Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Mission Monitor Board Every 10 Years Forum The Workbench

I thought I'd try something a little different with this thread.

I'd kinda like to think of it in the vein as Cramer's Cafe, Varlent's Variable Villa, Shakes, or Cobie's Security Office... only this would be the place you come to look sexy and suave in your tool belt… whatever tool belt you wear. The emphasis here would be placed more upon tools, crafts, and butt cracks… well not so much butt cracks, but they are bound to appear when tool belts are worn.

I just think Legion World could use a little place to discuss shop... whatever shop you are into. Whether you are a writer, a painter, an artist, a carpenter, a metal worker, a musician, a singer, a reader, a watcher, a computerer, a collector, or (my personal hobby) an action figure customizer, or a parent, or a breeder, or a (you get the idea).

For instance... I know I'd like to hear more about how Drake and Dean do their art. Favorite programs they use or paintbrushes and paint or canvas material… or how Nightcrawler makes his smilies or (you get the idea).

If you've got a hobby or an interest, or an interest in somebody else's hobby, or an upcoming project, I view this thread as the place to discuss it.

To start things off...

I put together an article for a toy website that I frequent called Raving Toy Maniac. The customizing community for the most part is made up of very nice people who share tips, techniques, parts, and the like. And they are almost as nice as the people here in our Legion community.

I thought I'd give a little back by sharing my technique for joining two action figures together. If you are interested in seeing the anatomy of an action figure, you can see (complete with pictures) the two I tore apart here: Minesurfer\'s Waist Article

Wow.

I knew there was a lot of work involved in customizing but your article really brings that home for me in detail. And that was just about waists! People aren't kidding when they call it a labor of love.

Nicely done.

Wow! And here I thought customizing just meant repainting the figures!!! I'm impressed minesurfer.

Me too! Very informative. Makes me appreciate the few customized figures I have.

As for the Smilies. I draws'em pixel by pixel or use another smiley as a model and build from there.

A version of that smiley generator I had posted in the Anywhere Machine may be coming here soon.

Thanks fellas. I, as a customizer, take for granted that everybody knows that customizing is a lot of work and patience (when done right). Some figures are just simple repaints, but I try to stay away from that. I always try to swap pieces or make major changes to the lines of an existing figure. This is what I call the "technical aspect" of customizing and its what I enjoy the most. Painting and sanding tend to become chores after awhile.

When I look at a custom I always ask myself, "Do I see the character that was trying to be created, or do I see the base figure?" Hopefully my answer is the character, then I try to figure out where the parts came from. This is one of the reasons I'm going to redo my Kid Quantum and my Triads in the future. They look too much like the base figures for my tastes.

So Nightcrawler, you go through and color your smilies pixel by pixel? Do you do this in a regular program like paint shop pro or photo editor? How do you animate them?

I use Animation Shop 3 that came with my Paint Shop Pro 7 (although Scott gave me PSP 8, thanks Scott!). I just draw or copy multiple images, then the program animates them for me.

Bamfette from Nightscrawlers, who inspired me to do the Legion smilies, uses Adobe Image Ready.

I want to try a little something here...

With Custom Con 11 coming up, I thought I'd try and post a work in progress picture and let some guessing go on as to which figures were made.



They are of course, all Legion related.

Minesurfer, these look really cool! You obviously put a lot of time into them.

My father likes to collect miniature soldiers and then hand paint them. Every Sunday morning he'll do that for hours to get rid of the stress of the rest of the week.

I notice some X-Men costumes were used to make these: is that Sunfire and Archangel in there (or parts of them)?

Actually these are some before pictures. What you're looking at is my figures before the paint process, but after the technical points of putting the figures together. I used an Archangel and a Sunfire as a base figure for someone who is going to be a Legion related figure by the time I'm done with them.

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to guess which Legion-esque character I turned Sunfire, Archangel, and the rest of these X-Men base figures into.

Those look to me like the could end up being the Workforce. Looks like Evolvo in the back with the big head

You're barking up the right tree. Some of them have become Work Force members, but not all.

You're right about Iceman, he is now Evolvo. I tried some new tricks with his paint job, but all in all Evolvo turned out to be one of my worst customs. Almost embarassingly bad.

This is probably long and boring, but you can only do what my wife does and blank out when I talk about this stuff…

My long-neglected hobby is recording instrumental tracks on the pc. I’m a lousy musician but I enjoy playing.

The software I use is Guitar Tracks by Cakewalk. It’s a windows based program that simulates a multi-track recording console and mixer. It records the tracks as .wav files which are sort of laid out over a grid so you can cut and paste parts or copy to another track. I can either use the built in PC mike (for acoustic instruments) or plug straight in to the PC with an adapter that lets me plug a regular guitar cord into the PC mike input jack.

It also came with a pared down version of a .wav based drum machine type program called Drag and Drop Drummer. You just click on a .wav file of a snare drum hit and drop it in the track where you want it and once you build up a bar of the verse part you can copy and paste to fill out the drum track. It’s kind of tedious but since I don’t know any drummers…

My “gear” is an Epiphone acoustic guitar, a Squire Telecaster, a Squire Precision Bass, a Harmony Mandolin, a 10-watt Marshall practice amp and a Gorrilla practice bass amp. I use Martin light gauge strings on my acoustic and GHS Boomers on my bass. I think the last time I restrung my Tele I used Fender light gauge strings. I use Fender Thin guitar picks and Tortoise picks for bass. I had an empty oregano bottle I used as a slide, but I can’t find it and I can’t really play slide anyhow. I also have a crummy little Casio keyboard I use for banging out piano chords sometimes.

I wish I had much time to record, but the PC is in our bedroom and night time is the only time I ever have downtime so that puts the kibosh on it, except the rare occasions when I have the house to myself. Even then I seldom get to because I have to dig all my stuff out from the bottom of the closet and set everything up.

I usually only did covers of songs that interested me musically and which I could actually play all the parts. I did think I had written a good track once but unfortunately it turned out to be a chord progression from my garage band days, just capoed up three frets.

I used to paint Warhammer miniatures back in the day. I was getting kind of decent at it but then we quit playing... I did a few for a friend that had a pretty good checkerboard pattern on the legs. I doubt if I could do it now though.

Matlock, that's really cool that you record your own music! And you do both the guitar and bass rifts! Too bad it's so hard to get the chance to really do it--maybe if you ever get some free time you can set up a mini-studio room.

Minesurfer, are one of those going to be Karate Kid, Lightning Lad or Ultra Boy? I was thinking of the male on the far left (with Sunfire's costume) as a potential Garth. Maybe the one with the spit-curl is Superboy (or Mon)?

If we ever hit the lottery that would be my first priority for the mansion. I'd be making some friends down at Guitar Center PDQ for sure, I haven't bought any new gear in about 10 years.

Nope. None of those turned out to be figures that I've already done. Hints... there's a villain, one legionnaire from another era, and the rest are reboot characters.

How's the project going miney? I've been working on keeping Miss Vera Louis comfortable & happy for her kittens' sakes.

The project is coming along nicely, thank you. It looks like I'm going to enter alot of figures in this fall's Custom Con 11. It'll happen in October and I'll post more here when they go live.

Congrats on the kittens too. My wife has a soft spot for kitties. She grew up on a farm in Indiana and they have a bunch of barn cats that thump like bunnies. They catch field mice also, but mostly they just thump.

Ah, the sweet life of a thumping-like-a-bunny barn cat...

I see you're nearing 1000 posts, miney. You go, boy!

Time for an update at the ole Work Bench:

Last week (10/04/04) was Custom Con 11 which is a mock convention where Customizers put their works on display for "Toy Lines" they've done, but make it seem like a real Toy Show.

This year I made a few more Legion figures:

A few more Legion Villains.

The Uncanny Amazers.

The Work Force.

The Legion of Sustitute Heroes.

And a few Non Legion figures.

This should put an end to all the speculating about the works in progress from the previous page .

If you want to see them, you can follow this link to thread in the Bits Forum that has all the links and some previews.

Bump... Just a quick heads up... if you're interested in whats been on The Surfer's Workbench over the last year...

Custom Con 13 is coming up next week and I've got about 40 new figures ready for display. Not too many Legion (only one with any ties that I can think of, unless you go back to some of the old Brave and The Bold comics) figures in this batch, but if you're a fan of recent and not so recent DC animated shows, I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I'll post some links next Tuesday hopefully...

Awesome! Can't wait to see 'em! It amazes me at how you can create such cool figures.