These are so good! You're really talented! I love how detailed they all are, even little things like Wonder Girl's jewellery and Lilith's hair and skirt are really defined!
These are so good! You're really talented! I love how detailed they all are, even little things like Wonder Girl's jewellery and Lilith's hair and skirt are really defined!
The devil is in the details, my friend! The Legion ones even have flight rings!
Many people have asked how I did these and I just found this old text from Jo and Terri-Anne Sanning's old site that explains it all in detail, so I decided I'd post it here. Can you tell I'm bored at work today?
Basically I made molds off of two old dolls from the Marx Johnny West cowboy doll series from the sixties. They were the most anatomically proportional dolls I could find. I used a plaster mold to cast the dolls themselves (in plaster), which makes a pretty lumpy undetailed casting, so then I used a latex mold to recast the heads and hands and replace the lumpy ones with new highly detailed ones.
I poured plaster into a tupperware container until it was about half full. Then I sprayed the doll I was molding with cooking oil and laid it into the plaster until it was half submerged, with the feet against the side of the tupperware box. Then after the first half of the mold was set, I sprayed the entire thing with cooking oil and poured another batch of plaster over the top. After I dug the doll out of the mold I cut a hole in the end of the tupperware container. Then when I was ready to cast, I sprayed the two sides of the mold again with cooking spray and put them together in the tupperware, stood it on end and propped it up with two paint buckets. I used a funnel to pour plaster down into the holes in the bottom of the feet. After I filled the mold with plaster, I stuck two wooden chopsticks or dowel rods down into the mold, running them down to the shoulders of the doll-cavity, and letting them stick out about an inch. This gives the plaster something to cling to and helps to pry the plaster doll out of the plaster mold. It took some work to pry them out. I used a matt knife to do it and it's common for the molded figure to break apart in the process. I used wood glue to glue them back together after I got them out of the mold. The wooden rods also gave me something to anchor the figure into the base later. After gluing the figure back together, doing some cleaning up and replacing the head and hands, I poured plaster into a cream cheese container, and sunk the wooden rods into the wet plaster, up to the bottom of the feet. I used drywall mud for any patching or sculpting. I just smeared it on with a brush and smoothed it down with water. After it dried I smoothed it more with fine sandpaper. For the skirts, capes, and gloves, I dipped cloth in dry wall mud, draped them on the figure and let them dry. then I layered more mud on top to make them sturdier. I used an exacto knife and those little nutshelling tools with the curved pointy ends for almost all of my detailing.
When they were all done I used acrylic paint and water color brushes to paint them. I drew the emblems on my computer at work in Adobe Illustrator and printed them out to our color printer. Then I cut them out with an exacto knife and decopaged them onto the figures using transparent acrylic medium. It's like clear acrylic paint. Each male doll stands about 11.5" tall, not including the base. Females are about 11.25" tall, not including base. The bases add about two inches to each doll.
It's neat to see the team in their original uniforms, if only to see which ones are so classic as to have never changed (or only minimally changed).
Saturn Girl, Ultra Boy, Brainiac 5, Sun Boy and Mon-El have wandered away from their original looks, at times, but generally seem to return to the basics (or slight modifications of the basics) eventually.
Others, like Lightning Lad, Princess Projectra and Colossal Boy, moved on and never looked back.
Very nice. I liked the little touches such as Stone Boy replacing Blok and the ghost of Ferro Lad standing in for the second Invisible Kid. Is that Superman instead of Superboy, based on more recent retconning?
"...not having to believe in a thing to be interested in it and not having to explain a thing to appreciate the wonder of it."
It's Superman based on convenience. All these figures are adapted from History of the DCU volumes 1 and 2 EXCEPT Lana, who is from a Who's Who in the DCU cover. Haven't been able to find an appropriate Perez-drawn SuperBOY to use.
In all that Adventure goodness, it just jumped out a little, so I thought it was a retcon thing. Like Rond having the ring, when he probably didn't get shown having it until the Conspiracy issues.
"...not having to believe in a thing to be interested in it and not having to explain a thing to appreciate the wonder of it."
I hadn't picked up on him hiding it until you mentioned it. That's a nice touch. It was revealed he had the ring for quite some time before his father's attack on him, so a little easter egg.
Shame about Olsen's costume. Even if Element Lad had loaned him something. Anything.
"...not having to believe in a thing to be interested in it and not having to explain a thing to appreciate the wonder of it."
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