What’s On My Desk (And a Slightly New Direction) – 5/3/22

 It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these updates, so it’s probably a good time to mention that my current focus (at least when it comes to crafting) is on finishing a number of projects that I’m actually planning to sell in the very near future. I need to clear out some space so that I can keep making more, so an Outpost 206 Etsy store is on the horizon. 

I’ve also made major strides in my resin casting of late and I’ve got a ton of ideas for “bootleg” resin art toys that I’m excited to share. I do still have a gigantic pile of one-off personal projects as well as some finished projects from March for which I still need to do write-ups, but all of that is taking a backseat to what I’m working on at the moment. I’m still making my own custom action figures and miniatures, but they’ll no longer be limited to an audience of one like my prior dabblings.

I need to finish painting all of these hard resin luchador figurines, which I’ll be selling in a series of ten two-packs (one rudo with a red base and one tecnico with a blue base) and each of these two packs will be one-of-a-kind. These are just the basecoats, some further along than others, but I’ll be knocking these out and packaging them in short order once I circle back to them. But what I have next is something really special…

When I first started mold making and resin casting late last year, the number one goal I had in mind was to make my own articulated bootleg He-Man figures and over the past week, I applied much of what I’ve learned from my previous resin casting and mold making experiments (as well as what I picked up from the Youtube Academy of the Arts) to finally tick this goal off my crafting bucket list. Pictured above are my fully assembled, fully articulated prototypes for my upcoming series of MOTU bootlegs.

Using a bootleg He-Man figure from my collection (previously seen in my DIY mold making compound article where I cast it as an epoxy resin statue), I made silicone molds from each of its parts and cast them in flexible polyurethane resin so that the ball joints not only tightly fit into the sockets. I also modified an Origins Skeletor head to fit onto the bootleg body, which I’ll be using as the basis for the buck system that I’ll be using for my upcoming series of bootleg art action figures. I’ll be rolling out some more custom head sculpts too, just as soon as I get more silicone rubber in the mail. Yeah, unfortunately reusable thermoplastic molding compounds like Composimold and my homemade stuff aren’t an option here, since flexible polyurethane resins will only work in silicone molds.

These prototypes were the initial castings that I made from a trial kit of Smooth-On Smoothcast 45D semi-rigid resin to more or less clean out and break-in the silicone molds. For the figures that I’m actually planning to sell, I’ll be casting them with Specialty Resin and Chemical Flex-It 90 resin which is much more consistent and solid-feeling than Smoothcast 45D.

The amber-colored torso piece on the left side of the photo was made using Flex-It 90 but the rest of these initial parts were cast in Smoothcast 45D. As you can hopefully see, the parts are based on a ball joint/socket system and are all easily interchangeable while also being a tight fit and can be rotated without having to worry about anything popping off. This was important for me to implement in my figures because you see so many $100+ bootleg resin art toys that are held together with magnets and while I’m by no means trying to disparage them or their creators, I wanted to retain the essence of an action figure and I feel like non-articulated slug figures and ones held together with magnets are missing some of that. It’s just my own personal preference, but if I were to pay $140 for a bootleg resin art toy, I would want it to at the very least move like a $5 action figure (not that you can even buy an action figure in the store for $5 these days, but I’m sure you get my point).

Oh, and I also popped the arms off a blow-molded bootleg luchador toy from Mexico (I got a six pack of these things on Ebay) and filled the hollow figure with resin so that I can eventually make a silicone mold of it as well. Like most cheap, blow-molded toys, these figures have a little “blow hole” on the tops of their heads where the air was pumped into the parison (that’s the hollow plastic tube that goes into the mold at the factory) and that’s where I poured in the resin. I kind of want to cut it open and peel off the plastic outer layer just to see what it looks like now that the resin’s solidified but I’m going to resist that urge for the time being because I have other plans for this guy.

As soon as I get some more silicone rubber and I figure out the best way to articulate the arms (i.e. drill out sockets where they previously attached and modify the body to fit the arms or glue ball joints casted from a He-Man figure to the sides and modify the arms to fit the body), I’ll be using it as another buck body for a separate line of bootleg art toys that I think people will really get a kick out of once they see what I’ve got in mind. I love Mexican bootleg toys and their illustrious history amongst collectors and it’s going to be an absolute blast to pay homage to them with my own resin art toys. Bootlegs of bootlegs, if you will.

I’ll be making an announcement on the blog when I officially open my Etsy store. You can find it linked here, so watch this space for when I eventually add my listings.