Projects Log 5/25/22 – Sanding, Sculpting Practice, Dr. Manhattan Baltard, and a Surprise Custom Action Figure

So I finally got the methyl ethyl ketone/MEK in the mail yesterday and I should, in theory, have everything I need now to prep my flexible resin castings for paint per the method I picked up from Rainbow Yawn (who, to recap, was having the same problem that I was with his bootleg He-Man figures). I had trouble sleeping last night, so I finished dremeling my castings. My neighbors just moved out not too long ago so I wasn’t worried (and I doubt they would have heard the dremel through the walls anyway). I probably don’t need to tell you how much quicker and more efficient this was than continuing to take a sanding sponge and little sanding sticks to everything.

I also mixed up some Milliput for the first time in forever and filled in some of the more persistent air bubble holes, particularly in the left foot on some of the castings as well as other holey areas that didn’t respond well to my earlier attempts at surfacing and sanding them away.

During my lunch break, I had an hour to kill so I put on all my PPE (half-mask with filters, splash goggles, and butyl gloves with cotton gloves underneath) and started washing as many pieces as I could with the MEK. I dampened some cotton pads with the MEK before using them to wipe down the parts, going over them at least twice before setting them aside in a separate box to air dry. Butanone’s are a lot like acetone or isopropyl alcohol in that they dry out pretty quickly and don’t leave a residue (at least none that I could see), so I don’t bother wiping them off after apply the MEK.

I’ll probably finish cleaning the rest of the parts after I post this update and then hopefully tomorrow, I’ll see how the painting goes with a “pilot” figure before doing the rest. Fingers crossed. I know it worked for Rainbow Yawn but it feels like I’ve been on pins and needles this entire month waiting to see how this paint prep would turn out for me.

Even though I finally got my MEK and scratch-resistant 2K automotive clear coat, I was still compelled to continue my experiments with using Angelus brand leather paints on flexible resin, this time using the Baltard figure made from my clean-out castings made for no other reason than to season the molds (hence why he looks like complete garbage and I made no effort to clean up the mold lines or fill in any of the air bubble holes). What I want to find out here is: if I prime the figure with Angelus paints (which are made to flex with leather without cracking and are commonly used on rubber soles as well), paint over that with regular acrylic hobby paints, and then paint over that with neutral/clear Angelus leather paint…will the paint job still flex without cracking?

After washing the figure in soap and water, I primed it with the Angelus black paint. Then I slopped on some Reaper Dragon Blue after picking the paint at random. Again, this is just a paint test so I’m not overly concerned with how it looks or how well it covers. But since he kind of looked like Dr. Manhattan, I used some Citadel White Scar paint to give him some pupiless white eyes. Then I applied the layer of neutral Angelus paint over that and I’m giving it the full 24 hours to let it dry. We’ll see how the paint passes the bend test and if it works, I might just hit it with the 2K anti-scratch clearcoat and see if that will help it pass the fingernail scratch test as well. If it passes, that would be a fairly big development as I didn’t wash these particular pieces with MEK (having started this paint test a day or two before it arrived in the mail).

I’ve been practicing a little bit more with polymer clay in my ongoing effort to teach myself how to sculpt designer/art toys. Inspired by a video from Evil Roy, another youtuber who I really like. I wanted to try to make an articulated ronin samurai figure just to see if I could. It turns out that I couldn’t. When I got to the arms, I realized that I was in way over my head and ended up tossing the whole thing out. This isn’t the first time I got over ambitious with a new hobby and I anticipate several more failures before I really feel comfortable working with polymer clay.

So I’m going to set my sights much lower on my next attempt at sculpting. I’m thinking something along the lines of this more simplified sculpture from Evil Roy. Or maybe I'll try to do something akin to one of these Kid Robot Dunny figures pictured below. The original figure is the red one on the left, the other two are epoxy resin copies that I made of it a while back with the intention of painting them (eventually). Ideally, I want to start sculpting one really simple art toy every day (okay, almost every day) but I probably won’t start that in earnest until sometime in June for reasons I’ll get to at the end of the update.

But as I mentioned before, one of my crafting goals for this year is to sculpt my own designer resin art toy to mold, cast, paint and hopefully sell in small quantities (but I’ll settle for just molding, casting, and painting them). Hopefully a few months of consistent trial and error practice projects coupled with whatever beginner’s polymer clay toy sculpting classes I can find for free online will build up the bare minimum sculpting proficiency I need to realize this goal.

And speaking of sculpting, another project I have my heart set on (at the moment, anyway) is to make my own series of M.U.S.C.L.E. inspired mini figures. The idea came to me as the result of some molding failures, particularly when I tried to make molds of this Mexican Bootleg Skeletor figure several months back. This was pretty baffling to me, because no matter what parts I tried to mold (much like my fully-sized MOTU KO buck body, this tiny bootleg Skeletor is also connected by simple ball and socket joints on the waist, neck, and arms), the castings turned out poorly due to the silicone that directly touched the master figure on the inside of the mold never fully curing. This resulted in a silicone mold that picked up very little details (and in the case of the head, none of the details) and blank, almost featureless parts.

At first I’d assumed this was due to me possibly mixing the silicon's Part A and Part B incorrectly, but my second attempt (using a different brand of silicone too, no less) yielded the same results. That’s when it dawned on me that it might be the squishy, almost rubbery plastic that I likened to that of an old school (as well as new school Super 7) M.U.S.C.L.E. figure. To further test this theory, I took a tiny bit of leftover silicone from a different pour and made a silicone mold of a Super 7 luchador M.U.S.C.L.E. figure that I had laying around (pictured next to the Mexican bootleg Skeletor) and yes, I confirmed that silicone will not properly mold figures made out of soft rubbery plastic.

That’s when I got the idea that I could still use the mold in the picture to make my own M.U.S.C.L.E. figures by using it to cast “blank” copies in hard epoxy resin (the clear and clear blue guy seen standing to the right of the mold that spawned them), customize them with details made from Green Stuff and maybe a bit of kitbashing, and subsequently make silicone molds of those that I can later cast in squishy, flexible resin (and yes, unlike the original material, casting them in epoxy resin will allow proper silicone molds to be made of them, since I use this same method when I make custom head sculpts for my MOTU KO figures).

It's just one of the many ideas I have that I've gotten myself excited about. This should also give me some extra practice in sculpting small details (though I’ve been doing that in most of my projects anyway).

The last thing I did over the course of the past week or so was a quick custom action figure that I started making on a whim last Sunday. Impatiently waiting for my MEK to arrive in the mail, I felt the burning need to paint something so I grabbed this Final Faction Brute figure that was taking up space in my bits bin and started turning him into a Doom Cyberdemon-inspired Cyber Brute. I swapped his feet with ones from a cheap Gundam model that I built a while back, cut off part of his arm and replaced it with a cannon from either a Batman or an Iron Man figure, and then kitbashed the rest of his cybernetics with some extra pieces from Creative Assembly No. 57 robot models.

Then I hit primed the figure with Duplicolor adhesion promoter before spraying on a coat of Krylon flat gray primer. I still prefer my Rustoleum 2X Painter’s Touch primer but it’s really overpriced online now and the nearest Lowe’s didn’t carry it. But I’m happy with the Krylon.

For the basecoat, I painted the skin with Citadel Bugman’s Glow with a few dabs of Mephiston red to give it that demonic hue. The cybernetics I painted with Citadel Leadbelcher. Maybe I should have painted them black first and then dry brushed on the silver, but I still thought it ended up looking fine. I would also paint the horns and the spikes on the back of the arms with a mix of Citadel Krieg Khaki and White Scar, but that was after I took this picture.

Then I gave the figure a heavy black wash in Citadel Nuln Oil. The sculpting on these Dollar Tree Final Faction figures are top notch and the details are always a joy to wash and dry brush.

And speaking of dry brushing, I decided to go a few shades lighter for the fleshtone to give it a more varied look and highlights that would contrast nicely with the darker, more reddish basecoat. I achieved this by mixing some Vallejo basic fleshtone with Citadel Kislev Flesh (and possibly a tiny bit of Mephiston Red and Bugman’s Glow as well). I dry brushed some Vallejo flesh tone and White Scar over the horns and what I assumed were his teeth to give them a more off-white boney look

I dry brushed on some Runefang Steel over all the cybernetic parts to make them pop more though the lighting in the pic below makes it look like I accidentally painted the cable on the back of one of his legs the flesh tone, which actually wasn’t the case (believe it or not). I gave the figure a matte clearcoat instead of a gloss, since I wanting to try out the Krylon brand matte finish clearcoat that I picked up on the same trip to Lowe’s where I bought the Krylon flat gray primer. I’d run out of the matte finish Aleene brand acrylic sealer that I typically used when I didn’t want a glossy finish on a final piece and the Krylon stuff appears to be just as good.

Oh, and if you spin his head all the way around to where the horns are pointing up, it looks like a completely different head that still fits with the overall motif. I'll chalk that one up to a happy accident.

I should probably note here that I’ll probably go radio silent for a bit, since I’ll be going home to my family’s place in Ohio to puppysit for about two weeks and won’t be bringing any of my crafting supplies. But once I get back sometime before mid-June, expect some big updates about my first wave of MOTU KO figures which I hope to have ready for sale on my Etsy shop if/when the painting is complete and I have the packaging figured out (I’m thinking a polybag with a custom header card). But I won’t take off without first leaving you with a before and after pic of my Cyber Brute custom action figure: