A Question of Action Figures..

[Chrispy]

Recently, I was browsing the McFarlane website and I noticed the tortured souls action figures. I\'ve seen them before but decided against getting them then (Clive Barker is one of the few men that truly scare me) but now I bought two on Ebay. Anyhoo, looked at the in progress shots and found this one:

..And people thought the Dark Age figs wee disconcerting.. Anyhoo, is it me or is that made out of greenstuff or something of the like? Maybe possibly a greenstuf/milliput mix? But this bring up many other questions as well: Why is it in production shots they use plastic that\'s already made to fit as the flat peices? How do you become an action figure sculptor? Is it easier in 6\" than in 1\"? To this last question, I\'d have to say yes because if you browse the page, you\'ll see it\'s 99% like the concept, and of course as most Confrontation people will tell you, the sculpts are usually around 80%.

And can you really give an action figure a better paint job? Inking and highlighting that \'orrid plastic looking metal, for example. On my America McGee\'s Alice fig, it looks like she spilled strawberry jam on herself and not blood, I would give it some more if it wasn\'t collectable.

I don\'t know why, but i\'m interested in all kinds of figures.. (perhaps I really AM the Despot of Mid-Nor!! ) Just thought I\'d post and see what others think.

Oh, and one more thing... without the buzzsaw halo, do you think this looks like a better grafted harpy for Dark Age? I sure do.. Conversion idea.. conversion idea...

 

[Errex]

Action figures

It is my understanding that toy sculptors work in wax/wax compounds to make the original, wich later are casted in resin to make the masters for a given toy.

A great source on the particulars of sculpting action figures can be found in the several specialized toy magazines on sale in the US (Toy Fare, Action Figure Digest, etc.). Aside from the people that work for McFarlane Toys, there are independent studios wich get comissions on several of the more popular toy franchises. Among my personal faves, is Art Asylum, lead by this guy Digger, who happens to be one of the more gifted sculptors out there.

And yes, Clive Barker IS scary. I\'ve been re-playing Undying lately, and it still scares the sh*t outta me.

 

[No Such Agency]

*Shudder*

OK, that is just ****ed up. I mean, bad enough that it\'s a sick combination of elements of sex appeal and bodily mutilation (reminds me of the animated female cadavers in \"The Cell\"), but on top of it all she doesn\'t even have Swivel Arm Battle-Grip! What\'s the world coming to?

 

[Chrispy]

Actually, No Such Agency her wings as well as that buzzsaw are fully articulated.. who needs kung fu grip when you have a rotating saw in your head?

 

[Garyo]

Professional sculpting

Look for a product called Castaline (sp?) You can find find it online at \"The Complete Sculptor\". Many of the toy sculptors are using this wax based product to do their prototypes. You can leave it under a heat lamp and it stays soft and workable and hardens as it cools to room temp.

 

[Chrispy]

Is that anything like jewlers use? My mom thought I should get into it because of my attention to details, but it was just too expensive. I remember something about making an intial sculpt from wax, though.

 

[Garyo]

Jewlers tend to use an even harder modeling wax. Castaline is somewhere between modeling wax and polymer-clay. If you are really interested in sculpting models... pick up a sculpting life study class at school. You\'ll learn a ton.

 

[Cenobyte]

Chrispy - you just hit it. I searched the McFarlane Site for exactly these toys too, cause i read the whole \"The Legend of Primordium\" Story from the \"Tortured Souls\" Line and it just kicks ass. Clive barker is really pure horror at it\'s best.

What i\'ve thought about was a warhammer army of undivided chaos with Characters and Champions featuring the Characters in the storyline. Want a little vignette with Agonistes, who just stands in one edge of the battlefield, watching his \"creations\", how well they do in combat against mortals. That is what i call a Theme-based army concept.will require some serous conversion and sculpting works, but with some of the dark eldar miniatures (which seem hardly inspired by barker) i think i will be able to build up someting suitable...

just think about \"The Scythe-Meisters exalted Chaos Warriors\" - makes me shiver...

 

[Cenobyte]

btw.:

this is really, really hard-ass fucked up... yurghz...

have yopu seen the other ones painted? line one was dead cool, but line 2 seems a little too much... horror is okay, but splatter isn\'t what i need... i mean... have you seen \"Feverish\"? this is really to much...
Same goes for \"talisac\" from line one...

nope... there is no figure i like in the second line...

 

[Chrispy]

You actually have the whole story? How\'d you pull that off? Yeah, the 2nd incarnation is a little...much. That\'s why I only chose to get Camille. I also got Lucidique from the first one.. but Mongroid freaked me out in the first one too.. I\'m bidding on the full set out of box but that\'s just so I have another Camille to play with (I always end up playing with them, I\'m a terrible collector ) and I\'d just sell the rest singly, cause I don\'t want those things around me!

What kinda Chaos army would it be, anyways? Slaanesh? Kinda seems fitting. As for life sculpting class, I don\'t think my college has it. The scultping class from what I\'ve seen is putting pecies of scrap iron together and expounding how it \"reflects humanity\'s torment\"... by that I mean it\'s crap.

 

[Cenobyte]

just e-mail me, then you will have the story too... if you know what i mean.

chaos... thought of undivided, \'cause my main gods are tzeentch and nurgle... the ones i don\'t like are slaanesh and khorne... so i\'ll take undivided, cause i think the tzeentchian minis are cool enough...

\"there is a secret song in the center of this world... and it\'s sound is like razors through flesh!\"
\"explorers. in the further regions i experence. demons to some. angels to others...\"
- Pinhead

HR is still the best...

 

[Chrispy]

Cool! Looking forward to that. In the mean time, I wanna get back to one of my main questions:
Is repainting action figs considered minis?

As I said before, the scale is bigger, but that means more work (For those of you who think anime kits are easy, I dare\'s ya to buy one and try) But so many figs have a really sucky version of metal. I\'m not saying I\'d use NMM on one (that\'s too much even for me) as the scale would make it look weird, I\'m just saying I\'d re paint the metal parts if given the chance. If so, this\'d be a great way of practicing on large scale kits without dropping down at least $25. All of this probably dates back to me and my brother making new figures out of destroyed GI Joes, so....

 

[Cenobyte]

sorry... i got OT.

all i can say is that i recently planned to put my brushes on an older action figure from mcfarlane toys also. but i did not yet do... in fact, i\'m afraid to ruin it that way... cause i think it\'s really hard to get such a big think look good. with my paint style it will take an enormously much time, to get something good out of the whole thing...

but dirk stiller uses his washing techniques on bigger stuff... thought about that too, but i have not really understood, how the whole washing works... think i will coup with that problem in a few months. now i have to build and paint some spawns of agonistes.

ah, and btw.: you got mail.

 

[Chrispy]

That\'s weird. I had no problem with my Rei and that\'s the size of a small fig. First time on large scale, too but I used an airbrushwhile she was still unglued, s I didn\'t have to use liquid mask that much. Even so, that stuff requires 3-4 coats to pull away. I hand painted her eyes, shirt and hair, though. Main problem with action figs is how they move, and if paint gets in the cracks it could stop it from being action and just a figure.

 

[Cenobyte]

(ot: got the story? how do you like it?)

well... i would fix all the articulated joints with superglue first, before i would start painting anything...
how big is the problem, that the stuff, these action figures are made of are still limber in a certain way? i mean... is it worth the effort to paint something, that is not made of metral, plastic or resin?

please excuse my bad english... btw.

 

[Chrispy]

(Got the story, wasn\'t too scared by it.. and that scared me. )

Well, it might be awhile before I try. I just got my 12\" Extra Bloody Limited Editon Lucidique and like I said, I\'m not opening it for quite some time. I might, however, go to Toy\'R\'Us and see about other good sculpts that need better paint jobs.... That also scares me, Tortured Souls toys at Toy\'R\'Us (\"Mommy, why does that lady have a ouchie through her head?\" )

One thing I saw on the Mcfarlane website I might look into to beeve more evil is bases with strewn corpses to scale. I have no problem at 25 mm scale, but larger is just grosser. So that\'s my new project: to get an action fig and convert/paint it. For under $15 I can afford to have a little fun. Only problem with the superglue is that the Tortured Souls figs have real chains, but then who said I\'d be using them.. perhaps a disembowled Harry Potter?

 

[Chronique]

As to the wax-based sculpting compound

I have a friend whose mother is a professional sculptor, and she gave me this wonderful stuff called “Plasteline” and she swears by it. In consistency and sculpt it’s not unlike the green stuff at room temperature (albeit it’s much smoother, and doesn’t have that sticky “chewed gum” quality), it softens when heated, and never hardens. The idea being that you would sculpt your master, and take a rubber or silicone RTV mold of it, and thus have your master. She uses it for everything from pottery and lamps, to elaborate sculptures like a church’s manger scene. It’s beautiful stuff. The brand I have is made by Chavant, Inc. ( www.chavant.com ) and they have several types, the two I have are “Hard Sulphur-Free” and “Le Beau Touché” You can buy it from Sculpturetools.com here if you so desire:

http://www.sculpturetools.com/chavant/cart/plasteline.html

 

[frankthedm]

The second tortured souls line was kinda cute[but i have a thing for succubi, oni girls and other evil females].

What i found funny was i saw those fig in a local KB toy store :bouncy: right along with the other action fig for the kiddies .