Miniature Customization - Jungle Barbarian (He-Man Mini Resin Recast)

 This project made me realize something about why I have so many concurrent projects at once and the rate with which I knock them out. The stuff that I extensively plan for seems to take me forever to complete and will sit around in my works-in-progress pile for months while the projects that are completely off-the-cuff (like this one), I tend to knock out in a weekend or less. I’m not entirely sure what that says about me and the way I self-motivate. At any rate, here’s that He-Man from the Eternia Minis line that I recasted in sapphire blue epoxy resin as part of a crafting experiment involving silicone mold-making.

After filling in all the craters caused by air bubbles with Green Stuff, I replaced his hands which suffered the worst of the air bubble-related damage. Since the sapphire blue casting was my second one, I knew the hands would give me trouble so I had a contingency plan already in place. I sawed the hands off and swapped them out with some spares that I created from a basic Oyumaru/Blue Stuff push-mold that I had set aside in case I had any spare epoxy resin leftover for when I was filling the silicone mold. Despite being made from the exact same epoxy resin, the hands created in the Oyumaru thermoplastic mold were a lot squishier than the ones from the silicone mold, which were rock hard like the rest of the casting. This wasn’t an issue, just something I found interesting since it didn’t do this when I recasted some swords for my Blade Sisters project using the same method.

Once repairs were complete, I wanted to try out the new dremel my brother got me for Christmas (and not a moment too soon, since the one I’d been using since 2015 was on its last legs) and sanded off his chest armor and straps. My plan here was to go for a Jungle Barbarian type character, taking visual cues from Savage He-Man from MOTU: Revelations and Ka-Zar from Marvel Comics. With that in mind, I began sculpting.

Curious to see if the Aves Apoxy Sculpt that I hadn’t used in almost a year was still good, I mixed some up and was pleasantly surprised that it was still usable despite the hardner/greenish part of the putty had dried out some. This is what I used to sculpt the new pecs over where the chest armor used to be. Wanting to make an already over-the-top muscular figure appear even more shredded, I used a Red Hulk Heroclix mini that I happened to have in front of me as an anatomical guide.

I sculpted his hair, obliques/ribs, and back muscles using Milliput. A note on that…this Milliput in particular is terracotta-colored and it stained my fingers a sickly, diarrhea-brown for at least a day after handling the stuff no matter how many times I scrubbed my hands raw trying to get it off. Never let it be said that I don’t suffer for my art.

I glued the figure to a copy of a GI Joe stand I made using moldable thermoplastic beads so that he could stand up.

After allowing my initial sculpting details to fully cure, I realized that the recasted figure was missing his nose. Whether or not the figure’s original nose failed to survive the resin casting (I really couldn’t tell from my initial photo) or I accidentally dremeled it off, I have no idea. Either way, I carefully made him a basic nose with Green Stuff which came out a lot better than I would have predicted, given my inexperience with sculpting. I mixed up some more Green Stuff and made him a loincloth.

I primed the figure with Bulldog adhesion promoter and sprayed it with a flat gray primer. It was here that I noticed some air-bubble damage on the back of his boots that I somehow missed before, as well as one on his leg and an area on his face where I filled in a smaller air bubble crater that would need additional sanding to smooth over.

I did a little touching up with some additional Green Stuff details, namely the cloth around his boots to cover up the holes as well as some extensions to his hair to separate it further from the back and make it easier to paint. I also added some more around his pecs to blend them in better with the rest of his upper body.

I primed the miniature a second time after the Green Stuff touch-ups fully cured and I was ready to paint the basecoat.

A couple things I wanted to mention about the basecoat before I get to the paints used. For his skin tone, I wanted to go for a bronzed barbarian look, so I started out with my lightest fleshtone (Citadel Rakarth Flesh) and did the whole trial and error things where I’d mix in drops of Vallejo Fleshtone, Reaper Leather Brown, and Vallejo Calvary Brown (for that reddish hue) before I eventually landed on something I liked. It occurred to me that I could have probably started with Citadel Bugman’s Glow since it’s already a flesh tone with the reddish tint I was looking for but oh well.

And for his eyes, I considered drawing in some pupils with my Prismacolor markers but I decided to leave then all white for that “berserker rage” effect, which I thought made the piece a lot more fun. All that aside, here are the paints:

• Hair – Reaper Candlelight Yellow and Desert Sand
• Eyes and Teeth – Vallejo White (also painted the eyes Abbadon Black before I went over them with the white).
• Skin – Citadel Rakarth Flesh, Reaper Leather Brown (and possibly Harvest Brown as well), Vallejo Flesh Tone, Vallejo Calvary Brown
• Base – Citadel Castellan Green
• Loincloth and Boots – Vallejo Old Wood and possibly Reaper Naga Green (I would later change the whole thing to Citadel Castellan Green)

I went heavy with the washes, which was primarily Citadel Reikland Fleshshade. This was my first time using Reikland Fleshshade (I got a pot of it for Christmas), though in previous articles I might have referred to Kislev Flesh paint as Reikland Fleshshade by accident. Up until this point, I’d been using Vallejo Flesh Wash and I much prefer Reikland Fleshade. Like all the other Citadel washes I’ve used, I find that it flows much better than other brands’ washes and doesn’t make the model just look dirty. I also applied an Agrax Earthshade wash to the base, the clothes, and the hair.

I dry-brushed the base colors that remained on my wet palette over the raised areas that I hit with the wash and then layered on some Citadel Kislev Flesh over the skin to make him look more natural and less like a human-hotdog hybrid. I think I alternated between dry-brushing on Kislev Flesh and the base skintone a couple different times and I was worried that I completely overdid it and started feeling put-off by the texture left behind by the brush strokes (which, again, is something that I’m really trying to work on).

When I’m in the later stages of painting and my model has too many obvious brush strokes, I find that spraying it with a glossy clear coat helps smooth out the surface. And that’s what I did here.

After the first clearcoat, I started feeling much better about the project. I was getting ready to call it a day when I realized that the figure would look a lot cooler with some weapons. Taking a length of styrene rod, some more Green Stuff, and an action figure knife from a bootleg GI Joe, I started kitbashing him a spear and a blade sheathe. I simply cut the blade off the knife, stuck it to the end of the styrene rod with some Green Stuff and then made some lines with my sculpting tools to create the impression that the blade was affixed to the end of the spear with some vines or old cloth wrapping.

For the knife, I just stuck the leftover handle into a blob of Green Stuff and kneaded it into a sheathe. Once the Green Stuff was cured, I painted the weapons with the following:

• Blade and knife metal – Citadel Leadbelcher (with a little bit of Runefang Steel dry brushed over it)
• Sheath and spear wrapping – Citadel Dryad Bark (dry brushed with some Reaper Naga Green and Citadel Castellan Green)
• Knife handle – Citadel Dryad Bark
• Spear shaft – Vallejo Old Wood and Reaper Harvest Brown
• Wash – Citadel Agrax Earthshade

Since the replacement hands were soft and squishy compared to the rest of the figure, I had an easy time drilling a hole for the spear to fit through. I superglued the spear in place and the knife sheathe to the figure’s lower back before spraying the entire thing with a second protective clearcoat, again going with the glossy finish to blend everything in and make the whole thing glisten.

I had a blast making this and I’m glad I didn’t just toss out my resin recast that didn’t turn out as well as the other one (I still have the silicone mold too, even though it’s not a very good one). I’m probably going to heavily modify the other He-Man Eternia Mini recast I made as well, though I have a boatload of other projects I need to finish up first. So I’ll just leave you with the before and after pic as well as a side-by-side shot of the Jungle Barbarian with the original He-Man Eternia Mini figure that I used to make this project’s mold.