customizing riders and other characters
You either start with a big budget to pay someone else to customize or build realistic characters and horses... or you DIY.
Customizing isn't impossible, you don't have to have years of art training. PRACTICE.
The above characters and horses are part of my Hawk Circle/Earth Life Foundation stories. I had already written and illustrated the characters for years before customizing some existing dolls and action figures to represent them in photoshoots.
Sometimes an action figure or doll will be just right: the one for Rainger Murphy is a curvy Made to Move Barbie with red hair. No modifications needed, except bigger boots. Barbie also did a Signature Looks line and hey, wait, what is one of my Ravenkin doing there???? Perfect for Connor.
The rest though, mostly needed modifications.
For the 1/6 scale characters in the slide show above:
I long ago gave Bran better hair with some epoxy putty from the hardware store. Don't use the quick set kind. Use the stuff that gives you time to sculpt. Then I painted it in acrylics. A caveat: how are you sculpting that hair and can he still turn his head (not enough). His face is somewhat repainted, and I used chalk pastels (rubbed on with a paper towel) to give his body some depth of color. I'm not sure what action figure he was originally.
Ian was a rando GI Joe from a yard sale. Did the epoxy hair and gave him some new clothes. He's nicely articulated.
The 1/6 scale horses are Johnny West/Marx series. Flame was a childhood horse who had parts of his palomino coat darken from light exposure (white in Breyers actually lightens), so I repainted him as a blue roan. His Thunderbolt friends got painted black, and added some glitter, because, seahorses.
Jon was a well articulated body bought online, without a head. That sat on my shelf for a long time. I finally ripped a head off one of the Kens I'd collected (yard sales, thrift shops), repainted, cut off half his head (the hair part, it was dumb), cut apart a Barbie's head for the hair, and glued that hair on "Ken". Used some air dry clay to fill in the cracks cause I was not so accurate with the xacto knife. Again: chalk pastels to blend the head and body colors.
Dark-haired Ravenkin showed up when someone suggested buying heads online wasn't expensive. He's some dude from a game. He looks like a Ravenkin. I thought to swap out heads with Jon's body, back and forth, as needed. Nope, too hard. So Ravenkin gets a Ken body, probably the one I ripped the head off of. The Ken body required building of articulated knees. Karasu is the name he's going by (the original character head is Japanese, that's the word for raven).
The 1/9 scale characters match Breyer's Traditional scale well (if you think of those as large horses), and can ride Classic scale as ponies. I have several characters from Mego (classic film and TV characters), some MCU superheroes (about 6" tall), and Jon and Bran were customized from 7" tall Legolas, by Toy Biz, from the LOTR films. Repainted faces, hair, clothing, cut some clothing off (tunic skirts etc), and gave Bran hair from wool yarn.
Customizing isn't impossible, you don't have to have years of art training. PRACTICE.
The above characters and horses are part of my Hawk Circle/Earth Life Foundation stories. I had already written and illustrated the characters for years before customizing some existing dolls and action figures to represent them in photoshoots.
Sometimes an action figure or doll will be just right: the one for Rainger Murphy is a curvy Made to Move Barbie with red hair. No modifications needed, except bigger boots. Barbie also did a Signature Looks line and hey, wait, what is one of my Ravenkin doing there???? Perfect for Connor.
The rest though, mostly needed modifications.
For the 1/6 scale characters in the slide show above:
I long ago gave Bran better hair with some epoxy putty from the hardware store. Don't use the quick set kind. Use the stuff that gives you time to sculpt. Then I painted it in acrylics. A caveat: how are you sculpting that hair and can he still turn his head (not enough). His face is somewhat repainted, and I used chalk pastels (rubbed on with a paper towel) to give his body some depth of color. I'm not sure what action figure he was originally.
Ian was a rando GI Joe from a yard sale. Did the epoxy hair and gave him some new clothes. He's nicely articulated.
The 1/6 scale horses are Johnny West/Marx series. Flame was a childhood horse who had parts of his palomino coat darken from light exposure (white in Breyers actually lightens), so I repainted him as a blue roan. His Thunderbolt friends got painted black, and added some glitter, because, seahorses.
Jon was a well articulated body bought online, without a head. That sat on my shelf for a long time. I finally ripped a head off one of the Kens I'd collected (yard sales, thrift shops), repainted, cut off half his head (the hair part, it was dumb), cut apart a Barbie's head for the hair, and glued that hair on "Ken". Used some air dry clay to fill in the cracks cause I was not so accurate with the xacto knife. Again: chalk pastels to blend the head and body colors.
Dark-haired Ravenkin showed up when someone suggested buying heads online wasn't expensive. He's some dude from a game. He looks like a Ravenkin. I thought to swap out heads with Jon's body, back and forth, as needed. Nope, too hard. So Ravenkin gets a Ken body, probably the one I ripped the head off of. The Ken body required building of articulated knees. Karasu is the name he's going by (the original character head is Japanese, that's the word for raven).
The 1/9 scale characters match Breyer's Traditional scale well (if you think of those as large horses), and can ride Classic scale as ponies. I have several characters from Mego (classic film and TV characters), some MCU superheroes (about 6" tall), and Jon and Bran were customized from 7" tall Legolas, by Toy Biz, from the LOTR films. Repainted faces, hair, clothing, cut some clothing off (tunic skirts etc), and gave Bran hair from wool yarn.
7" elves
Back when the LOTR fims came out around the turn of the millennium, I collected All The Things. Legolas was my favorite character in the BOOK, so of course, faced with the possibility of after so many years being able to have actual elven action figures... I got a shipload.
Fellowship Legolas is kinda crap, though he did make a nice boat figurehead for a two day backcountry kayak expedition. He looks nice but does not pose. Two Towers and Helms Deep Legolas are beautifully articulated and already ride well. I only had to cut off some medieval tunic stuff and cover up the torso with a vetwrap shirt. It's some kinda rashguard/all weather gear.
For Jon I just removed the original clothing that wasn't part of the body, and painted the rest.
For Bran I cut off the flowy clothing, and the flowy hair, gave him wool hair (which is nice to pose) and repainted extensively as well as doing a vetwrap shirt which covers up the questionable torso and arm vambraces. Redoing his face was epic, required the use of acrylic craft paint (Folk Art, Ceramcoat, Americana... the rest are too thin and watery) and chalk pastels, and one shed whisker from Shuri.
Their butts are a bit flat, which can be cured with some epoxy (or Apoxie brand sculpting medium) or poster putty (temporary) or vetwrap jeans. These guys have nice wrinkles in the legs tho.
Fellowship Legolas is kinda crap, though he did make a nice boat figurehead for a two day backcountry kayak expedition. He looks nice but does not pose. Two Towers and Helms Deep Legolas are beautifully articulated and already ride well. I only had to cut off some medieval tunic stuff and cover up the torso with a vetwrap shirt. It's some kinda rashguard/all weather gear.
For Jon I just removed the original clothing that wasn't part of the body, and painted the rest.
For Bran I cut off the flowy clothing, and the flowy hair, gave him wool hair (which is nice to pose) and repainted extensively as well as doing a vetwrap shirt which covers up the questionable torso and arm vambraces. Redoing his face was epic, required the use of acrylic craft paint (Folk Art, Ceramcoat, Americana... the rest are too thin and watery) and chalk pastels, and one shed whisker from Shuri.
Their butts are a bit flat, which can be cured with some epoxy (or Apoxie brand sculpting medium) or poster putty (temporary) or vetwrap jeans. These guys have nice wrinkles in the legs tho.
KNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES
My eternal frustration as a kid who had Breyer horses (1/9 scale) and a limited number of Barbies (1/6 scale) was the dumb dolls were not articulated to ride.
A few of the dolls I've rescued are also "stiffies".
Well WE CAN FIX THAT!
As long as your doll can do a partial split (the hips are flecible) you can make knees. You will need to cover them up with clothing, or assume the character has knee braces.
I looked at some youtube tutorials and came up with a simple version of articulating those stiffies...
A few of the dolls I've rescued are also "stiffies".
Well WE CAN FIX THAT!
As long as your doll can do a partial split (the hips are flecible) you can make knees. You will need to cover them up with clothing, or assume the character has knee braces.
I looked at some youtube tutorials and came up with a simple version of articulating those stiffies...
- YOU KNEEEED: fence wire (farm store), vetwrap (farm store), noodle nosed pliers, glue (hot glue is your friend), hacksaw, exacto knife + candle, aluminum foil, sandpaper (fine), craft magnifier or reading glasses...
- Do one cut in middle of knee on doll: hacksaw works great, but you can use a literal hot knife (blade heated in candle flame) which melts through the plastic... and stinks, and might not go through and throws Evil Crap into the air you're breathing.
- Sandpaper those rough edges
- Use needle nosed pliers to make the joint
- wrap the middle of that in vetwrap... or wrap the whole thing so it just stuffs into the hollow of the leg better
- stuff tinfoil into hollow part of leg, use glue as needed
- stick ends of joint wire into thigh and calf, glue, squoosh, be sure it's in the right position
- be sure you've cut things to have the legs the same length
- wrap the whole knee in an athletic wrap of vetwrap
- 10. vetwrap because it's less messy than gorilla tape, and you can move or fix it
