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Customs by
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Stephen Andrade
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e-mail
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bottleimp@hotmail.com
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Web Address
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none
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Custom Recipes:
Hawkman: The Justice League Martian Manhunter is out of scale
with its own line, but it was a perfect fit for the old-school
figures. The costume was also perfect for adapting into Hawkman.
The boots were re-sculpted, along with the bottom half of his
face (to give him a more square chin) and an open hand was
swapped with his closed fist so that he could hold the mace
(cobbled together from bits of accessories). The wings on the
helmet are modified from the Toy Biz Hawkman. I was originally
going to use the Toy Biz Hawkman’s wings as well, but
they looked a little too stubby. So I sculpted some from scratch
using SuperFlex Sculpey and using the JL Hawkgirl’s wings
as reference. They’re a little rough, but they’ll
do until something better comes along.
Hourman: I always liked that Hourman was this bulky kind of
guy, so I wanted to use the rounder, more heavy-looking old-school
Batman body. The mask, sleeves, belt, and hourglass were sculpted
with Milliput (this was before I changed to Sculpey), and a
cape from a Detective Batman completed the Man of the Hour.
Johnny Quick: Johnny uses one of the newer animated-style
Batman bodies and an animated Superman head. Some sculpting
and painting, and he’s ready to recite his speed formula
and go.
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The Ray |
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Uncle Sam and Dollman |
The Ray: One of my first forays into the world of Sculpey,
this guy was a pain. The base is a Nightwing figure, with reculpted
face and chest. At this point I was still trying to bake the
figure rather than using the safer boiling method, so as it
cured the hands and feet melted into shapeless blobs. I had
to substitute hands from a Racer X (a previous victim of the
oven) and feet from an old-school Robin (which I actually like;
it makes the Ray’s boots look a little more on-model).
Now, the one thing I didn’t want to do was use a metallic
paint, because in the comics (and the cartoons, as well) shiny
gold is always colored yellow, not that darker gold color.
I decided to give him a two-tone costume, like he had in the
Freedon Force comics in the ‘70s, but retained the original
design from the ‘40s. I finished with a gloss clear-coat
to give the Ray that shiny look.
Uncle Sam and Dollman: Uncle Sam was the first heavily modified
custom I did. The head is a Ra’s al Ghul, which I felt
looked more like James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam posters
than a more generic head. The body is a Wildcard Joker. The
head is glued into place (due to incompatible necks), and the
hat, vest, and bola tie are sculpted from Milliput. At the
time I made this, I was only familiar with the All-Star Squadron
rendition of Sam, which gave him the bola tie. If I had to
do it again, I probably would have left him with the bowtie.
Dollman is a repainted Microverse Superman—the only toy
I could find that was the proper scale.
The Atom: The JL scale comes to the rescue again! The JL Green
Lantern was short and stocky enough to fit in perfectly as
the tiny titan. Some sculpting, painting, and a trimmed-down
Batman cape made the Atom one of the quickest (and one of my
favorite) customs.
Green Lantern: I chose a Racer X figure for the base for
2 reasons. 1) It’s taller than most of the animated style
figures, and Green Lantern is usually described as being taller.
2) It looks like his shirt billows out slightly at the waist,
making it perfect for Alan Scott’s loose-shirted costume.
The sleeves, boots, and head were sculpted, the ring was a
piece of random plastic, and the cape was from a JL Martian
Manhunter. The symbol was decoupaged on from a scanned image.
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