#toycustomization

My GDToys 97005 (Sesshomaru) Son Of The Demon Dog Repaint, so far. I am pretty happy with him, I just need to restyle his bangs, and then I'll be done with him (for now). I suck at tiny things, my hands are definitely getting shakier with old freaking age! I already had a terrible shaky hand, but holey freaking heck hole, it's like I put my hands on a full speed blender, instead of steadying them on a flat steady table!

My older than dust cellphone died, and my "current" phone's battery was drained, so I took these with an even older phone, and they are obviously museum quality photos. However, I am super excited to finally complete this, so I wanted to take photos as I ruined the doming process, as usual! It took just a few hours over the course of three days, to repaint him and only with acrylic paints, so no sealing in between layers, which is why I love acrylics. I didn't want to go too hyperplastic with him, because the head sculpt is not, and Sesshomaru is not hyper-realistic either. I wanted his demon markings to look a bit textured, kind of like birth marks or tattoos, rather than paint or make up. I am in love with this head, I hope I can get a second one. I feel he would make a gorgeous Alucard (Castlevania). I missed my chance when he first released to get one parted out, so I am hoping I'll be able to get a second head sculpt at a not too exaggerated price. I kind of sorely regret not trying harder to get a loose HS, now that I' think about it more seriously.

I modified my 3D artist OG-RE4 Leon S. Kennedy head sculpt. I also repainted him, for the gazillionth time, if that wasn't obvious. I have to say, modifying a tiny eyelid was pretty easy to do with the Vallejo Plastic Putty, the only issue is, it doesn't seem to sand all that well. It started to crumble when I tried to sand it. I let it cure for longer than 4-hours, when is supposed to take only one to two hours, according to Vallejo's own website. I had read mixed reviews about it sanding well, or not. I guess it doesn't? Kind of weird, considering it is meant to be filler for models, and then it goes without saying, meant to be sanded afterward for a perfectly smooth finish...?

Regardless, I feel it works well enough for me, for tiny modding projects. I am definitely going to use it again for my Leon, whom I feel happier about right now, but I still know that he's not accurate enough. He'll never be, because he wasn't sculpted accurately enough, and that's pretty sad. However, the only thing I can do is try to make mine as accurate as I can without having to pay someone else to 3D sculpt another one for me. I could try myself, but I live in the middle of nowhere and I don't want to have an adventure trying to figure out how to create a 3D sculp/mesh/file to then have it 3D printed somewhere. I haven't (3D) modeled anything in more than a decade. I feel like my old dusty 3D Max and Maya, are probably not it, for 3D printing and that's all I know. Since those were the programs, we were allowed to use in college, back in the dark ages. When I learned how to 3D model. I believe blender is the popular choice for 3D printing nowadays, but that wasn't allowed so I didn't even bother trying it. Of course, I am not going to be 3D modeling a head at this stage. I much rather mod this boulder of a 1:6 head sculpt. It's a huge head for what it is, and not accurate, but it's all I got! DX

I am happy that I found something that is less wasteful than a tiny .25 oz container of Aves Apoxie, and less expensive as well. I am probably going to try modding my Myou Bettina next, since I wanted to give him smaller eyes, but still don't want to waste money on Aves' clay, when I know I won't get even halfway through the tiny container. Now, I can actually try, without fear of wasting clay, money and possibly sanity. Modifying (relatively) tiny heads is a huge pain in the gut, but I still want my Leon to be more accurate, but not enough to pay anyone again for another failed likeness. I also want my Bettina to have much smaller eyes. He looks too baby faced for my taste. I do love my Leon so far, I feel he makes a gorgeous looking figure. However, I want my OG-RE4 Leon to be accurate and this is not it. I sanded his upper lid a lot, the 3D sculptor gave him te droopiest lids ever, I also sanded his jaw quite a bit -- Leon has a very roundish head. Not sure what the artist was thinking. I added an actual upper eyelid with the Vallejo putty, because the 3D-sculptor didn't give him any. Certainly not even close of an eye-shape as Leons, but I feel like I'm doing good progress. I wanted to see what the putty was like, before doing heavier eye mods. Now I kind of know, so I am comfortable moving on. I will try first on m Bettina, however, because that is an even larger head, with huger eyes to try plenty of times, without worrying too much about heavy damage (I hope!).

More of my Leon S. Kennedy 3D-artist, resin cast head sculpt mods and repaint. I kind of fixed his left iris, so I feel less like crap about having f-it-up a few days ago. I still managed to ruin it a bit with the doming, but I'm not too angry about it now. I was furious with myself, when I did it yet once again. However, he doesn't photograph too terribly, and I am in love with how he's looking so far, so I am okay with it for now.

I took photos this time on my DAM toys body that belongs to my repainted Looks Ken, so the body doesn't have hands, and I tried to avoid many full-shot photos for that reason. This head was also sculpted so inaccurately, that it is huge on most any bodies, and DAM bodies are freaking huge! Not as huge as Game Toys bodies probably, but I don't want to have to get a second one just to find out, if this sculpt will work on it. I could use my GT Sephy's "nude" body, but I don't really want to find out this sculpt looks well on it. That body is a pain in the gut to get now, and I don't want to spend a fortune on a body for this sculpt. As much as I love the head sculpt now, I already spent too much on it -- mental stress more than monetary or anything else.

I repainted my fan-art Ken Kaneki (MYou Bettina male) for the second time. I had enhanced the 1st face up I gave him previously. However, I decided to attempt painting him the way I learned to do 1:6 sculpts, form that one (15 episodes) tutorial I watched. I was impatient however, which I regret to no tomorrow. So, I was able to get most of the pigmented skin texture on there with mostly acrylics. Then I grew impatient, because I was taking too long (it was dumb of me, terribly so!). 

I am still super happy with how he looks despite using pastels and ruining the beautiful subtleness I had going on. I did take progress photos, but they ar more awful than these. I am of course heavily disappointed in my hair strokes -- my eyebrows and eyelashes are horrid. However, I am happy with how much more mature he appears, due to the heavy dark brows, so I’ll probably be keeping them for a while (before I start obsessing and repaint him again!). 

I need to get a new pointy brush, because I managed to already ruin the one I was using to paint my Sephiroth and Leon 1:6 head sculpts. Bettina has much, much larger eyes, and I was still not able to get not-so-clean, but kind of sharp lines like on Sephy. I wasn’t able to do a better job on Leon either, but he has tinier eyes and they were sculpted way off, so I kind of have to cheat with the way I shade his lower eyelid to make it look like they are a more accurate shape. Leaving me to having to pain the lashes on an area that is hard to do so (and yes, I also suck, so there’s that too!). 

I decided to fully-repaint my GT 1:6 scale action figure Sephiroth. I had planned on just cleaning up the lower lids a bit more. I thought that the default paint was strong enough that 90+ percentage isopropyl alcohol wouldn’t remove it, but I was wrong. I had an extremely hard time removing the paint on the lips, so I thought I would be able to only partially remove my heavy pastel shading with alcohol without damaging the factory paint, but that turned out to be a miscalculation on my part. It was just the gloss they used on the lips. They did give this head a few top layers that were easy to remove and damage with alcohol alone, the sad part is that it got into my gloss damaging my repainted irises. 

That was the whole reason why I didn’t want to fully repaint this head, because I was okay with the eyes, just the lower eye-lids looking heavily make-up-looking, was what bothered me to no tomorrow.  Just as I dreaded, I wasn’t able to get the irises as bright and cyan/blue as I got them last time. I also wasn’t able to get them as detailed, but I also f-ed up the right one with the doming/glossing bit. Which I also dread to do, because I know how it’s supposed to be done, I just can’t seem to get it done right. DX

Regardless, I am happy with him for now! He doesn’t look like he’s wearing a thousand pounds of eye makeup, so that’s all that really matters to me. The fact that I have no fear now, of damaging the irises anymore (because they turned out like crap!), is kind of freeing in a way. I can always try again as many times as I feel like it, because I know I painted the whole thing myself. I don’t have to fear I’ll ruin something. I was okay with the factory paint minus the lips and eyes, which are the most important to me, as far as character accuracy goes. So now, I just have to keep trying and try to improve along the way! This is only the second head sculpt I paint in the 1:6 action figure customizing style, with acrylics alone, so I think I can hope to improve some. (:

Because I am not an obsessive nut job, I repainted my 1:6 scale 3D artist resin-cast Leon S. Kennedy head sculpt for the millionth time! Here’s how he’s looking so far. I thought I was done, after a few hours of work over the weekend (3-day-for-a-few-hours-each, to be precise). He still needs to be sealed with a few layers of MSC matte and a single one of gloss in between, then have his eyes glossed and “domed.” 

I felt like I was happy with how he looked while I was working on him. I tried really hard to match him to his DAMtoys LSK2R body, which is grey-toned, as are all 1:6 action figure bodies. But his rubbery upper torso is painted to be sunburned-red, so that was a challenge. Mentally more than anything, I kept wanting to make him golden tanned, because that’s what Leon appears to be (or might just be me), in OGRE4. However, that’s not even remotely close to the body’s coloring. >_>;; I might tone down the reds on his cheeks, just so he doesn’t look like he’s flushed or wearing blush, my worst nightmare! DX The reds are not so harsh IRl, but until I become a master photographer, I have to attempt not making my toys look like they might be wearing make up (I am not a fan of the look).

I am not planning on displaying him nude, so there’s no reason to actually match him to the body. Yet, I have no clue when I’ll get to sew his default (OG) RE4 5.11 tactical shirt for him. So, I’ll probably be taking photos of him shirtless for a whole while longer, and that’ll mean that he’ll look crappier with crap paint apps and worse off, not matching his “default” body. Until I decide to get another floating DAMtoys nude body, and see if I like the coloring better. I am tempted to steal my current repainted Ken’s body, because that’s a bit less of an eyestrain (fake) tanned color -- at least, he doesn’t appear to be heavily sunburned. I don’t know how 1:6 action figure developers decide on painting flesh tones on their grey-toned plastic bodies, but the ones I own so far, are questionable at best. DX