Cartoon-Accurate
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Started |
: |
~Unrecorded~ |
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Finished |
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June 18th, 2004 |
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Base |
: |
See parts |
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Parts |
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Original Keldor Head(s)
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Materials |
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Revell paint,
Marabu |
Character & Intent
Being from Germany (as opposed to comparably
wealthy western countries) rarely has it's merrits,
but the recent "Buy MOTU stuff for 25 Euros and
get a Keldor for free" promotion at Toys 'R' Us was
definitely was one of those.
The one problem with having an unboxed Keldor
is that you gotta keep his extra heads (and the
fatefull vial of acid) somewhere. Since my
initial solution prove to be somewhat
unsatisfying, I knew that I would
have a project on my hands.
Another little bugger about Keldor is
that his appearance (which is that of a
repainted Skeletor) differed a
little from the Cartoon version.
Given those two facts, I knew
I had to do what any real
customizer would do...
Creation
Collectors, don't kill me yet - I didn't chop up a real
Keldor !
I only got one, and he's on my shelf, battling the
several masters one level above this fellow.
What I did instead was making a spare body that supports
the interchangable heads concept, complete with the original
Keldorian armor, boots, wristguards and some extra arti-
culation thrown in. No cape, though. Yet.
As you might've noticed, I didn't use a Skeletor body for
this custom. There's several reasons for that. First of all,
his lower legs are too different from the boots to be converted.
It would've been a waste of good parts. I also like the idea of
Keldor's entire body changing with the transformation, so a
different
build makes sense. And foremostly, I didn't have a spare
Skeletor.
Of course finding parts wasn't easy. The torso came from a Mega
Punch
He-Man I had purchased to get my original Keldor. (I had to buy
that
one because He-Variants with a coat of dust were all my resident
Toys
'R' Us had left) Finding articulated limbs was a little harder to
do.
Fortunately, I still had this lot of massacred wrestling figures I
had
found at ebay for little money. I must've taken apart half a
dozen
of them before I had found arms that, with some filing, fit
the
pegholes of the torso while not having the skinny forearms that
Toybiz WCW figures were notorious for. The legs came from
one of the kings of wrestlers who don't know their place, Buff
Bagwell.
The problem with the legs was that the hip peg didn't fit the
torse;
it was too short (which is probably reminiscent of Bagwell
himself).
Therefore, I took a discarded peg from another figure, cut it
into
shape and dremelled a hole into the hip peg, hot-gluing the
additional
peg into it. Now, it fit the torso reasonably well.
To add the hands and wrist articulation, I once again had
to drill holes into the arms until they suited the hand-pegs.
The left hand was left over from my Trident
Custom.
I chose a Scott Hall hand for the other side because
it's pose-intended articulation was suitable for holding
the vial of acid that came with the TRU Keldor.
The boots and wristbands are entirely sculpted
using fimo. If you paid close attention to the
Masters of the Universe animated series by
Mike Young Productions, you might have noticed
that both those elements (as well as the armor)
changed a little with each appearance, so I did
my best to merge the designs into one.
I had some trouble putting the parts together, as
the torso shell bent out of shape a little through
the process of boiling and taking it apart. Some
(a nerve-wrecking lot, actually) extended bending
and filing took care of that problem.
Off to prime.
The armor and loincloth (of course leftovers again)
might've been the biggest challenge in the making
of this figure.
In oderder ro replace the crossbone decoration,
I first had to cut it from the armor, carefully retaining
the jewel. Then, I cut some bottle cap safety seals
into shape and and hot-glued them on. The problem
with this was that the armor had to remove flexible
in order to use the clothing straps. Unfortunately,
the armor was already bent out of shape a little
from previous attempts, so I also had to expand
the strap a little. What I finally did was, instead of
gluing the new ornament to the strap directly, preparing
a dyed strip of liquid latex, glueing one end of it to the
ornament and the other to the strap. It worked quite
nicely.
The loincloth posed another problem. I previously
had not realized that the Bagwell hips are slightly
wider than Skeletor's, so it could not be attached
as it was intended. Instead, I cut it into two parts and
glued them on. Unfortunately, that left a gab on each side,
which filled with liquid latex once again. Not perfect,
but it worked.
As A little personal adition, I cut the ornamental "leather"
straps on the armor into solitary parts instead of leaving
them in one piece to allow for more natural movement.
What followed was a rather slow paintjob, as I had to
match the colors to the real thing as closely as possible.
Once again, I can't claim that it was a flawless success,
but I am satisfied.
On a sidenote:
ETERNIA WILL BE MINE !!!!
