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*** Head on over to my Ebay Auctions to see what’s available this week, or commission me if you’d like your very own custom action figure like this one. ***
For the final installment in my series of 3.75 inch Watchmen figures I give you Niteowl. He was created using an X-Men Origins Wolverine comic book Wolverine as the base, and the cape came from a DCU Crisis Spectre figure.
As I often do, I first worked on the head. The first thing to do with any custom before painting is making sure you have everything prepared – all sanding and sculpting and parts swapping finished. So that’s what I did. I started off by cutting off Wolverine’s claws, I sanded down the points of his boots, and even did careful sanding to the ears on his cowl to give them more the shape that Niteowl’s did in the movie. Then I had to do some heavy sanding removing his shoulder pads and sanding down his shoulders and back in general so the cape wouldn’t look clunky when glued on. After that I started sculpting.
The sculpting process began with the head. I sculpted onto his ears to help give them the shape I needed, and I sculpted on his goggles as well. After that I sculpted on much of his armor plating detail he had on his costume in the movie, all over his chest and legs and sculpted on the crescent moon “boomerang” thing he has attached to his belt in the movie. Then I prepared the cape by removing the hood and cutting the shape into the bottom and attached the cape and glued it on, and sculpted on part of the collar of his cape that comes to a point on his chest. Then, the painting. Oh the painting.
For the painting I noticed Niteowl’s costume had 4 basic colors. Dark brown, lighter brown, gold, and black. All parts that were to be dark brown were first base-coated with flat black (head, cape, golves, boots, armor plates, and all parts that were to be lighter brown I painted with a testors sand base coat. Then I dry-brushed testors leather over the black parts, and painted a lighter brown over the rest of the body. I painted his goggles gloss black, and used flat black to paint the owl feather detail around his neck and down the back of his cape. Then, I wanted to make his costume look metallic. In the movie he’s wearing armor not spandex so I wanted this figure to relfect that. So I dry-brushed a thin layer of testors gold over the entire figure (sans cape) to give it a bronze or copper metallic look.
That’s the conclusion of my 3.75 inch Watchmen customs, but not the end of my watchmen customs period. Stay tuned to find out.
