Topic: Yuzzums' Customs

[Tamer]

If its a post you make you should be able to hit the remove button there on it? Not sure why you are not seeing that. I will look into it.

In the meantime if you let me know which post you would like removed I would be glad to remove it for you.

[Sjefke]

I saw Viperskingdom selling these last year.  Well, Fighter Pods are now $2.99 per four-pack and my daughter's favorite character is all over the pegs.   She may never wear them, but I couldn't resist trying to make a gift for her.

Merry Christmas

[Tamer]

Now this is just a great idea. I would sure buy a set for my daughter. I hope I am not spoiling any surprise by putting these on the front page, but figure it might be ok.

Merry Christmas Sjefke.

[JediMerc]

Love what can be done with these fighter pod sets.  My wife ordered a set of R2 earrings of of Etsy back in the summer; she loves them and my daughter wants in on the action now too. 

[Sjefke]

Now this is just a great idea. I would sure buy a set for my daughter. I hope I am not spoiling any surprise by putting these on the front page, but figure it might be ok.

Merry Christmas Sjefke.

Dont worry.  She's clueless.  
She actually watched me post the pictures and didn't put two and two together.  

... and the idea isn't mine.  The Asian sellers were selling them about a year ago.  This is by far the best use for FPs that I could imagine.  I found a set with Boba Fett and Carbonite Han that I plan to do too.

Love what can be done with these fighter pod sets.  My wife ordered a set of R2 earrings of of Etsy back in the summer; she loves them and my daughter wants in on the action now too. 

They're cheap at Tuesday Morning and 5Below now too. 



Merry Christmas Tamer and ISY.  

[CloneCrazy]

Great job Sjefke!!! A very merry Christmas to you and the family!!!

[Sjefke]

Great job Sjefke!!! A very merry Christmas to you and the family!!!

and you and yours.

[Sjefke]

Gotta finally share.  Here's a custom that I've been thinking about for over a year and finally started after I found the right fodder.

CANE ADISS
Two-headed Yuvernian smuggler
and
Deep, deep DEEEEP background alien in Jabba's Palace.

Here's Cane's big scene. That's his silhuoette in the background.  He appears again as Han is being dragged away to the dungeon, but he's just a blur.

http://fatz.swhosts.net/ROTJ/cane.htm



Before I show him off, I'm going to bore people with the research.

I started out trying to find reference images, but there was practically nothing on the net.  There was one maquette made for the ILM creature shop ad that was just of a couple of serpent heads on really long necks.  There was no body and never was one, only speculation.  Some say he was meant to be two separate aliens, which would explain the different color skin and spots, but sJarek a.k.a. Pablo Hidalgo wrote a backstory about Cane and proclaimed him two-headed.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cane_Adiss

I personally prefered the two headed aspect.  Lucas never had a problem with aliens with two assymetric heads.  Look at Fode and Beed and Captain Eo's first officer.  


This is the concept maquette


These are all the reference images I could find.




So all I had to go on for a custom was pictures of his heads.  In the Creature Shop photos, the heads are about the size of a human torso and the necks were really long, so I figured Cane needed a big, solid body to support them.  Wookiepedia says Cane is 2.4 meters tall.  Wookiepedia is wrong!  I found a couple of images from which I figured out the scale.  In the image below, we see all of Jabba's henchmen, except Cane, but I noticed that there are images of Cane set against the left edge of the same arch.  Note the circled markings on the triple comparison photo.  Cane is approximately twice as tall as Hermie Odle, who is supposed to be 2.1 meters tall.  That makes Cane Adiss freaking huge!



Any body for Cane is pure conjecture.  Some references said Yuvernians are 'snake-like', others say 'horse-like'.  I looked at some of Cane's head shots and remembered the scene in Jurassic Park when the Brontosaurus sneezed on the girl.  For me, Cane had to have the body of a bronto.  The backstory about Cane Adiss said he was a smuggler.  Well smugglers need to be able to handle starship controls, so he needed hands.  So I gave him some.  How he gets in a cock pit, I'll never know, but apparently in the story, his size was an big issue.

Putting all that together, I came up with this is concept sketch for Cane Adiss.

[Tamer]

Do not post? Thats like telling me a snowspeeder could take down a walker.

LOL. Loved the background on this character and I learned a good bit.

[hemble]

Ah come on I read the background info on him an dteh closer to the bottom I got the more excited I was getting you can't do that to people show us the custom

Ron

[Sjefke]

I started Cane when I found just the right fodder, the MU comic pack with Juggernaut and Colossus and a couple of other random hinge joints I had in a box. . Thank you Target clearance.   I literally chopped Juggy to pieces.   I exposed his neck, and flipped his torso around because I liked the look. The legs and arms were too long, so I cut the swivel joints off his legs to shorten them and replaced Juggy's gorilla arms with Thor Movie Destroyer arms.  I switched the swivel hands with the knee joint from a The Corp figure. After lengthening his waist three times, I reattached his hips at a 80 degree angle, so his legs would articulate like an elephant's.    




When I was satisfied with the body's shape, I after attaching the limbs, and I sculpted on the body detail (feet, ribs, hump and limb muscles) with 2 component plastic repair.  For fine hide detail, I smeared a really thin layer of Aves Fix-it Sculpt over small sections and imprinted leathery hide texture with templates I had made from the Dewback and the Reek.   ISY is right. Aves is great.





I wanted really flexible arms, so used GI Joe legs as a base and figured, what the Heck? Let's give him articulated fingers too.  I took some packing wire, rolled some 2 component material as thinly as possible. When it had cured, I cut 90 degree pieces out of the palm side.  I glued the fingers onto the feet of the GI Joe leg, shaped them and covered them with white nitrile using a flexible fabric glue.  Nitrile is the material that hospital gloves are made of.  Nitrile is a great soft goods, because it takes color from a Sharpie marker and still flexes without the colors chipping or wearing off.

 


My favorite parts are the necks. They have 180 degrees flexibility, but they're not made of wire.   Like the hands,  I also covered them with nitrile.  I glued 2 inch sections of white nitrile with Locktite Flexible glue around the necks with just the right tension to achieve the wrinkled look.   I had to work in small sections because the glue dries so fast.   That job took me 6 hours.  



The tail was a so-so success.  I wanted to retain shape without sacrificing flexibility, so I used yellow silicon molding material. Setting and shaping it right on the tail mechanism, I etched the texture in with leather templates. For the record people, silicon does not take color.   Sharpie marker ink will stick, but not well, but I eventually got some good pattern into the contours.



Of everything, the heads took the most work. That was pure sculpt work. The eyes are actually blue, glass pin heads, and the teeth are the pin points glued into holes in the jaw. Can you see the tongue? To get the fine folds effect, I smeared a very thin layer of Aves on small sections and pressed on creased aluminum foil.   When that cured, and the foil was removed, it looked like fine wrinkles.

[Sjefke]

Ah come on I read the background info on him an dteh closer to the bottom I got the more excited I was getting you can't do that to people show us the custom

Ron

A Jedi must learn patience.  
Did I not say I was going to bore you first?  At my pace, Cane was a three month project, so I'm gonna milk this presentation.    
I love watching other guys' process, so I want to show some WIPs too.  
Not to mention that Photo Bucket is giving me a heck of a time tonight.

Painting process next.

[Tamer]

What a great step by step process. Going to the front page.

Looking forward to seeing how this turned out.

[Sjefke]

Painting this custom was a challenge.  I had used 3 different materials, all of which had different properties.  The Aves takes Vallejo like a dream, but the nitrile in the necks is very flexible.  Any paint flakes, wears and chips off when you touch it.  The silicon in the tail was worse than that.  That stuff wont take any color without a fight.  

I had already sanded and cleaned all the plastic parts, especially the joints.  I started with a base coat of Rustoleum satin yellow spray paint for plastic from the Home Depot.  I've found that's the best stuff for ball joints, as long as it's a thin layer.
I used yellow fabric paint on the nitrile.  Once that had dried, it would take a wash of Vallejo latex.
That tail was a bear, but I eventually tamed it.  Everything beads up on it except Sharpie permanent marker, and unfortunately, Sharpie doesn't allow for subtle shading  I used a brown Sharpie in the creases and wiped off the extra with alcohol.  Eventually, the alcohol and Sharpie ink must have left a paint-friendly layer on top, because it was suddenly able to take some latex.







Once everything was a homogeneous base coat of yellow, I used a combination of washes and dry-brushing to accentuate the detail on the hide.  I put on the spots the most simple way I could, with more Sharpie.  I tried to match the spots on the heads and the necks to the reference images as best I could.  I just used my imagination for the body.

[Sjefke]

Sorry about the long intro.  Here are the final images.   

He has 27 points of articulation in the body alone, excluding the necks, hands and tail. I count double-ended swivels on ball joints as 2 POAs.

HEADS: Original sculpts. Did you see the tongue?
Head/Neck Joints: double-ended ball joints made from MU's Collossus' shoulders.

NECKS 180 degree flection in any direction. It's not done with wire, but the mechanism bends through the whole length of the neck.

FORE ARMS Made from GI Joe MARS Trooper legs.
Shoulder: ball jointed. I replaced the metal GI Joe metal hip peg with a The Corp shoulder ball joint.
forearms: improvised swivel joint with a small nail head.
elbows: double hinge joint.
wrists: ball joint.

FORE LEG
shoulder: swivel shoulder joint from MU Thor movie's Destroyer.
elbow: ball joint. Also the Destroyer's elbow.
ankle: Swivel joint from The Corp soldier's knee.

WAIST: Double ball jointed waist from MU Juggernaut. (adapted to increase range of motion)

REAR LEGS All from MU's Juggy with the swivel joints removed to shorten the legs by about 1/2 inch total.
Hips: ball pegs
Knees: double hinged knees.
Ankles: ball joints.

HANDS: 14 points of wire articulation in each. Original sculpts.

TAIL: Original sculpt. About 30 degrees of flection in the tail, with the same mechanism as the necks with poorer range of motion. The silicon material is a lot stiffer than I anticipated.

OTHER FEATURES:
Blue glass eyes taken from pin heads.
Teeth made from metal pin points. Funny how that works.
Human hair (Thank you, Geekette, my daughter)


ACCESSORIES:
The gun is left over from a POTF figure. I sculpted an extension on the handle to fit Cane better.
The harness is from TFU Rancor, cut up and heavily tweaked. I sculpted the buckle and holster.
The gauntlet is molded from the forearm of a 6 inch Halo Spartan.
The pouch under his chest is molded from one on the Dewback's saddle.