The original plan was to get another Jor-El variant for my Man of Steel collection but then I thought a 2nd Superman in a black suit would be better. About 6 months ago MMS200 seemed plentiful and cheap. As I tried to get a bargain they became more and more rare, especially in the U.K. I ended up waiting a while and paying well over the odds. During the wait, I thought that I could attempt a blue repaint (and make the other one black) and if that went wrong change it to black. I scanned through a lot of this thread. Saw lots of inspiration, Owens being one in particular. I'm sure there will have been lots of others but a lot of the images are now gone.
I saw some pics on Facebook where people had modified the body, at first glance it looked great but the more I looked at it and compared, it looked daft with boulder shoulders and legs only bigger on the outside. I thought of using the BvS body but after measuring the stock body vs the BvS body (plus the cost of getting one) and pics of Henry in the suit my measurements concluded that stock body with adjustments would be more work but get the result I wanted.
I used images of Henry in the suit to get as best reference for the size that I could and adjusted the body accordingly. It's now within 1-2% of what I measured. I didn't need to do anything to the shoulders.
I padded the calves, lats and hips. I added size to the inside and outside of the thighs using molding clay. I put the smaller ankle pegs in. I tested some chrome under the suit with the intention of covering it with chrome tape but unless I was going to have him stand outside, facing south and only look at him on the 4 days of the perihelion it was pointless as the suit is too thick to warrant the work involved. I did go over with a chrome pen that I had because why the hell not?
I tried to adapt the boots into a BvS style by removing the inner plastic but made a mistake and didn't want to ruin a 2nd set so I removed some of the inner plastic at the back and the fold at the top just to get them nearer. I trimmed the collar and dremeled out the gauntlets.
I was going to use an aerosol but then decided to invest in a cheap airbrush and give that a go. There seems to be two ways to repaint Superman, eye-popping deep bright blue or somewhat subdued like the movie. The whole point of this collection is the movies so that was my goal. I was really hoping to find a nice balance between the really dark flat blue and the really striking metallic blue sheen depending on the light involved. The symbol and boots have been painted at least 10 times each lol.
It's not perfect but I'm quite happy with it.
Still, a few bits to do. Getting the wired cape to sit flat enough is a challenge. I need to finish the belt too. Possibly glue the gauntlets and shorten the neck. Maybe tweak the boots a bit.