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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. ***
Where to begin? Well, this custom has a long history let me tell you. Readers of My Comic will remember last September when I had to have a guest comic done for me when I injured myself and had to go to the hospital for stitches. Well, this is the reason. I was working on Roadblock here, and was using a knife to pry open his torso, and…well…it slipped. And went right into my left index finger. My girlfriend Sarah rushed me to the hospital, where I waited for 7 hours before the doctor saw me. I didn’t look at my hand the whole time the doctor worked on it. I just had my eyes closed the whole time while clutching Sarah’s hand. The worst pain from the whole experience was when the doctor gave me the local anesthesia. Ironic, I know, but for the first 20 seconds those shots of anesthesia were the worst pain I’ve ever felt. The doctor had to stop just to close the door; I was screaming that loud.
I’m just glad this didn’t happen to my drawing hand! And just to let everyone know, despite protests from my girlfriend, and even though I had a messed up hand for the time being, the very next day I went back to the Roadblock custom, finished cracking open that torso (MUCH more carefully this time) and finished it! The fact that I could pull off the type of painting and sculpting on such a small scale with one good hand makes me feel accomplished. But enough of that. Onto the description.
Roadblock was made from two different Heavy Duty figures from the Rise of Cobra line. The reactive armor one, and the one with his green shirt and camo vest/pants. It’s the one that’s just called “Heavy Weapons Specialist”. I took the reactive armor torso, gave him the other one’s arms, and swapped out the legs. Then the real fun began. first I sculpted a shoulder pad onto the left shoulder just to help give it its own flair, and to help cover the “scar” from cracking open the torso. Then I took Heavy Duty’s head, sanded down the hair, used apoxie to smooth it out, sculpted a beard on him, and painted it. Now it no longer looks like Heavy Duty at all, but a different character: Roadblock.
Then I gave him Heavy Duty’s giant ammo backpack, only I sanded down the big “HD” because he is not Heavy Duty. I also gave him other guns as well. And I painted the crotch in the same camo pattern as his legs to match. Gave him the belt from the normal wear Heavy Duty and drilled a hole in the back for the peg from the belt to fit. Sanded down the HD from the belt buckle as well.
And for perhaps the most fun part, I customized a diplay stand for him to look like the other Rise of Cobra display stands. This involved painstakingly taking photographs of other Rise of Cobra figure stands that had the letters I needed. Then I measured out the size of the “canvas” the names were on, I took the photos into Photoshop, compiled the letters from all the all the photos spelling Roadblock, then I basically traced over the letters at a setting of 600 DPI (really great printing resolution). Then I just printed it out, and glued it on. It’s not perfect and doesn’t have the slight shine that the other Rise of Cobra display stands have, but it works for now!
And Now I have my own Rise of Cobra style Roadblock to go with the rest of my RoC collection! I hope you enjoy it, because it truly was expensive to make! I think this may be the most sentimental custom I’ve made to date. Needless to say I won’t be selling this one anytime soon.
