| Puck |
| Wednesday, 31 October 2007 | |
 A long while back, perhaps around the start of the year, someone started a discussion on the Fwoosh about customizing a Puck from Alpha Flight, asking for suggested recipes. I suggested using some of the bigger figures from the Superhero Showdown series of figures, since those are in 3 3/4 inch scale. I had been thinking about that for some time, since a lot of people had been going through a lot of work to shorten standard Marvel Legends figures (my favorite is Grownnerd's Puck, because he comes with an awesome custom Sasquatch) - I thought SHS would provide a more suitable base with less effort. Others had the same idea - I've seen Pucks from both Discogod and dagodfather - both used SHS Juggernaut as the base. Recipe Test fitting at the start of the project First, I had to do some major work on his arms. His forearms were way too long, so I cut out as much of them as I could without hitting the elbow hinge and then reattached. I used a paperclip drilled and glued into both ends to help provide some support. Still, because there was very little plastic left to make a bond (I used superglue and not something stronger), the forearm can't take much torque and I am really hesitant to bend the elbows. Hulk's triceps and biceps were really ripped, so I took some of the mass out of them and essentially resculpted the back of the arms. Next, I added some mass to the inside of Juggernaut's thighs. Puck is short, but wide, and Jugg's legs didn't seem to live up to that. I think there's a little more balance with his upper body now too. Finally, I built up his neck so that his head sat at a better height. I originally wanted to put in a disc there, but settled for a barbell. I probably could notch the back of the neck a bit to enable him to look up more. The head is from the Logan variant from Marvel Legends 11. I sculpted the headgear onto it, adding to the width in the process. The groove in the head was carved out with a cutting disc attachment on the dremel. I debated on whether to keep lowering the top of the headgear to cover his eyebrows, as it appears in some of the artwork. Decided to leave the eyebrows exposed to give him a little more character. On top of that I did some minor tweaks here and there. Grinded down some of the lats so he could get his arms down. Shaved off the straps on Juggernaut's feet. Filled in some of the grooves in Hulk's torso to reduce some of the muscle rips. Used a combination of watered down Apoxie Sculpt and clear nail polish - in the future, I'll be sticking with the nail polish when I want to retain some of the initial grooves as opposed to flattening out completely. It's much faster and gets the job done. Also added just a couple of clothing folds on his chest. Paint was fairly simple - black vinyl dye and Sharpie on the black parts, touched up with Tamiya flat black. The "P" was hand-painted first in tan flesh for coverage, followed by a couple coats of orange. I tried a tan vinyl dye base for flesh, but that just ended up looking green-tinged (not sure if that was the base coming through or if that's just what the vinyl dye looks like), and wasn't as effective as resisting paint rub like black does. So I just did the standard of tan flesh with a flesh dry brush. For body hair I went with the thin brown lines, since I knew he'd eventually be posed nearby some standard Wolverines with that same deco. He's probably still a bit too tall, but he's good enough for me. |
