Archive for the ‘Toy Customs’ Category
My first Real X Head custom! RxH is one of the premier Japanese designer vinyl companies, made from the ground up by Mori, the owner and creative genius behind the designs. I like the sculpts of the RxH figures alot, but there are so many colorways to chose from at this point that I’ve only picked up a few production pieces. To get most of the sculpts, I instead opted to snag an entire peach flesh set to do with as I pleased, including a couple extra of the Bigaro sculpt, seen here, to practice on.
This figure is designed as a tribute to Tetsujin-28, known in the US as Gigantor, one of the original animated giant robots from way back in the late 1960’s. I love the classic muted blue of Gigantor, with its small splashes of color for trim. The yellow 28s on the arms are a nod to the later redesigned T-28, which had big yellow stenciled 28s on its forearms. I had originally airbrushed the eye, but my aim is not true enough yet, and my yellow paint was not the best mix, so I colored back over all of that and hand painted the eye area. Big thanks to my friend Sanjeev for his tip on how to ‘fake’ metallic colors with a thin silver coat over all the non-metallic colors! I had drawn up the ideas for this guy, and managed to paint the entire figure from start to finish in an evening. It still amazes me how much I can get done now with the airbrush! The ‘cape’ is painted to look like T-28’s distinctive jet-pack flame. When I was taking the photos, something dawned on me as well: the gold-mist Bigaro makes a perfect Black Ox stand-in! Watch as Bigantor copies some moves he saw in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen!
Pics of my shelves seem to have become pretty popular, so here’s an update including much better pics of my vinyl shelves, and the bottom shelf totally redone with my TF big-guns in anticipation of some new stuff coming! Right now I’m loving the Max Toy Co and glow display on my nightstand.
OK, photos came out better in a little less light so we’re good!
This is the insect-kaiju Gumos, sculpted by Dream Rockets, released in unpainted green vinyl as part of the Battle Pack with Max Toy Co’s unpainted flesh Captain Maxx, used for my Maxx-vell custom. This is the first kaiju I airbrushed, and it was very different from doing Maxx-vell. The colors were applied much more roughly, and free-handed, rather than the handpainting and masking and shading of Captain Maxx. I used a dark green to shade the sculpt, a light green to highlight it, and used the awesome green of the vinyl for the midtones. Browns and reds for the spines/spikes, and yellow greens for the claws. The eyes were a bit of an experiment, and I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. I painted the eyes a very dark silver, and then applied dots of much lighter (GW Mithril) silver in a semi-organized pattern. I then applied Tamiya Clear Red in a few thin coats, topped off with some Future for shininess, in an attempt to represent iridescent segmented compound insect eyes.
Here’s a teaser shot for the Gumos kaiju I finished the other day, the second member of the Max Toy Co and Dream Rockets collaborative Battle Pack I purchased, which came with the unpainted flesh Captain Maxx, and an unpainted green Gumos. I’ve gotta take some better photos of Gumos before I upload anything, as my fluorescent lighting washed out all the shading and made most of the figure look unpainted.
Finished photos of Captain Maxx-vel, besides from painting the inner head. Airbrush compressor showed up the other day and worked like a charm! The blue guy in the fight scene is the Max Toy Co Alien Xam GID, painted by Deadpreisdents to look like Alien Baltan, and the pink guy is the Pachi Summit MTC Drazoran.
Captain Maxx is the original creation of Mark Nagata, founder of Max Toy Co, as a combination of his love of Ultraman and his son Max. Since his initial release a few years ago, Captain Maxx has developed a small menagerie of fantastically original enemy Kaiju. An unpainted flesh Captain Maxx was released in a Battle Pack with an unpainted Gumos insect kaiju, and the set was one of my first major vinyl purchases. I couldn’t decide which of the available Captain Maxx figures I liked best, so I decided to get the unpainted figure and make my own! When I saw the Captain Maxx design, the Ultraman influence was apparent, but my first thought was ‘Captain Mar-vell’. The figure reminds me of Captain Mar-vell (from Marvel Comics, not DC’s Shazam!) original Kree battle suit, which he wore in his early comic career. Mar-vell Maxx here is also the first figure I have used my new airbrush on… I did the initial base coat with the brush, and then the highlighting of the base suit color (I went for a mintier base color than the pale in the comics). I had a good time doing the fine highlighting on the light color, but could not replicate the results on the darker green yet… I am using Cel-Vinyl paint from the company Cartoon Color, and it sprays well, but works best at low pressure for the fine point way I use the airbrush. Right now all I have is canned air, which has poor pressure regulation… the only reason I was able to get the results I got the first time was because the can was freezing over and running out of air, so I am working on picking out a compressor so I can start using the airbrush more. The figure is shiny right now because it has multiple coats of Future on it as I finish sections, so that I can do any hand painting work without risking messing up anything airbrushed. I’m going to add highlighting to the dark green sections, as well as some other details and hand paint the Kree planet logo on his chest in another green so it stands out.
Marmit is one of the leading modern vinyl kaiju manufacturers today. The Sky Deviler is a design from the stage troupe Big Battel from what I understand, out of Boston. I bought the purple vinyl with green spray colorway the other day. The claws and eye and top pincers were flat colors, and kind of bland, and the eye was not painted too cleanly. I decided to make all the teeth and claws bone colored, instead of the flat silver they were before. I’m still waiting for parts for my airbrush, so everything here is hand painted with acrylics. I did alot of layering on the teeth and claws to get the bone texture down, and then added some cavities and whatnot to them. I Used some reddish colors to blend in where the claws grow out of, as well as redoing the lips on the big sucker mouth, around the eye, and in what I decided were gills on the front of the monster. The eye was done using a picture online for reference, and I used yellow for the iris so it would stand out against the other colors on the figure.
My current shelf setup… a combination of real robots in scale and the vintage super robots I’ve been accumulating lately, along with some vinyls and vintage Transformers.
Ok, had a nice sunny day and was able to redo the photos for this guy. Mechabot: A Hero Reforged is a project by Go Hero, and is designed to capture all of the zaniness and classic funk of 70’s Super Robot shows, and Mechabot is the titular hero machine. Mechabot is equipped with the usual gamut of Super Robot equipment, including Super X1 Alloy Plating, Nova Ray Emitters, and the prominent Wing Blade. Mechabot is designed to combat a growing Sea Monster thread, so a lot of his design elements, like the shark-esque hands and wingblade fin draw from nautical inspiration, giving Mechabot a unique flair among similarly designed Super Robots. The Mechabot toy is a vinyl release with fantastic articulation for a vinyl toy, including cleverly cut hip, ankle, and elbow swivels that allow Mechabot to do a variety of action poses!
On to the custom… out of the bag, Mechabot is smooth sleek silver, with matte black and gloss metallic blue. I wanted my Mechabot to look a bit more ‘used’, and set to the task of adding variation and interest to this sleek design. When dealing with Super Robots, there aren’t a lot of panel lines, hard edges, or greeblie details to work with, so I decided to use color variation instead to add interest, much like when doing solid-colored tank models. The first thing I did was add a great deal of chipping and paint wear, using greys for the blue and black parts, and GW Boltgun Metal for the silver. I broke out the oil paints and started adding localized color filters of yellow ochre, multiple browns, black, white, and blue to all the silver surfaces, to get the worn metal weathering effect I was after. Acrylic paints were used to add rust spots, and oil paints were used to add rust streaking from the larger dings (I don’t really know if Super X1 Alloy rusts, but oh well). The oil and grease streaking were done with Tamiya and Valeijo Smokes… Tamiya’s is more black, and Valeijo’s is more brown. The Mechabot logo written in the Kanji (I think?) from the packaging was done with a super-fine brush and acrylics. From there I went to applying sealer, starting with a coat of Future first, so that I would have a nice neutral acrylic barrier between anything harsher and the vinyl underneath. From there I used clear finishes to add more interest to the different surfaces on Mechabot. The black parts were coated with dead flat artists’ matte varnish, and the silver metal bits were finished with Valeijo Satin. I left the blue bits Future shiny to make the metallic finish pop. I then went in and repainted many of the chips and dings in the blue bits and the rust spots I added to the silver with the matte varnish to add contrast to them.
Mechabot: A Hero Reforged is an original IP vinyl toy designed by Go Hero. In the realm of designer vinyl toys, most are either made by pretentious twits, hideously ugly, or some combination therein. Mechabot bucks against this model, and is a gorgeous vinyl beast with great articulation and a stellar design. Out of the bag, Mechabot is a bit plain, and after playing with mine for a few days, I figured I could without too much fuss spruce him up a bit and make it look like Mechabot had seen his fair share of battles without being too overwhelming. I used a combination of paint chipping effects and a lot of subtle oil colors on the silver to add surface texture and variation to the armor, and a mix of finishes (gloss, satin, matte) to tie all the details together. This is a just a teaser shot, as I was unhappy with the table reflection the silver picked up in the rest of my photo shoot.
Prometheus Rising Studios 