Shop Log - 6/21/22

Since my last update, I’ve mostly spent my hobby time making the molds for my action figure’s basic buck body (torso, arms, legs, etc) with the SRC brand Cast-A-Mold 24 silicone rubber. I do still have my previous molds of the same parts, but the silicone I used to make those wasn’t vacuum degas. If I were to try pressure casting with those molds, they would probably come out of my pressure pot full of the little spiky bubbles on the surface which result from the pressurization popping bubbles within the silicone and then the resin filling those newly created voids, which is why you always need to degas the silicone in a vacuum chamber before pouring it. I have one mold left and it should hopefully be fully cured by Wednesday (since it’s a two part mold and the first part won’t be finished curing until at least tomorrow morning, after which I’ll pour the second half). But I’m saving all of that for a series of separate articles that details how I make my custom resin action figures.

For this article, I’ll talk a little bit about what I plan to do with my first batch of twelve or thirteen figures (hard to say because there are still parts that I cleaned with MEK but haven’t assembled yet) that I made with Flex-It 90 resin, the ones I deemed not good enough for sale due to how marred they were with air bubbles, since they were made before I purchased a pressure pot. My trial wave, if you will. 

I started painting my original batch of figures and still plan on finishing them because painting action figures is  relaxing, fun, and good practice. And also, I plan to use these as hand painted samples/prototypes for the more quality figures that I’ll be producing. I’m using these imperfect castings to more or less workshop different decos and variations for my Mr. Boneface series of figures (as well as subsequent lines that use the same parts).

That way, I can use my painted sample figures as a sort of color guide (almost like a pantone book) when I’m pigmenting my resin to try and match the paint colors as best I can and try to keep the colors consistent from one figure to the next. I’ll only be painting the details (boots, loincloths, faces, wrist bands, etc) on the final production figures and letting the dyed resin act as the base color, which is pretty much how action figures are produced in the factories using colored plastics. On top of that, I’m heavily considering giving my Mr. Boneface figures added cape accessories (likely made out of EVA foam since I still have a lot of that) and these samples will also serve as mannequins for the different patterns I’ll likely cycle through before deciding on final pieces to cut out of the material.

Pictured below are the initial five that I painted:

Ideally, I want the line to consist of six figures with their own unique color schemes (two with the hooded skull head, two with the skull head, and two with the bandana skull head) with an extremely limited run of several copies each. About thirty figures in total for my Mr. Boneface line. I should note here that these samples aren’t representative of the final designs and the designs I’ll ultimately pick out for the line may have slight variations in the color as well as additional decos. 

For instance, if I chose the gold one for one of my two skull heads in this line (and I’m thinking I will), I’ll probably try to mix up a flat yellow gold since I won’t be able to replicate the metallic gold. And because this figure is an homage to the Japanese superhero Ogon Bat, the final figure will also have black Wolverine-stripes down each of his sides that I didn’t feel like painting on the sample at the time (though I will print out masking patterns to neatly apply the stripes to the final figures).

Another one of my painted samples is this guy, inspired by an incredibly colorful Skeletor variant that I saw in a recent Ed’s Retro Geek Out video on youtube. Supposedly, there’s a Poland-exclusive variant of Skeletor from the vintage Masters of the Universe line with this (or at least a very similar) color scheme though I haven’t been able to find any other sources online to verify that. Still, it’s a fun deco and another one that I’m considering for the final six just by virtue of how strange it looks.

But I’m keeping my option open because I still have three more Mr. Boneface samples that I need to paint (and before that, decide how I want to paint them) as well as my three “Death Master” figures that I’m thinking of including as part of a larger retro-style barbarian series. Here they are primed in flat black:

I’ll be sure to update you after I paint these and see what interested parties think, i.e. which designs/color decos that they like best out of the nine or so potential Mr. Boneface designs. I do have some ideas for what I want to paint the final three Mr. Boneface samples, but I’ll keep those a secret for now.

If I do manage another Shop Log update in the next day or two, it will probably be about other miscellaneous side projects that I've wrapped up over the past week or so (more quickie customs and I resin figurine that I finally finished painting after almost forgetting about). The article about my mold making process is forthcoming but it will be a lot more in-depth, but for anyone curious about that sort of thing, I'm sure it will be worth the wait.