Repaints and customs by icruise

[Les Walker]

VERY NICE! Love the ALIEN base, and your Hobbits look terrific. Wonderful work.
Really like that base. Any shots of the rods you can show us, so that it can be understood more? I may try this for mine also. If you don't mind.

 

[icruise]

Sure. This isn't a very good picture, but you get the idea. It's just two metal rods that I pounded into holes that I drilled in the base. They stick out about half an inch and go in the holes in the alien's heels. I had to drill out the holes in the feet just a tad for the rods to go in smoothly.

 

[icruise]

I've been working on converting a Hudson figure to a Hicks, since Hicks is so darned expensive now. This is still a work in progress. I used some very fine grained sandpaper to remove Hudson's graffiti and that part worked great. It removes a little of the camo pattern, but not enough so you'd really notice, since the paint underneath (or maybe the plastic itself) is sort of an olive drab color. I went back and filled in a few of the more obvious gaps with paint. It's pretty difficult to do the graffiti and so forth by hand. I'm not that happy with the "HICKS" name or the heart. Quite a while ago, I made a padlock to go over the heart out of some pieces of paper clip and some epoxy putty, but I can't find it... So I'm going to try cleaning up my office to see if it turns up. If so, I'll add that. I also drilled a hole in his shoulder armor for his "BORN AGAIN" bullet hole.

Obviously the head is the Figuremaster Les Spikey Hicks sculpt, which is very nice.

 

[uscmhicks]

they all look great , the alien looks like a mini version of the cm

 

[icruise]

I've been working on this one literally for months (although not constantly by any means). It took a lot longer than I thought it would to paint it, and my lack of progress meant that I had a hard time motivating myself. I've never done anything remotely this big before. Anyway, there was a time late last year when I was buying quite a few of the better Hasbro pieces, and the Hasbro Tauntaun is one of their best. Somehow I ended up with two of them, but it soon became apparent that I didn't really have any use for two. So I decided to use one for a custom. The scene where Han uses Luke's lightsaber to cut open the Tauntaun in The Empire Strikes back always stuck with me, so I decided to do that.

The Hasbro Tauntaun looks like this when put on its side:

Not the most natural position. So I had to strategically cut parts of its limbs and then reattach them using epoxy putty. Here is an in-progress picture, before I cut into his belly. A few of these cuts turned out to be unnecessary. I decided to remove the stirrups and bridle, because they look too fake.

Here they are reattached:

I also cut a hole in his stomach and sculpted some guts, and extended the leather straps from the saddle with putty.

Finally, I closed his eyes and made his tongue stick out.

And here is the finished product after painting:

 

[Cocoboloboy]

That tauntaun is a work of art. I mean it dude, seriously. From the idea to the cuts and reattachment to the sculpting and painting. Amazing!

What is that green material you used for sculpting?

 

[mrhatrulez]

Dude, that is brilliant work! You did a fantastic job with the paint!

"And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!"

Woot! I was first lame @ss to quote that! Time to go find a life!

Awesome job!

 

[icruise]

Thanks. The green stuff is epoxy putty. I think I talked about it in some detail earlier in the thread, if you want to know more.

 

[Cocoboloboy]

Oh yeah, now I remember. The epoxy tape. I'm gonna have to get some and try it out. You've obviously mastered using it. All the projects that you've done with it look great.

 

[icruise]

I also replaced the head on my Hudson figure today. As you may know, the head that came with the figure looked nothing like the actor, so most people want to replace it. I originally used this head (sadly, from the late Chris Chulamanis). However, the likeness wasn't the greatest and I was not quite as good at painting when I did it, so I wanted to try another one. The new one is from H2 creative (aka "Hero Heads") and if you look at it at the right angle it does have a pretty good resemblance to Bill Paxton, even if it's not dead-on.

 

[icruise]

I've got some new head sculpts on the way for my Bishop and in general I'm kind of on an Aliens kick right now. Speaking of which, I just realized that I never posted my custom Hot Toys Aliens snap kits in this thread. They're 4" G.I. Joe/Star Wars-sized figures.

From left to right:

Vasquez is a custom made from a Pirates of the Caribbean Elizabeth Swann head and a Drake body. I made the bandanna with epoxy putty and resculpted the hair. I also added her graffiti to her chest armor.

Hudson is a custom made from a Hicks figure with a G.I. Joe Duke head, with resculpted hair and added facial hair. I also added his graffiti.

Apone is the stock figure, except that I painted over his beard, since the character in the movie only had a mustache.

Ripley is stock except for adding some brown highlights to her hair.

Same for Hicks.

Drake is stock except that I made his hair very light blond and I think I may have repainted over some sideburns or something.

Anyway, these are pretty nice little figures, and although they are somewhat hard to put together, having them come in pieces makes them easier to customize. I'm still working on a Bishop...

 

[icruise]

Continuing with my Aliens theme is my repainted Ripley. I don't know why it took me so long to get around to repainting her -- she certainly needed it. The red hair was terrible. It's actually a pretty decent likeness otherwise. The jacket is from the Sideshow Connor McCloud figure.

 

[Mooncat]

Superb work m8 long may it continue

 

[DarkArtist81]

Wow man... That TaunTaun is SICK!! I love it... Even sculpted the tongue hanging out.

And great work on Hicks/Ripley/Hudson... Really amazing work there bro, the skin tones are fantastic!!

 

[icruise]

In honor of the release of The Dark Knight, I bought Batman Begins on Blu-ray and watched it a couple of days ago. I realized that for some reason they never made a R'as al Gul figure (although Figuremaster Les did do a very cool "ninja fighting" custom figure a while back). And I also realized that I had everything I needed to make one right in my house. I had an extra Qui-gon figure that I bought for his outfit to use on my Episode One Obi Wan custom that would serve as the base.

I had to first remove Qui Gon's hair, which was fairly difficult. Then I dremeled away part of his beard and the stubble on his neck. Then I resculpted parts of his neck so the parts I removed would look smooth, redid his beard, and added something sort of close to his hair style. I'm really not very good at sculpting hair, so I'm impressed I even got this close.

After I primed it, I decided he needed more prominent eyebrows, and I also tweaked the hair a tad.

And here is the "finished" figure. I did as much as I could with the materials at hand. The suit coat doesn't really fit the figure and is the wrong color, but I was impressed that I was able to find a black shirt and pants in my parts box. Couldn't locate a black tie, though. I'll have to get some more appropriate clothes later on.

 

[abadguy]

Holy crap man, your stuff is awesome. The T-1000 to Harrison Ford in Blade Runner to Bishop from Aliens.

The head sculpt that Sideshow did for Lance Henriksen is really weird. The prototype that's on the Frank Black box is a lot better likeness of him than the actual figure itself is.

 

[abadguy]

Speaking of Lance Henriksen, seeing some figures from the movie Near Dark would certainly be amazing.

 

[icruise]

Holy crap man, your stuff is awesome. The T-1000 to Harrison Ford in Blade Runner to Bishop from Aliens.

The head sculpt that Sideshow did for Lance Henriksen is really weird. The prototype that's on the Frank Black box is a lot better likeness of him than the actual figure itself is.

I'm not sure if the sculpt is any different, or if it's just the paint job. I do remember thinking it was strange how different the picture on the box was from the actual figure. I'm probably going to be replacing my Frank Black sculpts with custom Bishop head sculpts fairly soon, by the way.

 

[galactiboy]

Holy crap! That Taun Taun is seriously badass! I almost missed that one... just unbelievable how cool that looks

 

[mrhatrulez]

Dude, Brilliant work on the R'as al Gul headsculpt! I'm very impressed. I wanted to take a EP III Anakin and dremmel/sculpt it into an EP II Anakin, and you proved that it might be possible!
Awesome!