01/12/01-- Sorry, but this project isn't dead yet! In my spare bits of time since the last update, I've done little refinements which you can't appreciate here-- replacing the hands with some CC hands (cut below the original SOTW wrists) body shaping, adding bulging veins, etc. All the fine tweaking takes a surprising amount of time, probably because I don't work as intensely and do a lot of evaluative stuff. And goof off. (You've gotta have a free clean hand to handle the beer-tool.) The feet, which I always have a hard time getting interested in, took an evening to get just "so-so". The side-by-side pic is sort of a before/after comparison. I ran across a SOTW bod in one of my body boxes, so you can see what I was talking about earlier in the article. I slammed the SOTW body earlier, but I should stress that it does have some unique positives, which is why I used it in this project. Sure, it's a big ugly & funky body, but in some areas it has more well-hidden articulation than its "contemporaries". It manages to get pressure-tensioned arm/torso and leg/hip joints without showing the center hinge cutout. Take a look at the upper arm ball of your Dragon/Max Steel/Sideshow/TC figures/etc. figures from the side. You'll see that there's a cutout that you can't really do anything to hide, except by covering it with costuming. The SOTW figure doesn't have this problem-- there's only the seam where the arm connects to the body. Another plus is the wrist articulation-- I attached the CC figure's hands below the SOTW wrist because the SOTW figure's wrist gets a better range, and it doesn't look too bad. There's a moralistic kinda lesson here: From a figure-hacking point-of-view, the initial surface cosmetics are far less important than the potential of the underlying structure. You can easily resculpt a bland chest, but it's a lot harder to radically rework articulation so that it blends better. Therefore, you don't want to write off any body styles-- even the Hall of Fame style --because they might have little bits and pieces that work better than anything else. Pic #2 probably elicts a "huh?" response. Dammit, don't you recognize the half-jawbone of the fierce Whateverbeest? These are usually found wherever there's excess putty that's about to go stiff, and are highly prized as weapons by ape-like warriors who can't afford shotguns.

01/13/01-- I promise, I'll try to lay this one to rest soon. I just needed a little more material to split up the original page since it was getting too big. Here are a few more small ideas to make the figure a little more interesting-- This figure really is plain, and it's hard to come up with stuff that I haven't already done that doesn't cover up too much of the body work. So these details are like doodles and don't change the overall look of the figure. The good thing about doodling is that you can do it forever, undo it fairly easily or stop at any time. The face paint is a take-it-or-leave-it thing, kind of inspired by the Schwartzenegger "Conan" movie or some comic books. I didn't want to go overboard with it by using reds and whites, even though it's easy enough to paint over. To do a really convincing job of this, a gloss coat and some crude simulated smearing would probably help. Or you could use real colored creams (like lipstick), but then you'd have genuine smearing which could get unacceptably messy. This is something I've deferred till later; I don't know if I really like the look so far. Pic #2 shows a closeup of some simulated, fairly recent light scarring (I'm not much into severe, realistic gore). It may be difficult to see, which is the way it's supposed to be. It's a mix of brick red acrylic, flesh and some thicker matte varnish, to give it a little body and irregular texture so that it will form a slightly raised area. The area is overpainted with a thin wash of flesh to tone it down and make it blend. Older scars have less red-- some are darker brown and some show up as a lighter, slightly glossy mark. These don't need as much texture, depending on the type of wound. Experiment on yourself and observe first-hand... The tattoos are supposed to be crude, so I didn't get very fancy or worry much about symmetry. Basically, you just have to mute the colors-- no pure colors and use a diluted mix so that you don't create any raised texture. I mixed the black with flesh and overpainted with a thin flesh wash. Very easy. For what it's worth, the other arm's got a crescent moon and star with a stylized mountain pattern underneath. I'm sure it has profound meaning and maybe someday I'll figure out what it is.   LESS BULL