Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Prince Adam 200X V2 Custom Action Figure Art - Masters of the Universe Classics

Welcome back to Castle Grayskull Week at Insidious Customs! Did you forget to pre-order your Masters of the Universe Classics Castle Grayskull? If so, here's the link to the page where you can do it.

Today's custom is a variation of a MOTUC custom that I made earlier this year; Prince Adam 200X style. A client of mine was so fascinated by the design, he commissioned one for himself. However, his one stipulation was that I make the head more closely resemble the 200X cartoon.
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I liked the idea and thought I would use this opportunity to improve on my initial piece and try my hand at interpreting a very stylized, almost-anime hair style, as a realistic look. Another thing I wanted to do was give him sculpted gloves so that he would have better wrist articulation. So I took the commission. Little did I anticipate that simply changing the a hairstyle would impact the figure, and my time creating it, so greatly.

The first thing I did was remove the head from the base figure's body. I removed the hair and added ears because there were none on the original sculpt. I then began sculpting the hair. I did it in several layers to give it the forward swoop seen the in the cartoon. I spent a lot of time working and reworking it. Cartoon hair is a tricky thing to bring to life as cartoon angles do not equate to real world angles. I sculpted the gloves, shoulder-belt, and boots and then painted everything up.

However, when I finally put the head back on the body, the extra hair I had added to the back of the head caused the head to look downward because of the collar on the vest. I tacked down the back of the collar but the head still pointed down and the right-left articulation was still hindered.

I had a completely finished custom figure fully painted and ready to go but I could not bring myself to give it to my client this way. So I made a judgement call to replace the ball joint in the figure's body with a slightly longer one that would raise the head just enough to clear the collar.
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I carefully cut off the back of the neck and replaced the joint with a longer, more sturdy, ball joint. I re-sculpted the back of the neck, painted it, and attached the head. Thankfully, it worked out perfectly and it's actually a sturdier joint than the original. Many thanks to my client who patiently waited for this figure during this much longer than expected process. I will never make this figure in this way again so he truly has a one-of-a-kind in his collection.
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I'm very happy with the finished piece. I hope you dig him too. If you do, why not pre-order Castle Grayskull from Mattycollector.com by November 12th so my client, myself, and all the Masters fans can have one to display with our figures. Mattel has even sweetened the deal by including an exclusive Masters of the Universe Classics 30" x 20" cross-sell poster showing all the figures they've produced to date! Until next time, I remain The Insidious One.

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