|
|
|
Sunday, 08 October 2006 |
 I entered Caliban and Sunder (plus Callisto) into CustomCon 15, entitled X-Men Legends: Catacombs. "X-Men Legends: Sewers" just didn't sound right. Believe it or not, I had originally planned to enter something along these lines at last year's CC. Callisto, who I made in September last year, was the catalyst, and I've had Caliban and Sunder here as WIPs since then. It's become a running joke with people who see my WIP shots - poor Sunder has been sitting there, essentially untouched, for a long time. With just two new figures here, I wondered if I should even bother entering it - compared to my own grand vision, it didn't measure up. Ultimately, I figured that CC gave me a reason to finish. Otherwise, these poor guys would probably still be lost behind other customs that found their way out of the WIP stage.
|
 Caliban here is pretty much all ML Professor X (suprised?) For all of you wondering who this scrawny, slime covered mutant-sniffing mutant is, this was the original Caliban, before he got all roided out during the crappy X-Men era that is the 90's. Read some classic X-Men stories, people! This guy almost married Kitty Pryde!
I really just wanted to resculpt part of Chuck's head, and ended doing the eyes and mouth, primarily. Since Chuck has on a 3 piece suit, I ended up having to resculpt the chest too. I really wanted to go for a scrawny / starving / bony look. As a result, I think I overemphasized the bottom of the rib cage - it's hard to see the difference between the pecs and the rib cage there.
I painted with some basic colors. Nothing really notable except that the eyes are painted gold to give then some more shine than straight up yellow, and that the white skin has a light blue wash - I really wanted him to have a sickly look to him.
After painting, Actorjez suggested I scuff him up a bit. So I cut out chunks of his jacket, added a ripped waistline using a cut up chunk of Elektra's front thingie (I can never remember that word), and painted some mud and crap on his knees, elbows, and other random places. I wrapped paint tape strips around his feet and tried to make them look as crap-covered as possible. After all, they do live in the sewers... I mean catacombs!
Sunder is a Sandman figure (the surprises just keep coming!) This character is even more obscure than Caliban. People tend to remember Callisto and Caliban, but Sunder is just another throwaway big dumb brute. When he reappeared in Muir Island after the Mutant Massacre, I didn't even recognize him at first. He was mercifully put out of his misery one issue later.
Like with Caliban, the most interesting part of this custom was the work on his head. I wanted to really capture the ape-like proportions of the brow, the double chin, and the bulbous lip. In the end, I don't think that I obscured enough of the Sandman underneath. If I had repainted the eyes, that probably would have helped give him a little more character of his own.
 His jacket comes from the snowboarding Human Torch figure from the Fantastic Four Movie line. I bought that figure after someone on Fwooshnet made the funny suggestion that you could use his head to make a custom of Industrial. Not that I would ever do that, because I'm not an Indy-stalker. I probably just had the retail urge and dammit that was the only thing that was there to buy.
I thought about trying to use Torch's arm for the one that remained sleeved. That would have given it the same texture as the jacket. but it was just too scrawny, and I didn't want to shave down the bulky right arm to accomodate it.
Instead, I focused on trying to fill in as much of the Sandman pockmarked texture as I could. And that task is probably one of the main contributors to why this custom actually took so long. Filling in crap is a pain in the ass. Sometime during the WIP stage I had added some Apoxie Sculpt to my inventory of materials, and that helped a lot - Sniper2160 had given a tip that by adding water, you can make the consistency of Apoxie Sculpt like that of a soft clay or sludge. Before that I had been using Super Sculpey and that was just too slow. Still, you can see that I just wasn't thorough enough to get rid of the texture completely. I did try to get coverage on all the exposed parts, and it didn't really come through until the paint stage that it needed more. At that point, the CC deadline was looming. And let's face it, if I didn't make it this time around, it would probably be another year.
The scarf is from that Elektra thingamabob again - the waistband goes around his neck, so that and the front strip are one piece, with another piece glued underneath it - quick and easy scarf, if you ever need to make one. The tassles are some craft thread that my wife provided. His feet got the same treatment as Calibans. Done and done.
On an unrelated topic - I finally bit the bullet and bought a light tent for pictures. I didn't have it when I submitted the pics for CC. Let me know if you see a difference in the quality of the pics.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
