Action Figure Customization - Skullbarian

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-the-top with the skull motif and thus, the heavy metal Skullbarian was conceived.

After a light sanding and washing the figure in some warm water and dishsoap, I sawed off the protruding lever on his back. In case you’re curious, it was for a sword-chopping action feature. After sanding down the nub, I filled in the hole with milliput. In retrospect, I probably should have sanded it down some more after the milliput cured and did a better job of smoothing it out. Maybe I can just pass it off as a grisly scar on his back...he is supposed to be undead after all.

I also made sure to dremel down the knee and elbow joints to curtail any paint rubbing off down the line, though I didn’t have to sand them down as much as I normally would. There was already a decent amount of clearance between the joints and their connecting surface (thanks, Toy Biz. RIP).

With the prep work out of the way, I started making his armor and leather/cloth details with worbla. From there, I snipped the finger pieces off three of the Halloween skull rings and glued them to the belt and bracers. For the studs on the shoulder piece, I superglued some tiny rhinestone stickers (again from the Dollar Tree).

For the smaller skull on his chest strap, I cut the face off of a hard plastic skull bead. I bought a whole bag of them on Amazon without realizing how much of a pain they would be to cut. I don’t even want to guess how many minutes it took to saw one in half with my little xacto saw. I don’t have a dremel buzzsaw attachment to facilitate such a task and truth be told, my dremel was on its last legs at this point and couldn’t hold a charge to save its life no matter how long and how many times I charged its battery pack. Later on, I would come up with an easier method to utilize these hard plastic skull beads without going through the backbreaking labor of cutting any more of the things (here’s a hint: it involved Blue Stuff and Green Stuff).

I sculpted him some big, cylindrical barbarian boots with milliput, eventually bulking them out even more than what is picture below a little later on to better distribute the weight and make it easier for him to stand. Then I dissected the skeleton garland and superglued its skull on his shoulder pauldron and a skeletal hand on each side. I wanted to have the hands dangling from his belt like trophies but they interfered too much with his leg articulation, so I had to glue them lower.

Arriving at the final stage in the building process, I sculpted him a facemask out of Green Stuff as well as some fur for his boots. Again, I feel like I should have sanded his mask down some more after it cured to smooth it out, which would have ended up looking a lot better in the end. I’m still feeling my way through this whole sculpting thing but it’s definitely something I’ll try to be more conscious about in future builds.

As I alluded to earlier, I made a one-part push mold of two skull bead faces out of Oyumaru Blue Stuff and subsequently filled the molds with Green Stuff. Once the Green Stuff cured, I had two ready-made skulls to decorate his boots (no sawing necessary). I cut some leftover worbla scraps into strips and used those to make the criss-crossing straps on his boots.

The giant skull on his shoulder had a noticeable gap, so I lined it with some milliput. I wanted to texture it to look like fur, but I was at the tail end of this box of milliput and it was starting to dry out (in spite of how much I kept wetting it during the mixing process).

I primed the figure in Bulldog adhesion promoter and laid down a basecoat consisting of the following:

Skin Tone: Citadel Macragge Blue and Mechanicus Standard Grey, Vallejo White, and Reaper Dragon Blue and Mountain Stone (I wasn’t keeping track of the quantity I was mixing on my wet palette, just trial and error until I eventually found a mix that worked for me).

• Hair: Citadel Abbadon Black
• Bones/Facemask: Vallejo Artic White brush-on primer followed by Vallejo White. Eye sockets are filled with Citadel Abbadon Black.
• Bracers, Boots, Shoulder Armor, Loincloth: Citadel Dryad Bark
• Belt and Straps: Reaper Leather Brown
• Bracer Skulls and Belt Skull: Vallejo Bright Bronze
• Studs: Vallejo Gunmetal Gray (which I would later repaint with Vallejo Bright Bronze)
• Fur (pictured later): Citadel Krieg Khaki
• Legs: Citadel Naggaroth Night

I should note here that mid-way through the basecoating, it suddenly occurred to me that his mask and skulls needed some battle-damage to make them look less pristine. With no real rhyme or reason, I gouged out some scraps and cuts with my little handheld file set. Once I was satisfied with that, I sprayed off the paint and plastic dust with a can of compressed air and continued on with the rest of the basecoat.

It was only after I finished with the basecoat that I realized his dark purple/Naggaroth Night pants looked too much like he was wearing spandex. My solution was to make a loincloth piece that was flexible enough to, again, stay out of the way of the leg articulation. Thankfully, I had some scrap pieces of EVA foam from my Captain Ray build, so I cut one into a triangular shape and layered on some smaller pieces to both fortify it (as this foam is thin enough that it can rip relatively easily) and add some detail. I glued it together with Mod Podge, then coated the entire thing with Mod Podge, and once it was dry I primed it with Bulldog and painted it separately from the rest of the figure before supergluing it in place.

I’m at the point now where it’s probably a safe bet that my customs will have at least one or more of the following: a cyborg arm, a loincloth, and/or some form of camouflage.

I went heavy with the Citadel Nuln Oil wash because I really wanted to the black shading into all the spaces between the muscles to make them stand out that much more and give the piece an old-school comic book look. I also went heavy everywhere else to get the Nuln Oil into all the scratches and scrapes I put into the skull decorations and to darken and dirty up the leather straps.

I think I also used some Citadel Agrax Earthshade wash on the boots, but it was mostly the Nuln Oil doing all the work here.

I was really looking forward to the dry brushing and highlighting stage, despite the fact that I’d used up all of my blue/gray skintone mix and had to recreate it to the best of my abilities. I wasn’t too terribly worried about it being an exact match with what I had before, because I wanted to go a touch lighter as I dry brushed over the raised areas to create more of a contrast with the darkened recesses. I dry brushed over the fur with Krieg Khaki and also used it to dry brush over the Leather Brown and Dryad Bark-colored areas to (hopefully) create more of a weathered look to the various straps and cloth/leather details.

I made some last minute changes to the base colors here, going over the shoulder armor with Citadel Leadbelcher to give it a new metallic look as well as painting the studs with the same Vallejo Bright Bronze I used for his belt and bracer skull plates. Lastly, I dirtied up the mask and skulls some more by dry brushing then with a small amount of Vallejo Flat Earth. I think I might have also dry brushed some Flat Earth over the leather straps as well.

After touching up the messy areas and giving his hair another coat of Abbadon Black, the Skullbarian was finally ready for his protective clearcoat. I used a matte finish clearcoat here, though I was tempted to go with a glossy finish (I’m glad I didn’t). I sprayed the figure with multiple clearcoats since I was worried about the paint being, as a little bit rubbed off his hands when I was wiping off the excess Nuln Oil during the wash phase. After the third or fourth light clearcoat dried, I was able to pose the figure without fear of paint accidentally rubbing off.

With the Skullbarian finally complete, I’ll leave you with a before and after photo to illustrate the legendary journey from the starting point to the finished product: