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Started |
: |
February 10th, 2004 |
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Finished |
: |
February 24th, 2004 |
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Base |
: |
"Skeletor" |
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Parts |
: |
Calves/Feet joints |
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Materials |
: |
Revell Paint,
Fimo, |
Character & Intent
Trident, atlantean warrior and only of his kind.
Genetically enginered with ancient technology, the fate
of Atlantis was in his hands, as a bout of champions
against Rome's greatest Gladiator was to decide upon
the fate of both realms. But the romans didn't play fair,
and a toppling pillar sealed not only the fate of Trident,
but also the that of Atlantis, as the Romans won the
right to claim all the ground safe from the coming
flood.
Trident is a pretty interesting character with an
interesting design to him. This green fish-man
seems to strongly dislike humans, and yet, he
loyally serves his human creators. It is also
ironic that he fights to keep the Atlantis "Dry"
while being enginered to survive underwater.
Oh, and a good player can kick some
major ass using him in the games.
Creation
This custom is made from the Skeletor that
came with the Battle Ram Chariot. This version
does not have the typical "arm smash" action feature
and therefore also lacks the ugly button in the back.
The only problem with the one I used was that I
purchased him used off of ebay for 3 bucks with his
right leg broken off. This problem was fixed with a
small screw through his leg and epoxy putty in the
peghole. It holds up for the most part and retains
it's articulation, but it remains a bit too loose.
That came a bit later, though...
The actual first step was the head -I boil&popped
it to both be able to work on it independently
and bake it without warping the figure's torso.
As some of you might know, the head does not
look like an actual skull underneath this soft hood,
so I had to cut the extended back end of it off.
I made this head in two steps; First, I sculpted the
actual face with fimo and backed it, then I sculpted
the back of the head, the ears and the helmet using
the same material and gave it a second oven session.
This way, I was able to pay attention to the detailing
without worrying about damaging other parts of the
sculpt.
Moving on to the body, I careful cut the loincloth off
and promptly moved it into my parts box for possible
furture usage. The hand came off quite easily - It didn't
even require boiling, just a bit of force.
The removal of the loincloth had left a bit of a gap
in between the hip and torso. Fortunately, I was
able to cover it up with Trident's belt, sculpted
from Efa Plast Clay. The gems on it are made
seperately from Fimo and glued in place.
A problem I personally have with Skeletor 200X's skulpt
is that he seems to be constantly sucking his stomach in.
Hey, Skel... Your head is a freaking skull, you can give
up on trying to impress the girls now.
Still, this vain habbit of Eternia's overlord of evil forced
me to re-sculpt the two upper abs using more Efa Plast.
I'm actually pretty pleased with the outcome, as it
seems to look authentic enough.
The next, much bigger problem was shin armor.
Skeletor wears it, Trident doesn't. I knew that I
would not have been able to resculpt the calves
as needed, so I chose to "transplant" them from
a WCW Bill Goldberg figure.
I carefully cut both figures up where needed
and removed Goldberg's feet using boil&pop.
Then, I cut and dremeled most of them away
and dremeled a fitting hole into Skeletor's feet.
Then, I hot-glued the remaining joints into
those feet and re-connected them with the
calves, using toothpicks as makeshift
pegs. Then, I glued the claves to the thighs
and sculpted over them to cover the seams.
I used Efa Plast on the left leg and Fimo
on the right one, as I had not re-attached
it yet and was therefore able to oven-
harden it. On the feet themselfes, I cut
two toes off of each and sculpted the
webbing in between.
Trident's trident was also sculpted using
fimo onto a cut AL as a base, enabling
me to re-insert it into the wrist and retain
articulation.
The fins on the arms and legs are also
made of Fimo while the back fin are
actually fringes from the pants of a
WCW Kevin Nash figure. All of them
are hot-glued into place and the seams
are sculped over using both Das Pronto
and Efa Plast.
The wire (whatever it may be good for) around
Trident's body is made of actual wire and glued
in place. Since it's actually silver-colored, it was
pretty tedious to give it the golden tone. Speaking
of it, I "ennobled" the Revell gold paint using some
Fimo silver powder to improve it's metallic shine.
The shoulder pads are made from Efa Plast.
I'm not quite happy with how they turned out,
but it's the best I can do considering the body
sculpt and not hindering articulation.
Now for the paint...
I skipped on priming this one, mainly because
the weather wouldn't allow for me to use spray paint.
In order to give the appearance some depth
and a somewhat scaly appearance, I used
a technique that is somewhat new and experimental
to me. First, I painted the entire "skin" of the figure
in a dark shade of green. After that layer had dried,
I painted the same surface with some lighter green.
I used very little of the revell paint for this, bordering
on drybrushing. Then, while the paint was still sticky,
I dry-brushed of it with a light shade (water-based)
light green Marabu paint. This not only brought out
the highlights of the sculpt, but also created a somewhat
cracky, scaly appearance. I'm almost sure that this
has to have been done before, but I have never heard
of it. Therefore, I will call this technique "Rush-brushing"
for now, since it has to be done in a quick manner.
Another detail about the paint job I'd like to mention
is that the eyes glow in the dark, as they're painted
with Revell glow-in-the-dark paint, mixed with just
a hiiint of blue marabu paint.
Finally, a brushed layer of clear matte
laque concluded this custom.
All in all, I'm rather satisfied with it.
