Gargamel is pretty much the single biggest and most prolific of the Japanese vinyl companies, and their most recognizable figure is the Zagoran, based on a vintage bootleg toy. There are Standard Sized, Mini, Crouching, Pocket, and now Micro Zags, enough for everyone to love one. There are mini releases of many of the popular sculpts in true-blue vinyl, intended for customizing. I went back and forth with my little Zag trying to decide what to do… finally I settled on a low-saturation color palette, contrasting with the bright and wild-colored production releases. Initially the figure was all sprayed, but I really wanted to bring out all the fantastic texture and scale detail in the sculpt, so a wash and some drybrushing later I have a very well-textured cute little Zag. I spent some time thinking about how to do the eye as well, and settled on some more color to ‘pop’ against the muted body color. The mini Zag just has such a fun face!
Archive for the ‘Toy Customs’ Category
Gargamel Mini Zagoran Leave a comment
‘Heavy’ Phanost Onell/Glyos Leave a comment
The Glyos series is the brainchild of Matt Doughty, founder of Onell Designs, a small toy company dedicated to making some of the most fun and unique toys on the planet. Inspired by his childhood love of Micronauts and all things fun, Glyos toys are ~2″ tall PVC figures with completely interchangeable parts and a variety of designs, allowing you to make just about anything you can imagine. The build-toy aspects of Glyos are really just amazing, but my favorite part comes down to making awesome character figures to match the great character versions Matt has already come up with. This custom was based around a special light-grey Phanost head I received as a bonus in one of my orders, for which I built and painted a special body. We have recently been shown, in the awesome 8-bit style Passcodes Matt produces, some of the origin of the Phanosts, and while I won’t spoil anything, I will say that they are quite powerful. My thinking with this custom was that a Phanost had been captured and experimented on (maybe by the Sincroids?), so I used some Buildman body parts, since the Buildmen are interchangeable mechanical bodies used by everybody in Glyos. Upgraded with Phase Armor and a heavy Gobon Cannon, this Phanost escaped his captors with his new, more powerful body, and means business.
DaJoint 1/6 Zero Metal Defense Capsule 1 comment
Phil Reed (battlegrip.com)’s latest 1/6 figure push inspired me to pull this figure out, which I bought back in 2004 or 2005 and have basically been sitting on since. Before Ashley Wood was pushing the 1/6 envelope with his little Hong Kong firm 3A Toys (expect lots more 3A toy pics forthcoming), Da Joint released small range of really unique sci-fi 1/6 scale figures. Da Joint is a small graphic design-type firm from Hong Kong that has done many interesting TV commercials and such now-a-days. The side of the box reads:
“2037 a.d. An Iron meteor shower rained down from the sky brought the known human civilization to an end. Years later, inside the enormous crater of Hongkong island. Some surviving scientists discovered a large meteorite floating in the air. The phenomenon was caused by the extreme force and temperature generated during the meteor impact, resulting a realignment of matter’s atomic structure. The scientists named the anti-gravity meteorite as “ZERO METAL”. 2067 a.d. The new Hongkong declared independence, named itself “Gang Dao”. A highly mobilized armour unit armed with Zero Metal technology is introduced as a force to police the region’s security. Anger and fearful Kowloon civilians united to fight these troops for their own sovereignty.”
Engrish aside, Da Joint’s little world sounds pretty slick, and it’s too bad more did not come out of it. Regardless of the setting, this Jiu Gang Zero Metal Defense Capsule figure is awesome, but was not perfect. Back in 2004, the base 1/6 person body used in this figure was loose and crappy, so the fantastic armored trooper never really stood up well or could his gun arm out, even though the actual armor was really well detailed and designed. After seeing the new Hot Toys True Type bodies for sale, the inspiration hit me to finally fix my ZMDC trooper, as the first step in expanding a 1/6 sci-fi collection. The new body fit perfectly, and is tight and articulated enough to finally breath some life into this impressive design. I also added a second belt with a pistol holster, and new hands.
Da Joint even went so far as to include decals with the figures for buyers to apply, which were really well printed, and happily, still went down great after sitting in the box for 5 years. Once all the decals were laid down (I used about 2/3 of the sheet, and the rest is just different numbers and artsy stuff to apply to individualize the figures), I did some weathering to beat up this guy a touch. I drybrushed the armor in just about the same color as the factory used to fade the decals in, and then did some sponge chipping with a few spots enhanced with some brush-applied marks. An oil wash brought out the details and added some grime, and then the boots (as well as the guy in the suit underneath) received some dirt and mud splatters using layers of both acrylic paints and weathering pigments. I added some grease leakage to the moving joints of the armor (mostly on the articulated feet) and some grease to the shiny metal pistons on the feet. Without going too over the top, I’m really happy with how this guy looks, and he’s just a blast to mess around with now that he can actually hold his gun arm up!
It Came From Skullbrain II M1GO GID “Sodor” Manda 1 comment
It Came from Skullbrain II is the second (now annual) showing of customs made by artists at Skullbrain.org, organized by and held at Super7 in San Francisco. My contribution is a M1GO GID Manda entitled “Sodor” after a particular Chinese Dragon any child should know. The show opens this Saturday!
Max Toy Co & Dream Rockets GID Neo Eyezon and Shelves Leave a comment
Grail time here… I got back to school yesterday, and today went to the mail room to track down an elusive score. Conspicuously absent from my Neo Eyezon shoot was this Tokyo Magazine exclusive release via Dream Rockets. This guy has an orange rub and green sprayed accents on GID vinyl, and was actually the first production GID release, which snuck under most people’s radars. The rub work admittedly is not amazing on this figure when compared to some of the Ream X Head, but the colors are great.
I also snapped a couple shots of the eclectic mix of vinyls that made it to school with me… there’s a few other toys here as well, but there’ll be time for that later.
EDIT: Added at the end is a shot of the three newest Neo Eyezons I received in the mail today. The two two-tone figures are the latest release in Japan, and the red with silver and green spray figure is actually one of two Christmas-themed figures painted by the legendary Goto-san himself. I hadn’t seen the Christmas one before, and was thrilled when I opened the box. I’m also looking forward to adding the Kikaida colored figure to my slowly growing Kikaida tribute color group.
Max Toy Co Red Pontiac Eyezon Revised Leave a comment
The Red clear Eyezon I was working on needed a little revision, and here is the final result. The new brighter eyes really pop alongside the shiny colors, and the blacked out back eyes add some interesting contrast.
Real X Head Guiro Seijin Gatchigon Leave a comment
Guiro Seijin is a very cool kaiju from Ultraman Leo, with a very distinctive painted toy:
http://www.clubtokyo.org/listings/itemListingRpt.php?catID=1&subCatID=12&contentID=1722
I love the paint work and figure, but could never afford the vintage figure. Somehow I thought the Real X Head Gatchigon sculpt kinda, sorta, maybe reminded me of the Guiro Seijin, so I decided to see how the Gatchigon would look in these colors… the end results came out really neat, even if I feel like I cannot have been the first person to think of this custom. This guy was fun to paint; the loose spray vintage style was very different from the tight and detailed spray work I usually do.
Max Toy Co ‘Red Pontiac’ Clear Kaiju Eyezon Leave a comment
I finished this latest Kaiju Eyezon over the weekend and snapped some nice bright pictures today. The goal for this figure was to change it up from the earthy potato palette of the first two Eyezons, and go with some much brighter colors, and a much greater emphasis on the clear and the visible guts. I’m really happy with how this one came out… the colors have a great deal more subtlety than my other figures, with many layers, while still retaining a surprising amount of clarity. The silhouette of the guts can be made out with the figure in your hands, and up against the light, this figure goes up like a Christmas tree. I cleaned off a few critical spots of paint so that the guts could really be seen in-hand.
M1GO Oozing Hedorah GFW 1 comment
Hedorah the Smog Monster is one of the most iconic of the Godzilla enemy kaiju, even if Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster is one of the most divisive of the Godzilla films. With his many forms, Hedorah brings destruction to Japan as revenge for their polluting ways. This particular sculpt is by M1GO, representing the most recent Godzilla: Final Wars version of Hedorah, in lovely brown chocolate-ey vinyl from the latest Lucky Bag. The color was so fantastic and made Hedorah look like a giant sewage monster, so I wanted to keep most of the base vinyl color and run with the sewage palette. The green ooze is shiny on a matte figure, with wet looking dark brown in he crevices of Hedorah’s body, giving it a wet and dry ‘made of poop’ look that I think really works for the monster.
Max Toy Co Clear Eyezon With Guts 2 WIP Leave a comment
Working on another clear Eyezon with guts… this time, the colors are going to be much more wild, starting with the guts. There is going to be a much greater focus on the guts this time, so the paint work is more extravagant, and I tried something new on the clear body. I sprayed the body with multiple coats of Future, inside and out, before I put any paint on it, so it should be much more clear than the first clear Eyezon I did. I will update with some pics of the guts installed once I do it.
Prometheus Rising Studios 