Shop Log - 7/15/22

 Much the same as last week, I’ve been dividing my crafting time between a bunch of disparate resin casting/mold making projects, doing a little bit of each but not really making a ton of progress on any one thing. I’m hoping that a lot of what I have been working on will save me some time down the road, particularly my recent efforts in making a stockpile of rigid urethane parts (blanks) that I can later customize and mold as all new parts for future homebrew action figures. As you can see in the picture below, I’ve made urethane copies of my MOTU KO and wrestler legs, torsos, and heads (as well as the stand that I’ll include with my MOTU KO figures). I also finished sanding off all the details on my cheapo 4-inch scale toy soldiers and (not pictured here) covered up all the holes my dremel made in the hollow plastic with Apoxie Sculpt. But we’ll circle back to those momentarily…

But first, I want to demonstrate what I mean when I say I’m going to customize the urethane resin blanks and why. Pictured below is one of the blank torsos for my MOTU KO buck system that I sculpted some fur onto using Milliput. The intention here is to create a separate “beast buck” inspired by the original Beastman from Masters of the Universe (whose parts were also used to create a variety of the later fur-covered characters in the line like Grizzlor, Moss Man, and Stratos). 

As part of this beast buck, I also plan to sculpt some furry arms and legs as well using the urethane blanks pictured above. When paired with different custom head sculpts, I’ll be able to create any number of different bestial characters (werewolves, yetis, bigfoots, Toho-inspired Gargantuas/Frankenstein monsters just to name a few). That’s the magic of a buck system and why I’m going through all this trouble to cast all these urethane resin blanks. I could probably do the same level of customization with parts cast in the Flex-It 90 flexible resin that I typically reserve for my final products and make molds of them without too much trouble, but as I mentioned before, I find that rigid urethane resin is easier to sand and blend, easier to dremel large chunk out of, easier to glue bits onto (and pieces of urethane resin glued together bonds remarkably well), and provides a nice solid base to sculpt on top of using various epoxy putties/modeling compounds.

I also customized a pair of legs that I cast from the same Adventure Man legs mold that I mentioned a while back. I cut off his boots and sanded away the belt, adding some Apoxie sculpt to even out the surface. I wanted to give this set of legs bare feet to replace the boots (and later sculpt some tattered pant cuffs over them) so I took the ones from a completely different bootleg He-Man figure; one I’ve yet to identify as I bought it loose on ebay without any of its accessories (though I highly suspect it’s from the oddly named “Ninja Warrior and His Combat Master” line). At any rate, I didn’t care to make a mold of that entire Ninja Warrior set of legs as those molds tend to be quite massive and it would have wasted a ton of silicone, so I made a mold of just the feet and casted several urethane copies of those so that I can graft them onto this legs blank as well as the pair of more traditional MOTU-style legs when I make those for my aforementioned beast buck. I also plan to sculpt some pockets and probably a different belt or some overhanging torn-up cloth to further change the appearance of the pants themselves.

The ball joint (that allows the legs to pop into the bottom of the torso) for this particular legs casting didn’t quite fill up all the way, so I swapped it out with one cast in Flex-It 90 from a pair of cast-off/reject legs that I had laying around.

I also experimented with casting accessories for my figures, again making urethane copies of different action figure weapons from my overflowing bits boxes. I did have some weapons made for MOTU or MOTU knockoff figures (particularly that Zodak gun and the three weapons from an old Imperial Toys “Dragons, Knights, and Daggers” set) but I was mostly looking for stuff that were a good it in my Mr. Boneface figures’ hands. Like the body part blanks, the intention here is to cast some existing weapons out of urethane resin to subsequently customize and kitbash them into something new that I can make a mold out of and cast in Flex-It 90 resin. I took five of the six weapons you see in the pic below and molded them all at once in my first ever gang/tree mold. I made a separate mold for the Zodak gun, as I want to also use just that piece to make a few more repro copies for my personal collection of vintage MOTU figures (again, all of which I bought loose on ebay because it’s cheaper). While the network of sprues left behind by the various wooden skewer and tooth-pick air vents that I glued to all the parts was pretty wild (I seriously felt like I was building a model kit), the tree mold worked quite well and I’m glad I went that route instead of making individual molds for each piece.

Oh and I cast some more head blanks while I was at it and used the leftover silicone from pouring my tree mold to make molds of some micro sized Godzilla and Baragon sofubi toys just to see if Cast-A-Mold 25T would actually cure over the extremely soft material from which the originals were made. And it did! Between these super soft mini sofubis and the M.U.S.C.L.E. figures I’ve made molds of, I’ve yet to come across a surface that Cast-A-Mold 25T silicone can’t successfully mold.

I decided my Dethlor-inspired Mr. Boneface figures needed a retro sci-fi ray gun. So I cut some pieces off the urethane casting I made of the “Dragons, Knights, and Daggers” blaster, glued the back part onto the front of the barrel and replaced the handle with that of the tiny knife from the picture above. Here’s the prototype of the accessory being test-fit into the figure’s hand and I was quite pleased with how it looked. And yes, I still need to clean up all the flash on my final Mr. Boneface castings, but let’s try to focus on one thing at a time…

I went ahead and made silicone molds of that gun, a random shield accessory that I found was a perfect fit for my Mr. Boneface figures’ arms, the beast buck torso, as well as what I think will be the final design for the collector’s stands that I plan to include with my Mr. Boneface figures and probably all my subsequent MOTU-inspired figures as well. To season the molds and give me an idea of how the final products will look, I cast all of them in Flex-It 90 resin that I pigmented black. Note that these particular castings aren’t great (and I didn’t really bother cleaning up most of the flashing), mostly because it was so insanely hot and humid that it greatly accelerated the already brief three-minute potlife of the Flex-It 90 and they were already starting to solidify before I was able to get them into the pressure pot. It also didn’t help my cast that I tried to do so many different molds at once, but whatever. These served their purpose.

Here’s a test fitting of the new weapons, stand, and torso, along with a random set of arms, legs, and a head from my box of reject parts. Everything fits, so I’m happy with it.

And before I officially move on from the subject of buck bodies and urethane blanks (at least for this Shop Log, anyways), I would be remiss not to give some progress shots on the aforementioned toy soldier interchangeable buck system parts and the process that went into making the silicone molds: one or the two sets of legs, one or the big beefy set of arms, and another that contains two more pairs of arms in different poses. The mold for the head blanks was already completed. If you don’t already know, this is a shot of my mold boxes and mold cup before I poured in the silicone (after degassing it in my vacuum chamber, of course).

Once the molds were ready, I use the last of my Smooth-On Smoothcast 305 urethane casting resin to make a whole bunch of blank buck body parts for my potential 4” scale figures. When I ran out, I cracked open a trial kit of Smoothcast 65D that I purchased some months back. 65D is from their line of semi-rigid resins. That’s how I was able to get the head, arms, and legs of that example figure to snap together. It has an even shorter potlife than Flex-It 90 with only two and a half minutes to get it poured into the molds, into the pressure pot, and under pressure before it starts to fully cure.

It’s pretty neat, but I don’t think I would ever use 65D for a final figure beyond my initial design and prototyping phase. I was able to disassemble the little sample figure without any of the ball joints snapping off, which is nice if I want to test fit parts as I sculpt them before. With my urethane blanks, I think it’s best to just cast them, customize them, make molds of them, and then stash the master parts away for safe keeping in case I need to make more molds of that particular piece.

As for what I kind of figures I plan to make with all these blanks…. I don’t really know yet. But now I have a big bag of blank parts for whenever inspiration strikes.

This week’s random side project involves one of the Marx cowboy figurines that I duplicated with Smoothcast 320 resin last month when I was first learning how to pressure cast. I decided to paint this one like the Lone Ranger. Granted, our gunslinger figurine doesn’t have a very Lone Ranger-esque expression on his face but I can still work with that.

For his iconic domino mask, I’d initially thought about sculpting one out of Green Stuff but it wouldn’t stick to the resin. I tried Worbla next, but couldn’t get the shape right because Worbla is incredibly difficult to cut into precise, tiny pieces. So I just painted one on and saved myself any further headaches.

For the blue, I used Citadel’s “the Fang” (a denim-colored blue) mixed with some Vallejo white, which I also used for the hat. The skin was a mix of Vallejo basic fleshtone and Citadel Kislev Flesh. Everything else was my usual staple paints: Abaddon Mephiston Red, Runefang Steel. You know the drill.

Also, I didn’t prime this figure like I do literally everything else I paint so the basecoat was really fragile with paint rubbing off right and left. Thankfully, an intermediate Krylon matte finish clearcoat after I finished the basecoat set things right.

I went super heavy on the black Nuln Oil wash since I wanted to get into the recesses of all the exquisitely sculpted detail in this piece. If I had the space and the inclination, I would totally start collecting other 5” scale Louis Marx cowboy figurines because the sculpting on these old toys is on point.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet gotten around to finishing the paint job (i.e. dry brushing over the areas I shaded with the wash and adding highlights) but I did start working on a custom diorama-style base for the figure. In the cupboard where I store the crafting supplies that I don’t have room for anywhere else, I have a bag of plastic stands for 12” dolls that I found at a thrift store. That hole is where you attach the support rod that holds up the doll (kind of like an unarticulated version of that “arm” you see that comes with the bases you get on a lot of Japanese action figures like SH Figuarts, Figma, Revoltech, etc) but I didn't need that part for what I was trying to do here.

I painted it up with some Citadel Stirland Mud technical paint (which I never used before, though it came with one of my Warhammer start paints kits) and while it did give it some texture, it was ultimately too dark and swampy looking for what I wanted here. So I flocked it with some craft sand before the Stirland Mud was fully dried. Once the base was dry and all the excess craft sand had been shaken off, I gave it a light dry brushing with Citadel Kreig Khaki layer paint to lighten up the surface. I also might have dabbed some Citadel Zamesi Desert in a couple places to give the colors a little more variety.

I would later fill the hole with some aluminum foil, super glued it down, and cover up the hole with some Green Stuff. I wadded up some excess foil and rolled it over the Green Stuff to give it what I hope will be a rocky texture once I finally paint it. Right now, it just looks like a gross green blob but hopefully we can change that.

So expect the thrilling conclusion to my custom Lone Ranger side project when I finish the last phase of his paint job and affix him to his diorama base in my next Shop Log, as well as some more updates on what I’ve been working on.