Okay. So its not really a sketch.
For the past couple of years, I've tried my hand at toy customization with varying degrees of success. My workbench (an old desk) is covered with a good many failures and false starts, the hard-learned lessons of craft.
Sounds poetic, doesn't it. Certainly better than my workbench has a pile of crap on it.
I digress.
Earlier this year I stitched together a fun little wobbler (bobblehead) called the 'Pin Monkey'. It was based on a design I did for a work event and involved cutting the head off a
Reservoir Dogs inspired toy called '
Monkey Assassin'. Once decapitated and stitched together with a
Sparky's wobbler, the Pin Monkey was complete and I had this really great part left over: a suit with a gun.
Now I needed a head.
My first thought was a Stormtrooper from Star Wars. Something about that little penis shaped head was just calling out to be dressed up as Mr. Pink (ooooh, dick jokes!). Except that I talked myself out of that. I thought it would be funnier to use Charlie Brown, or a skull, or a couple of other characters that made little to no sense. I used Photoshop to test out my ideas. Green Lantern was an almost, until I realized that painting the suit green would look like a leprechaun or an Irish mobster. In the end, it came back down to a Stormtrooper or Boba Fett and I was leaning hard to Boba until I watched Kevin Smith admonishing Bruce Willis to respect the Fett in 'Die Harder'. Scratch the bounty hunter. Time to defile a Stormtrooper.
The biggest challenge was getting something inside the body to support the head. The monkey I had decapitated wasn't a bobblehead, but a cast plastic toy. When I cut the head off I left a gaping hole in the body. Since I wanted this to wobble, I needed a neck.
I played around with a couple of ideas, most of which revolved around filling the body with spray foam. Then, while researching how to build my own light saber (project for another day), I hit upon the idea of running a tube through the guy and reducing it down to the size that I needed. I took the body to Home Depot and went through the electrical, plumbing, and landscaping departments jamming pipes and conduits into the neckhole until something fit. That something was a 3/4" sprinkler line. After that, I hit the parts bins looking for nylon spacers that fit one inside the other to create the rest of the neck. Add some PVC glue, a dremel tool, epoxy and sticky fingers and it was pretty easy to finish up. Just keep gluing and sanding until you end up with the tube-thing you see below in the photos. With neck in hand, everything else was a piece of cake.
I decided to make the neckpipe the same length of the body. It meant less gluing (none) and that the piece would hold up better if the neck was fully supported inside the body. Try measuring the inside of a monkey. Lots of trial and error. That's why I started with a foot of sprinkler pipe and cut my way down.
After cutting the neckpipe down to size and jamming it inside the body, I sanded the edges of the neckhole smooth and filled the gaps between the collar of his jacket and the new neck with Milliput, an epoxy clay. I like this stuff. It sticks to EVERYTHING and can be sanded, drilled and manhandled once it dries. I also used a little bit of it on the back of his left hand so he looked more Stormtroopery.
Next was some more sanding, some test fitting, more sanding, then priming and painting. The first time I tried to create a custom figure, I painted everything by hand with a brush (duh) and I hated the results. I've since learned how to use an airbrush and I get a little better each time around. Best hint I can give you, several light coats give you a better finish than one heavy coat. Think 'paint run'. I'm pretty sure there's an example sitting on my desk somewhere.
Masking is a pain in the ass, but take the time and do it right. I usually use painter's tape and a bamboo skewer to get into tight spots or to mask unusual shapes. Takes forever to setup and about 30 nerve racking minutes waiting for paint to dry to see how you did. I use Testor's Acryl paint for these customs because it stick well to the plastic, dries quickly and gives me a decent finish. Also, its low odor and cleans up with water which is huge when you work in the basement with no ventilation.
I hit the suit and tie with a coat of flat finish, and put a gloss finish on the shoes, gloves and jacket button. Despite its
Reservoir Dogs beginnings, I decided to paint the tie red instead of black to give him some pop. One other quick piece of advice on painting a 3-dimensional figure: make sure the piece is secured to the thing you use to turn it while you're painting. It'd be a shame to waste several heart-sickening minutes picking dust bunnies out of your finish coat only to realize that you now have to sand everything down and repaint half the damn thing because you forgot to tape the monkey down.
Just saying.
Anyway, that's it in a nutshell. It was fun and I hope everyone at the Funko message boards pop over and give this a read. I think Dustman Jim and Will were contemplating similar customs, hopefully, this will help. There are progress photos posted down below. Nothing's numbered, you'll have to figure out what's what but that should be pretty easy to do. They're sequential photos.
Enjoy.
-Stephe