Topic: Clonehead's custom figures #2

[Tamer]

Gorgeous Vizla Female Mando. Can you imagine her on a cardback? I gotta say I would love to see you try Bo Katan in this style after seeing this female mando work.

[lucasclones]

Gorgeous Vizla Female Mando. Can you imagine her on a cardback? I gotta say I would love to see you try Bo Katan in this style after seeing this female mando work.

She is a BLAST! Ha! Seriously she ia awesome. We need more femandos!!!

[Clonehead]

Ok how did you get the chest torso onto the body? I have your set of fem mando parts to use, I'm just curious how you added it on. Btw, love your stuff, you're an inspiration bro. Do you have tutorials for your stuff I can look up to gimme pointers?

tutorials on making the custom figures you mean? Why it's all right here in this thread, more or less. I try to report as much as I can of what I am doing here but if you have any questions about what I am doing, dont be afraid to ask. I will help in whatever way that I can.

 I do thank you for your comments. To get the chest armor to fit, you have to shave material off of the figures chest area or, if this isnt too harsh, give her a breast reduction. A hobby knife would work for this task but I used my dremel to cut material out of the way.
Remember that when heated, the resin will become flexible if you needed to try to re shape it but do be careful. That chest piece is delicate because I have thinned the inside of it so much.

Thanks Chad and Shawn. I would need a reference shot, Shawn. I have no doubt that we could do it.

[spudafett]

Ok how did you get the chest torso onto the body? I have your set of fem mando parts to use, I'm just curious how you added it on. Btw, love your stuff, you're an inspiration bro. Do you have tutorials for your stuff I can look up to gimme pointers?

tutorials on making the custom figures you mean? Why it's all right here in this thread, more or less. I try to report as much as I can of what I am doing here but if you have any questions about what I am doing, dont be afraid to ask. I will help in whatever way that I can.

 I do thank you for your comments. To get the chest armor to fit, you have to shave material off of the figures chest area or, if this isnt too harsh, give her a breast reduction. A hobby knife would work for this task but I used my dremel to cut material out of the way.
Remember that when heated, the resin will become flexible if you needed to try to re shape it but do be careful. That chest piece is delicate because I have thinned the inside of it so much.

Thanks Chad and Shawn. I would need a reference shot, Shawn. I have no doubt that we could do it.

Clint, whenever your working with yours do you ever pull your parts early from the mold and fit them to your new figure's body before the resin fully cures?  I've done this in the past with a few helmets and was able to stretch them a little bit bigger than the mold was...

now, that being said, you can definately not do this after the pieces have become completely rigid.  With the resin that I've used I've never tried heating it to warp it, but I immage you could get a little give out of it.  I would recomend that if your going to try heating up an already cured part to do it in the same fashion as boiling a figure to pop it apart, just boil the resin part and then press it onto the area you want it to form fit to...   As clonehead says though, you have to be very careful because your essentially ruining the part in doing this.  your warping it on purpose, but if you warp it wrong and it hardens back up you've messed up the part.

[Clonehead]

sometimes, Yes, spuda, I do that on purpose. I am getting better at heating em up to move for me, if needed.  When I finish up an order of missiles, I check to see if they are warped and heat the warped ones up to straighten em out by rolling em on a flat surface as they cool. Also, I do prefer to clean the flash off of my parts and carve on em while they are still a bit soft. Easier that way.

Update to the parts available. Too tired to post about em now but I now have a back armor piece and a full cod piece for the female mando.

[Tamer]

The latest episode of TCW was full of Bo-Katan. and just full of Mandalorians flying around.

I have a feeling we will see an update here (Clint was the first to tell me the forums weren't workig) so I am gonna wait to do another fp. Thanks for the forum message too Clint. I was actually thinking about not getting online all day till I read your email.

[Clonehead]

you are welcome buddy and yes, it did bum me out. I do have some front page material to post but not here as of yet. I have firefly review pics to put up, more parts for sale pics to put up and, a clearance price pic to put up. Yes, target lowered the price of the cyber maul yet again.

[Cmdr_Vulkus]

Ok cool thx. I aim to do some work soon but I'd love to know how you cast your parts so I could copy some of the ideas Ive seen and Im all about tutorials

[Clonehead]

Getting back down to business, I know I said she was ready for paint but I wanted to get a mock up going of the helmet with the rangefinder that I forgot to do for the last one.
I used the new nubbed mando helmet casting and filled the nub hole with resin. When it cured, I used the dremel to cut out a neck post hole for her body and tacked that CW rangefinder onto it. Now, I know that you would like to see it be a multi position rangefinder and we could certainly do that but I think the hinge flaps on this piece look kind of wonky and I would rather refine how those ends look and just leave it as a static piece. This helmet will serve as an alternate head and I will cast up some kind of pony tail to hang out from under the back of it.

[Tamer]

Hey, her cod piece and belt look a ton better too. Update on the front page.

[Clonehead]

Thanks buddy! I had just started to paint that Dare head and got a few strokes into it and realized,"man, this looks like a dude"LOL and as I was excited about another new part anyways, I opted for the casting of the Avengers black widow head instead. I did a bit of sizing to make the neck work and started like i did on the other one with paintwork to the eyes and a white primer coat for the whole head "i accidently deleted the first shot" After the whites of her eyes were dry,I dotted some lighter grey brown to dot her corneas, then I used a dark greyish brown to paint her a line for her upper eyelids and for her mouth.  After that, I mixed up some flesh tone and did her face and mixed a browner version for the lips and an even darker version for her eye brows.  She  had a bur on her lower cheek but rather than cut it off, I went for the Movie Star Mole and painted it brown. The hair got the darker brown for the recessed areas of her hair and then a reddish brown for the upper areas and finally a more yellow hue of that color for highlights. Finally , I softened the transitions with a brown wash and after it dried, I used the matt varnish to seal and tone down the glossy sheen. When i first started on this head, I thought, "sheesh, this gal is kind of homely" but as things came together, I thought she got better looking. And here all these years I had thought it was fun painting up helmets. I am enjoying doing the heads now.
  Can anyone guess the armor and undergarment color choice? The wife helped me with that one.

[Jedi Minstrel]

Coming along real well.

[Wookie-Balls]

Hey Clint

Mate you have really raised the bar with this pair of lovely ladies - I'm a great fan of your castings and I must order some more!!

Awesome work, can't wait to see more!

[Clonehead]

Thanks a lot, gentlemen! I have a good feeling about this one.
If i may digress, I have another tangent project that I started last night. As I have said, I get excited about a new part sometimes and I just had to find a use for one of those Sgt Airborne heads that I just got a mold working for. I wanted to make some kind of strike team member using that head and a dollar store Duke body and I am having so much fun painting faces anyways...........
OK, one more face painting tutorial and I will quit. I started the same way, painting the whites of his eyes, then I dotted blue for the cornias paying more attention to where the bottom of the dot was in the white of his eyes. Then I used a dark grey to paint a line of his upper eyelid, once again paying attention to where the bottom of the line was. I also did the line of his mouth, his nostrals, and the line where his skin met the openings in the mask with that color. Then came the flesh. After that, I used some dark brown to paint some conservative eyebrows. and mixed a more pink version of the flesh for his lips. The raised outline of the mask openings got a dark grey and the rest of the mask got a medium grey which still looks dark to me. I used the matte varnish to seal it all except the eyes so they would retain a shiny sheen. I figure if I use this grey for the whole body and then put a 3 color camo scheme over the top of it that it will look pretty cool.

I like him. I had been thinking of giving him a stogie though. What do you guys think?

[DarthSinister]

As always, fine looking works here Clonehead.

I was noticing on the last few photos the outstanding paintwork you're doing and it begs a question. On the last CAFN roundtable you made a joke about the new 6" figure line and the fact that our eye sight is suffering with age. How are you able to get that nice detail on the eyes? What's your secret? I've tried extra lighting and spectacles and I still don't get that sharp focus of yesteryear.