Outpost 206

This edition of What’s On My Desk is going to be a little different than the previous ones since I’m not going to lay out my current projects as well as the projects that I started a while back and still intend to finish. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be away from my home (and crafting supplies) for the Holidays and I won’t return until the new year, so this will most likely be my last post of 2021. But when I do get back from spending time with the family, I definitely want to hit the ground running and wrap up all or most of the works-in-progress shown here by the end of Q1 2022…as long as life, work, novel writing, and yet more spur-of-the-moment project ideas don’t keep getting in the way. Here’s hoping, because my secondary crafting goal for 2022 is to clear out some space in my plastic bits bin, which is overflowing with cheap plastic figures, miniatures, and vehicles that I’m itching to upcycle into new customization project. I also want to dedicate an entire month to just painting

While I didn’t intend for this particular project to be my last major crafting endeavor of 2021, it’s apropos since it forced me to combine most of the tricks and materials that I’ve picked up along the way since I made my first custom figure back in July of this year. The goal was simple: turn a Dollar Tree Batman figurine into my own interpretation of a Black Mage from Final Fantasy and, seeing as there was room enough on his base, I would scratch build him a Moogle partner too. This was my starting point and if it looks familiar, it’s the same Dollar Tree Batman that I used to make my custom Beheaded miniature in a similar video game-inspired project. Since they were only a buck, I bought two of them. I wish I would have purchased even more since in recent months, these Justice League figurines have practically disappeared from every Dollar Tree in and around my area. That’s a real shame, but on the other hand, it’s not like I don’t already have an entire giant plastic bin that f

I started putting this guy together sometime in October but I didn’t start painting it until about six days ago and finished just the other day. Going back to the beginning, my starting point was an old Hercules: The Legendary Journeys figure from the mid-90’s Toy Biz line. I don’t remember exactly where I got it, but I’m reasonably sure it came in a random ebay action figure lot I purchased way back when (which makes sense, considering I have one or two others from this series languishing in my bits bin). In addition to Kevin Sorbo Hercules here, I also had a bag of Halloween novelty rings, some skull beads, and an extra plastic skeleton garland leftover from my Flesh Golem build . My vision for this project was a musclebound undead barbarian warlord-type character (or maybe the chief enforcer for an evil necromancer) with my two primary inspirations being Skeletor from Masters of the Universe (naturally) and Death from Darksiders 2. My secondary objective was to go completely over

 This is something that I’d been wanting to try out for a while and since Amazon had some solid deals on small quantities of silicone rubber and epoxy resin around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I decided to finally give silicone mold making and resin recasting a shot. I’ve watched youtube videos on recasting action figures and miniatures, but for the most part, I going into this cold and following the directions on the little pamphlets that came with the respective silicone rubber and epoxy pouring kits. My first test subject was this Red Ninja vinyl figure from Prexio’s 2.5” scale GI Joe series that I found at the Dollar Tree a while back. I started by affixing the figure’s feet to a cardboard surface. Remembering something I heard in a youtube video about creating air vents because the hands and arms often trapped air bubbles when pouring resin. For lack of any soft wax (which I commonly see used to create air vents in silicone molds), I cut two pieces of styrene rods and sticky-t

Readers be warned, the pictures here are a little inconsistent for this one. I try to take at least one photo throughout each major stage in my customization process but I either accidentally deleted a several from my phone or they didn’t turn out and I forgot to take new ones. This was another one of those projects that was supposed to be a series of quick repaint that ended up being shuffled down my list of works-in-progress in favor of other projects until I got around to finishing it a few days ago, so I’m piecing this write-up together from memories that aren’t exactly fresh in my head. But I digress. This project came about because I had three identical Final Faction Shift figures from the Dollar Tree in my bits bin and decided to give them a kunoichi/female ninja theme. I primed all three with Bulldog adhesion promoter before I fully mapped out what individual paint decos I wanted to give the figures. The first of the three Blade Sisters I decided on a night camouflage color s

Like a lot of materials in my overflowing bits bin, this Superman Returns figure was another garage sale find that took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with it. While I don’t really collect superheroes, I’ve long been fascinated with the oddity that is Captain Ray , a notorious collector’s item from Kenner’s 1980’s DC Comics Super Powers line. Or rather, a Columbian-exclusive l ine called Defensores de la Tierra that mix and matched pieces from pre-existing Super Powers molds to create original characters. And much like Wonder Bread He-Man and Disco Skeletor , the enigmatic Captain Ray has inspired a great many fan-made customs over the years. Here’s mine… Pictured below is my starting point, the original figure after a bit of light sanding and a long soak in warm water and dish soap. I kicked around the idea of keeping his cloth cape, but I never liked soft goods on toys and I would ultimately get rid of it. I dremeled off the Superman shield off his chest and belt, th