MaulFan's Customs

[figuremasterles]

Thanks Les, means a lot to hear that from. I gained an even greater respect for you and Josh and Mikey and everyone else from painting this, it took a lot of patience, work, and love for what I was doing, and how you guys can do that consistently for the multitudes of the same heads, like your Chronos, and repeat the results is mind blowing.

It's never easy, but always rewarding.
Glad to see you enjoying this avenue of art also.
Takes a lot of looking and thinking.

And bear this in mind, when painting a character, you are not just painting the actor....but the role...remember that. Gets hard to keep up with, but you'll get it. in time.
Already have gone far with these paints.

 

[MaulFan]

Alright, I've been a little busy of late with my bigger passion, photography, but amidst all of my photos, I have been working on my customs. First, an update on my Medi Jack. I've worked a new skin tone to be darker and dirtier looking than the coat I had a few weeks ago. I also put on a coat of grey/white/red mix for his bandana. In some promo shots, it looks pure red like the Hot Toys figure has painted it, but in most of the film shots I've seen, it's a very faded and worn out red. Next step with his head is to put on a coat of brown for his head, then wash it over with black to make the brown come through like highlights, add specks of detail on his bandana to immitate the pattern on it, then do some final work on his eyes and I should be done with the head, then plop it onto a fully dressed body and walla. Sounds easy enough right? I know that the hat shots are fairly boring, but I'm very happy with how my paint job of his hat came out for weathering and lightening the overall color from the original Medicom shade, so I wanted to show it off a bit.

And for my latest project, what good would MaulFan's customs be without a Maul somewhere in the mix. I've been thinking about it for a while and finally decided to take on the challenge of creating an imposing Maul from the Sideshow sculpt. I love their paint job, I think it very well portrays him in calmer moments, but I want to see if his more fired up appearance can be captured in the sculpt. One thing I wanted to change too was to move away from the pure red used for him in most products and go for an orange-red mix that was very evident in much of the Theed hangar shots, which makes sense because it was red paint over flesh and would look that way at times. It took about 4 coats of a red-orange mix to first cover up all of the tattoos, then I did a final coat of red to take it just a bit away from the orange dominance it had.

 

[Darren Carnall]

very brave sir......

But I'm sure you'll have fun doing it I know I would. Good luck!

 

[figuremasterles]

VERY FRICKKIN' COOL! About time MaulFan!!!!!
Darth Maul!
Reworked by you, no less!

"I'll be watching your career with great interest!" And watching this repaint with interest.

I know the love for the character you have will come through.
Spend extra time on the eyes. Really. Take your time and get that look you want just right.

Great start my man! I am excited for you. It was like when I made my own 77 Vader. That was a large day for me. Or when I finish my JAWS Bruce shark maquette redo (arrghhh!! he's a toughie!). Anyone's totem character is always the biggest challenge.
You'll nail him though.

I for one can't wait for your inevitable, creative photo shoot of the finished dude! Rock us bro!


BTW, I love your Jack Sparrow and his hat! PERFECT colors! Love that!

 

[MaulFan]

Thanks Darren and thanks Les. I actually used your tips on doing eyes Les, and put a white wash over the red for his skin to keep it from being pure white.

Here are some update images. First, I took a pencil and marked the tattoo design I was going for, which is basically a sum of the various images of him around and what I figure was the intended makeup job to consistently have on him.

Tonight, I put a second wash of white over the eyes, then put the reds and yellows for his iris' on and added the pupils, then I painted the horns over, and wrapped up doing a good deal of the black on his head, with more to go.

 

[pixletwin]

I always thought a cool custom would be to create a pre-tatoo maul. Hmmmm....

In any case, yours is looking good. Can't wait to see the final paint.

 

[Darren Carnall]

looking good so far!!

I can see this is going to end up with me wanting to redo mine as well

Maul was one of the figures (along with Jedi Luke) that I was *virtually* totally happy with, and have no interest in painting them (ok, maybe a little... but I was resisting)

but watching your progress shots..... I'm getting itchy fingers, lol

Can't WAIT to see how this turns out.... good luck!

 

[figuremasterles]

Looking GOOOOOOOD!
I really like the way you are approaching this. In fact, why stop at the head? Do the body too! All the tats on him. Your method is THE way to do this. Keep going!

BTW, the eyes are looking SUPER! Just perfect. Love the progress.

Also, don't forget to give him an all over dull-coat (at the very least on the reds!) to blend the sheens between the blacks and reds. You can gloss the eyes after that. This needs to be quite flat. Something else will happen if you flat the red too, it will ever so slightly lighten it even more to the eye, and match the more pale look it really had, over all the promo photos where they bake the reds for drama. He was not too extreme a red. You did great getting away from a pure red already. That lightening is all you need that's left.

And don't forget the lower inner eyelid rims. Look at photos. It really stands out pink.

 

[Cocoboloboy]

Very ambitious dude! And looking really, really cool.

 

[Xander]

I like the eyes alot. And the tattoo work is going quite well! This makes me wonder if there's any saving grace for one of the Hasbro heads, perhaps with the SSC horns. A grinning maul would be awesome!

 

[MaulFan]

I like the eyes alot. And the tattoo work is going quite well! This makes me wonder if there's any saving grace for one of the Hasbro heads, perhaps with the SSC horns. A grinning maul would be awesome!

Interesting idea, but of the Hasbro Maul's, only the first one, which had no grin, truly had Ray Park's features, you could make a nice repaint for sure, but if you really want movie Maul, your only Hasbro option is the first one.

Thanks as always for the tips Les. I'm liking not doing his face in pure red, it's deffinately closer to his screen look, but given the tone you'd need, I'm glad the mass-produced items go with pure red because it's hard to screw that up, but with the shade I'm using, a bad mix and you could be looking at some ugly merchandise. I'll give full tats some thought, but that would definitely be no small undertaking, at least to really do a good job on it, so that might be a to do later with my other paint works and my photos and what not.

 

[RD13]

Great job on the customs

 

[MaulFan]

It's been a good while since I've picked up a brush, between things going on in my personal life and digital art work and projects, painting just hasn't fit in, but I've missed it and took a pretty successful step back into it tonight.

Well, as nice a job as I feel NECA did on the Rob Zombie Michael Myers figure, I am finding the coloration and weathering of the mask to be a bit off, after reviewing images from the film more closely. The mask, for the most part, is still white in the movie, with very dirty points of decay. So, I decided to work on painting my second Myers like the film instead of like Carpenter's Myers since the decay would be hard to smooth out. I may still dirty the white a bit more, not sure, but here's where it is so far. I may also clean the hands up a bit, and maybe make the knife a fresh finish.

 

[MaulFan]

Well, I'm a quiet customizer, but here's another effort of mine. I love Sideshow's Scarface figure and Andy Bergholtz did a great job on the sculpt, but Sideshow's paint apps, in my opinion, completely lost Pacino, so I'm repainting the head both the turn the eyes forward like most figures and to just make the overall look more like Al Pacino.

 

[Les Walker]

Very nice MF! I like both your MM and SF.
You are a good painter fella!
You improved the MM immensely!

 

[MaulFan]

Thanks Les, Scarface wouldn't look like he does if I didn't get your Spikey Hicks though, being able to study your methods applied to a figure inspired me ways to go about achieving things on this medium, so in a way, you were my teacher

 

[MaulFan]

Scarface update and just so everyone knows, the images I first posted were from the day before I just posted them today, so I'm not a machine or anything.

I went back and gave him a 5 O'clock shadow, added some darker tones under his cheek bones to try and highlight them a bit more as Pacino's cheekbones are very defined in Scarface. I also watched the movie again and noticed the scare is mainly a light shade and sometimes shadows catch, so I did a faint dark layer for the scare, then painted a light shade over it. Not sure how well pictures show it, but I'm happy with it in person. Another detail I noticed is that while most often it looked black, Pacino's hair is brown and in the right lighting it would catch brown highlights, so I've put a base dark brown coat on tonight, tomorrow I'm going to add the black over it and work it in for a nice mix, then I just need to find somewhere to get gloss medium to shine his eyes.

 

[DarkArtist81]

Wow Sean! You are the FIRST painter here that has brought out the Pacino in that sculpt! Bravo!! Amazing work man.

 

[MaulFan]

Thanks Josh, it's nice to know what you and Les think, when it comes to figure painting, I hold your opinions in the highest regard. I love Scarface and the figure rocks but Al's got such a unique look to him and Andy did as much as he could to bring it, and he did lots, but the factory paint sent him back 10 steps.

 

[DarkArtist81]

I think the eyes are the most important part of figure painting and those eyes on Scarface have life in them and they look like Pacino.

You are progressing nicely man, it's great to see your skills unfold before my very eyes like this.