by Dozymuppet
One fine sunny day I was thinking about how awesome Brubaker and Epting's run on Captain America was, and that I wanted to have that version of Cap on my shelves. A massive dislike of the Marvel Legends standard buck, and the subsequent realisation that my collection was heavily skewed towards DC figures, meant that something had to be done. Ponder...
*lightbulb*
DCUC Nightwing base. DCD JLA Atom head. DCUC Robin belt. Gloves, boots and belt sculpted. The Atom's head was still a little too goofy looking despite having the perfect shape, and the exposed ears. Did some slicing and dicing and modified the mask around the cheeks and nose, and added some brow that Cap has, and the Atom doesn't.
Still a little goofy, so I had to get the putty and sandpaper out and go some measure to wiping that smile of his face.
Next major issue was what to do with the scales. It looked like I had two options. One was to create a mould for the scales, possibly using DCUC Aquaman, and then apply the mould on a thing layer over the area of concern. Sounded like a lot of work. But I did a couple of tests just to see how it would work out. Fortunately, I soon realised that I could apply this technique to the shoulders, and all movement would be compromised. Which leads me to option 2: melt the damn things in.
Used a custom tool (broken off metal bristle paintbrush thing), heated up over a candle, and painstakingly applied what must be over 100 scales. I then sanded back the rough edges.
Then re-primed him.
*big photo gap*
So then it was down to paint apps, stars and A, acquiring a shield and the matter of ear-wings. After the primer coat and two or three spray coats of Tamiya Brilliant Blue, the definition of the scales started to be affected. Bit of a bugger. The stripes were applied with the old masking tape method, but it was tricky work, that required a few small touch ups. Too much musculature to deal with! Belt was pretty straight forward, but really effective.
For the stars and the A, I was originally going to paint these in, but initial tests showed I was definitely going to be in tears at some stage, so I went looking for some white contact paper. It's a bit tricky to apply, because it's not very flexible in the nooks and crannies. I'll probably re-apply some new ones at a later stage, or look to do custom decals. The main reasons I didn't go with the decals was because of the cost of the paper. Sheesh.
Earwings were a problem, because they have to be very small. Was planning on making some custom pieces out of an ice cream lid or something, but ended up heavily modding a pair of ML Namor's feet wings. Heavily.
End result:
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