Action Figure Customization: Ninja Commando Part 2 (Painting)

 All the way back in August, I posted Part 1 of what I planned on being my first “premium” action figure customization but, as I’m sure you can guess by the delay between the kitbashing article and this one, the end result turned out to be anything but. Overall, was this a major learning experience? Yes. Was I way too overambitious here, having only started doing this for about six months with only a handful of considerably less complex action figure customizations under my belt? Yes. Were mistakes made along the way? Oh yeah.

I was on the fence about whether or not I wanted to even follow up on Part 1 since I’m not at all satisfied with the final product, but then I had to remind myself that this blog is here to document my hobbies for better or for worse, and there will always be bumps (and disgustingly lumpy, brushstroke laden paint jobs) along the way. And since I made a Part 1, I feel like I’m obligated to make a Part 2, but this won’t be my typical after-action report where I won’t focus so much on the specific paints I used and stuff like that, but rather all the obstacles that presented themselves throughout the painting stage.

My first concern when I set out to paint this custom was the soft rubber (or rubbery plastic) material that was used for the hood and bodyarmor and I knew my regular primer just wouldn’t cut it on that material. Someone suggested Angelus leather paint primer (commonly used on shoes) and while the stuff was nice and clear and covered well, I don’t think it was too terribly effective here since the Rustoleum gray primer I sprayed on it later still wouldn’t pass the “fingernail test”.

And speaking of Rustoleum gray primer, I once again encountered the usual stickiness that plagued a lot of my previous customs and ultimately, I’d just had enough of dealing with it and decided to invest in a can of Bulldog adhesion promoter (which is probably the best thing to come out of this project because that stuff is a godsend). After priming the figure with Bulldog, it was finally ready to accept a basecoat. But little did I know at the time that my headaches with this project were only just beginning.

I laid down my basecoat. So far, so good. I even added a Nuln Oil wash to blend the urban camo and the rest of the colors together. That’s when this project hit its stumbling block, the one that would ultimately lead me to more or less lose my patience with this project and turn it from “premium custom” to “crafting experiment”. I am, of course, talking about the dreaded paint rub. The bane of action figure customizers everywhere and an issue that, being the ignorant neophyte that I am, downplayed thinking it wouldn’t be that bad. “I’ll just touch it up, spray some clear coat into the cap, and brush it over the problem areas. It’ll be fine!”

It was not, in fact, fine. Note the paint rub on the shoulder, elbow, and knee joints.

After searching for solutions online, I ultimately came across Jin Saotome’s solution (one that many youtubers echoed as well) which was to grind the joints down using the tiny circular bur attachment. And boy did I ever grind.

What followed was a seemingly endless loop of trial and error where I reapplied the paint, moved the joint, sanded the joint some more, reapplied the paint, ad infinitum until I finally reached a point where the paint no longer rubbed off. But by then, I was so eager to fix this problem that I paid little care to the actual paint applications, hence why the final figure has such an awful paint job. Lumpy paints from not being properly thinned and the plastic shavings not being all the way cleaned off with a hobby knife (thus catching the paint and looking even more lumpy), visible brush strokes from painting over the same areas before they full dried, name a problem and this project has it. It’s so bad that I can’t even lie and try to pass it off as weathering.

That said, there are quite a few valuable takeaways that this project opened my eyes to and ones I’ll be very mindful of in the future. While I’m not giving up on customizing super articulated figures (as I still have quite a few of them in the works), I am going to completely disassemble them before painting and sand down the joints and other areas where surfaces will rub against each other. I’m also going to start making a concerted effort to curtail my bad habit of going over the same area multiple times while painting a single coat (which my Reaper How to Paint Minis booklet from my Core Skills kit also said not to do).

But for now, I have no choice but to command Orc Lesnar to banish Ninja Commando to the Box of Infinite Shame.