roxybisquaint | TSCC: Custom Action Figures PART 9 (Reply)

I know, I know — enough with these in-progress photos already. Where the hell are the action figures?! They're coming. Soon. I promise. But I've put so much work into this, I couldn't skip over the last step: preparing accessories. So many GI Joe weapons are either really silly or way out of scale - bizarro futuristic guns, oversized pistols, undersized M-16s and the like. Fortunately, I found most of what I needed after digging through mountains of accessories.

Here I've got a pile of potential accessories and I've begun modifying. I cut the grenade launcher off the M-16 and shortened it's stock. The most realistic handgun I could find was way oversized, so I ended up cutting it down significantly into a properly scaled Glock-style pistol. I had to lose the trigger, but oh well.

There was not a single shotgun amongst my accessories and I really wanted Sarah to have one. What to do, what to do. I decided to try making one. My first attempt failed miserably, breaking after I'd spent a good deal of time shaping it. So my next attempt (shown below) was built on a wire frame made from a paperclip. That worked. In person, it looks awesome, but if you study it up close, you can see every little flaw. I don't think Sarah will notice ;)

Originally, I wanted to make a laptop for John as well. But after the labor it took to make that shotgun, I decided there's no way I could make an open laptop (and a closed one wouldn't be very interesting). So John got a backpack. It needed some straps, though, so he could actually wear it on one or both shoulders or carry it in his hand. More modifications...

I ground off the peg sticking out of the pack and drilled 2 holes top and bottom. I decided on ponytail holders for the straps, which I cut, fished through the holes and tied off inside. I probably could have left it like that, but I didn't like the hollow back of the pack staring back at me. I filled it with Super Sculpey, boiled it for a few minutes to harden it, sanded it smooth and painted the whole thing army green. In answer to the question "Can ponytail holders can be painted?", yes they apparently can be. I thinned the paint with a lot of water and sopped it on them. Seems to have worked.

And here's a picture of all the accessories finished:

To backtrack a little, I've also got a few more pictures of figure painting in-progress. They're actually all done now, but I didn't include these when I posted Part 8 of the action figure saga.