immediately with advertisements is nice (you have to scroll down to see them).

In short, good art and a fun, but thought provoking story that comes at you three times a week through a no frills, easily navigable website. Highly recommended. http://www.charlieeverett.com/

It's no secret that my favorite comic book character is Renee Montoya aka The Question. Since neither Mattel nor DC Direct has stepped up and given us a Renee action figure, I've been forced to make my own. To that end, I've made a 12" Renee Question (and had a lot of help from seamstress Modine, who made her trench coat) and I've made a 6" Final Crisis Revelations Renee Question. I've just finished my third Renee custom: a 6" Pipeline Question figure. The only hitch is that the hat is too small now that I've resculpted her hair and I need to re-do the hat. Still, since I finished her on the 24th, I figured I'd share version 1.0 with everyone. Version 2.0 will have an appropriately scaled hat.

This version of the Question is from the back-up story in Detective Comics, titled: "The Pipeline."







This version of the Question is made from a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Faith action figure (body, arms, legs); the head from a DC Universe Raven figure; and the hands and feet from some animae figure. The hat, hair, mask and cargo pockets on her pants were all sculpted from apoxie.

Here's all three of my custom Question figures together:



From left to right: 6" Final Crisis Revelations Question; 12" 52 Question, and 6" Pipeline Question.

And a special treat: my 6" custom Batwoman figure:





I've finally got the cape and cowl worked out: the cape is cut down from a 7" Dracula figure's cape and the head is a DC Direct "Hush" Huntress head that I cut down the pointed parts of the mask, resculpted the mask, and have cut down and am resculpting the hair to match Kate Kane's. This is still a work in progress: there's a lot left to do before this figure is finished.

And that's it for my December projects.

The holidays were as geeky as ever here: comic books; sf and horror movie dvds; science fiction, horror, and fantasy books, and as a special present for my wife -- two custom action figures of Dr. Helen Magnus from the SyFy tv show Sanctuary. I also made custom packaging for both action figures, one of which she thought was a real action figure produced by a toy company!

Without further ado, I give you Dr. Helen Magnus (the around-the-Sanctuary edition):







The "around-the-Sanctuary" figure is based on how Magnus dresses when she's in the Sanctuary. The body is a Battlestar Galactica Gina Inviere figure with a Stargate Atlantis Col. Samantha Carter arms and head. The hair is from a WWE Beth Phoenix action figure with apoxie to make it all fit together and look like Magnus' hair. I also sculpted Magnus' shirt. The tablet is from the Stargate figure and the gun is from some other 6" figure.

The packaging is also from the Gina Inviere figure with graphics and Magnus' history from SyFy's Sanctuary website, set in Exocet font (which Modine found for me--it's good to have a librarian for a best friend). It took a lot of re-sizing and tinkering with the images and text to get everything to work just right. Nothing was done in any graphics program -- it's all manipulation of photos, text boxes and text effects using Microsoft Word.

Here's Dr. Helen Magnus (Field Operative edition):





Field Ops Magnus is how she looks when she's outside the Sanctuary tracking down an abnormal or mixing it up with government spooks. The head, body, hands, and legs are from a Stargate SG-1 Replicator Carter figure, with the jacket and arms from some animae action figure, the cell phone from the Atlantis Carter figure and the gun from some other 6" figure. For this version of Magnus, I had to resculpt her right breast because it was some random shape that made the figure's original jacket fit correctly and I resculpted her hair and added the Gina Inviere's ponytail. The belt is made from a strip of vinyl and a metal piece for jewelery making from the craft store.

The much simpler package for this action figure is just graphics from the SyFy Sanctuary website and text in the Exocet font printed on cardboard and stapled over a zip lock bag. This package also too took quite a bit of manipulation in MS Word to get just right.

I have no idea how many hours I put into this project. I purchased both the Atlantis Carter and Replicator Carter with the idea of using whichever headsculpt was better for my Sanctuary Magnus. Then I got stuck for a week trying to figure out how to make Magnus' hair. I tried sculpting all of her hair, but that was a resounding failure. While I pondered the hair situation, I decided to make a second Magnus figure out of the Replicator Carter. Field Ops Magnus came together and was finished in a weekend. Then I got back to Sanctuary Magnus, where I finally hit on the idea to use the hair from another action figure. All said and done, it was totally worth the time and money (I puchased three action figures just for this project) because Booboo really loved them both. Definitely a labor of love. And, as Booboo pointed out, because of one episode in Sanctuary, the Magnus figures can live on our LBGT action figure shelf!

My Homages & Parodies - Series 1: Women of Wonder customized figures made it into Day One of Custom Con 30. You can see them here: http://thefwoosh.com/2011/12/customcon-30-day-one

The figures are:
Winged Victory from the comic book Astro City;
American Maid from the tv series The Tick (animated version);
The Lady from the comic book The Pro, and
War Woman from the comic book Invincible.

I'm proud of all of them, but a little annoyed that the helmet on War Woman is skewed -- something I didn't notice until I took the photos. I knew it didn't look right, but I couldn't figure out why. Maybe I'll fix it or maybe I'll just leave it and figure that it shows my progression of skill over the past couple of years of customizing figures. These four figures were all very challenging and required sculpting and a lot of fabricating of costume parts.

Two of the four figures (the Lady and War Woman) are lesbians and they'll both reside in the cabinet as part of my lesbian/bi action figure collection. I'm slowly working on customizing figures for the LB characters that don't have actual offical mass produced action figures. At some point I'll do a post highlighting the collection.

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at my figures in Custom Con.

Winged Victory (as she appears in the comic book):



And here's the action figure I used as for the body and the head (inset):



American Maid as she appears in the tv show (from the mass produced action figure):



The action figure I used for the body:



And the head:



The Lady as she appears in the comic book:



The base figure I used for the Lady:



Finally, here's War Woman as she appears in the comic book:



And the figure I used for War Woman:



You can see the final versions of the figures by following the link I provided to Custom Con 30 Day One. Take a look at the rest of Day One too 'cause all of the customs are pretty darn good. And while you're at it, follow the con for the rest of the week. Some of the customizers on the Fwoosh are incredibly talented and the best is yet to come. I wish I'd made it further because with Custom Con, they save the best for last, but honestly, I feel like I'm in good company in Day One.

A very productive month so far! I managed to move forward on a couple projects that have been on the backburner for a long time.

Batwoman Custom Action Figure

I finally figured out how to do her cape and what to use for her head. The cape and the head have been holding back this custom for, jeeze, a year now? I scrapped my previous attempt at a cape because I couldn’t make the joint smooth. While I think that cape captures the character better than the current cape, it just wasn’t working out. The final cape is taken from a 7” Dracula figure so it’s already black on the outside and red on the inside. I had to cut it down to be five points. Those five points are a real pain in the butt! No wonder everyone draws Batman’s and Batgirl’s cape with six to seven points. Anyway, here’s the mock-up for the figure:



I also scrapped my previous version of her head (Maria Hill with a cowl sculpted over it) because I am not good at sculpting and was going to have to sculpt hair and cut/grind down the cowl because it was too thick. Maybe I’ll come back to this head later, instead I’m going to modify a Hush Huntress head. I was going to use a DC Direct Star Sapphire Wonder Woman, but that head is too big, so Huntress it is. I’ve done the minor cover ups and neck mod, next thing to do is to start making Helena’s cowl look like Kate’s cowl.



Secret Project for Xmas for Booboo

I worked on the character's accessories. Need to repaint the figure and sculpt some hair. That’s all I can say.

Frame and Mat for Creepy Photo

I should’ve taken before photos, but sometimes I don’t because I’m afraid I’ll jinx what I’m working on – silly, I know. Anyway, I found the frame in a thrift store for a dollar. It was painted gold and was missing the glass, backing, and a hook. I spray painted it flat black and have been hand painting the raised decoration in gloss black. It looks pretty good, certainly 1,000 times better than it did when it was gold. I bought a matte at the craft store and painted that gold & cut it to fit and cut a piece of plexiglass to fit. Now I’ve got to finish the gloss black details and add a hook.



And here's a close-up of the gloss and the flat black to show the contrast.



That’s it for now.

October was the first month in several years in which I did not read a single book. That’s not to say I read nothing at all. On the contrary, I burned through a stack of magazines (Archaeology, Dwell, Locus, Curve) and read three years of Wonder Woman and Sensation Comics (1942, 1943 and 1949), as well as kept up with all of my monthly comic reading and weekly tv show schedule.

The free time I would have devoted to reading books and watching movies has been spent customizing action figures for submission to Custom Con 30. And if I’m not working on the action figures, I’m reading comics or keeping up with Fringe, Glee, Death Valley, Torchwood season 2, or American Horror Story.

November will be more of the same (although I should finish at least one book in November) and perhaps December too, depending on how well I progress with certain side projects that are due on Dec 25th.

The Wonder Woman project will begin in January 2012. I will read all 600+ issues over the course of the year and blog about it. I posted about the project several months back, but got derailed by our crazy schedule of travel this fall and by other, more pressing, projects. So stay tuned. Kudos to Modine for taking the WW project to heart and reading thirty years worth of Wonder Woman comics in two months while I slacked off. I promise I'll get to it in January.

Haven't gotten much reading or movie watching done this month. Too much traveling and focusing on various projects.

First Project - Making a Question mask. I'll devote an entire blog to this process, but I need to take picture of it in progress. Here's a photo of version 1.0. The holes are from me trying to work out how to breathe and see while wearing the mask. The mask is latex from a bald cap glued over a white blank mask. For some reason, LJ just won't post the photo. I have no idea why. I am planning on doing a longer entry on the process of making a Question mask when I finally perfect the mask.



The next project is just repainting a picture frame I found in a thrift store. I primed it, then spray painted it flat black. I'm going to paint gloss black over the decorative carvings on the frame. I also need to cut a piece of plexiglass to fit it and add a backing and picture hooks. Then I'll frame the spooky picture I bought. The picture will make an appearance during Halloween next year. No photo of the frame yet though. Maybe when I finish it.

And finally, Custom Con 30 submissions are due the 30th of November. I'm hoping to get three figures in this year: Winged Victory from Astro City, War Woman from Invincible, and the Lady from the Pro. They're all homages/parodies of Wonder Woman. Here's a teaser of Winged Victory. The first photo is the base figure (Hawkgirl), the second photo is how the character appears in the comic book, and the final photos is my version of her. It took me over 10 hours to put this figure together.









I think I did a pretty kick-ass job of it. Next up is War Woman. I'll be starting work on her this weekend. The base figure will be a DC Direct Wonder Woman figure, but it will require a lot of sculpting to make her match War Woman. I've got a month to go until Custom Con and a lot of work to do!