TMNT Custom Contest (Mark III)

[notebook]

think i'll play too. count me in, patraw.

[Patraw]

aden/Blade Raider: Cool, glad to hear the two of you may participate as well!

[Ninjinister]

I want real licensed TMNT HeroClix

[Patraw]

Write the company that makes Heroclix (WizKids) and suggest it, or run it by Peter Laird. Who knows? It could happen.

And, for those of you that aren't familiar with Heroclix, here's some background info for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroclix

[A little *too* Raph]

Sweet, I'm in. I've been waiting for another contest to roll around to give me an excuse to do some customs I've had in my mind.

[Bigfoot]

Last time, I went overboard and made like 10 customs. (Let me know if you want to see pics.) This time will be no different. I know I can only enter 1 submission, and I will make it clear in the end wich is my final decision. But these little contests give me a reason to "get away" from the real world.

Well anyways... It all started out with an idea...

Yes, a self made NECA playset was in my future...
I needed some stairs for the entry into a NY style apartment...

Hmmm...Those stairs are kinda big, these lower ones are more to scale.

Now a railing and some posts... This is all cardboard so I need to primer everything before I start slapping paint all over it...

All white! I mean right. That will work just fine. You can see I kinda drew an idea of what I wanted with pencil at this stage.
PUT SOME PAINT ON IT! It takes time... and I wanted the right color... so I asked Raph...


And that's what it looks like...

This was my first diorama of sorts. It took all weekend with all the drying times, and I am constantly adding detail. I just added garbage cans, fake rats, and an address this afternoon. I learned alot making this, and would do things differently in the future. I want to go even bigger in the future, but with a 2k3 theme. If anyone else has knowledge on the subject, or have pics of self made dioramas, please share. One of my questions for now is does cardboard work better over that styrofoam posterboard stuff? The edge of mine started to wrinkle up when they got painted.

Anyways, I actually have pics of something I did while this was drying, but there is a limit of how many pics you can post...

[notebook]

thats awesome. i'd love to see more of yr cutoms.

[A little *too* Raph]

Wow, thats pretty sweet Bigfoot. I'm lookin forward to seeing what you enter in the contest

[Bigfoot]

Thank you.

Like I said, I repainted these 2k3 turtles while the Neca thing was drying. I painted them with a very cool shimmering metallic paint. It started out as a test just to see how the paint would stick, and then I started mixing up different colors. These are in no way supposed to represent or be an example of anything that already exists. I just repainted them but with quite a bit more detail than you would get from Playmates. Oh yeah, and the color scheme is a bit different, but they look awesome in person, so sparkly.



Thats right, a copper shell!

And here are some past figs...

[Patraw]

A little *too* Raph: Glad to hear you intend to participate.

BigFoot: Cool, Mirage-style diorama. I think the stairs are the best looking element and match the NECA pieces pretty closely in style. The bricks and windows on the building face are a tad bit on the messy side--they need sharper and more defined edges. They appear to be just painted on--they'd look more realistic, and I think you'd find them easier to paint, if they were actual raised, 3-dimensional elements.

The interior of the corrugated cardboard is visible on your stair posts--I used to suffer from the same problem when I first started working with that kind of cardboard. If you want to get rid of that unfinished look, what you do is cut out a strip of paper, the width of the thickness of the cardboard, and then glue that around the edges to cover it up. Cardboard does have a tendency to wilt/warp when you paint it, as does paper, the best thing to do is apply thin coats and do smaller areas, rather than larger ones, at a time.

The psychadelic turtles are cool, I particularly like the blue/yellow Raph, because it reminds me of Mekka Turtle from the original NES game. I think a wave of turtles with those types of color schemes would be awesome.


And, here's what I've been working on:



I still need to make the two pairs of smaller wings, which will go inside the shell, and clean up/add to other areas, but I'm getting pretty close to finishing the sculpting work. Should have around 33 points of articulation when finished (little is permanently connected at this point in the process).

[Ninjinister]

Originally Posted by Patraw

And, here's what I've been working on:

-Image snip-

I still need to make the two pairs of smaller wings, which will go inside the shell, and clean up/add to other areas, but I'm getting pretty close to finishing the sculpting work. Should have around 33 points of articulation when finished (little is permanently connected at this point in the process).

Yay Sisyphus! You know, I wonder how he got his name. Maybe he's a dung beetle....

[VaughnMichael]

Originally Posted by The S

Yay Sisyphus! You know, I wonder how he got his name. Maybe he's a dung beetle....

S, I'm pretty sure he's a Scarab Beetle.

but hell maybe you're right, his color always threw me off.

I wonder who came up with him.

[Ninjinister]

Originally Posted by VaughnMichael

S, I'm pretty sure he's a Scarab Beetle.

Dung Beetles are scarabs. Besides that, I was kidding. As you know, dung beetles roll big balls of poo around. Well, Sisyphus was a Greek king who was punished to roll a boulder uphill for all of eternity, in the underworld.

[VaughnMichael]

Originally Posted by The S

Dung Beetles are scarabs. Besides that, I was kidding. As you know, dung beetles roll big balls of poo around. Well, Sisyphus was a Greek king who was punished to roll a boulder uphill for all of eternity, in the underworld.

Yeah I know about Sisyphus, but I wasn't aware that Dung's & Scarabs are the same thing.

[aprilsfan]

wow bigfoot, those turtles look amazing painted red and blue. and those foot ninjas painted different colors are pretty neat too. who would have thought that the 2k3 figures just simply painted differently could look so cool.

[Ninjinister]

Originally Posted by aprilsfan

wow bigfoot, those turtles look amazing painted red and blue. and those foot ninjas painted different colors are pretty neat too. who would have thought that the 2k3 figures just simply painted differently could look so cool.

The different coloured turtles actually remind me of these fellows:

http://ninjaturtles.com/toys/1997/donskim.htm
http://ninjaturtles.com/toys/1997/leocycle.htm

[BigApple3AM]

Hahaha, Pimp Daddy Splinter. That's awesome.

Patraw: Wow Sisyphus is looking good. Have you ever thought of doing figures larger than 1-2"? With all the articulation you give them they'd fit in great with the NECA TMNT if they were larger. You gotta do the other 3 turtles now since Don looked so good (and that playset on your website is badass).

[Patraw]

All done:




Materials:
Newsprint, Kleenex, white/hot glue, wire twist ties, ink, and acrylic paint.

Dimensions*:
(* The numbers given are approximations, as the dimensions of this figure can vary considerably depending on how the joints are positioned.)
5.7 cm/2.2 in. x 3.2 cm/1.3 in. (highest point x widest point)

Articulation:
Thirty-six points total: Neck (2), shell (3), wings (4), shoulders(4), elbows (8 ), wrists (4), groin guard, thigh guards (2), hips (2), knees (4), and ankles (2).

Time:
Roughly four days: Construction occurred on September 18, 20, 23, and 25 (2008 ).


The S/VaughnMichael: I don't know what kind of beetle Sisyphus is supposed to be (I have the game, but not the manual, so I don't know if they gave any background story on him there, didn't find any info on GameFAQs in that regard either). My guess would be a Goliath beetle, but a scarab is certainly a possibility. The Japanese like to keep big beetles as pets, so my guess is that the design might have been inspired by that--they might have been trying to channel a bit of MK's Goro with the four arm thing too.

Ectocooler: I've made plenty of larger figures in the past, but Baxter is the only TMNT one (I think he's about 8 inches tall). I mainly make smaller figures these days because it conserves space, takes less materials, and I find if more challenging.

Yeah, Don is kinda lonely by himself . . . I should have made a mold when I made him, then I could have turned out all four pretty quick like. That's kind of the rub, I don't like sculpting multiples of the same thing, which the turtles basically are.

[Archon_Turtle]

Just throwing my hat in the ring again... I've just begun construction of my entry

[Bigfoot]

I was wanting to make a Starlee figure and was wondering if anyone had some good pics of the toy that was going to be produced. All I found on Google were some crappy screenshots. Any pics posted in this thread or pm would be appreciated. Thanks.