18 replies to this topic

[jkaris]

Here they come (in no particular order). I'll post brief descriptions, but I'll leave it t their creators to tell you how they made them.

Both entrants sent a little extra with their entries. Matt sent a labeled tube with kewl hand drawn art of hs two entrants and they mini instruction books. They also came in a gashapon (kinkeshi capsule) with a smaller version of the label art.

Jeff's entries were similar, in that he sent all 6 wrapped in a mini-book, similar to the one that came with kinikuman figures, showing all the figures in that series. There was also an unpictured "chase figure". All came in their own capsule and were completely wrapped in the mini-book, as to hide the figure inside.

What can I say, great minds think alike!

Anyways, on with the entries:

Entry #7
matthewf1tz - #153 Snigator Claw










The claw was cast from a mold and sliced down the middle to insert a wire endoskeleton, then glued back together. He has no seams, other than the one on the side, and is made of silicon rubber and poseable/bendable.

[jkaris]

Next up:

Entry #8

matthewf1tz - Snigator #204 Tortle
















A tortle MUSCLE cut into his main parts, the shell had been split and hollowed out. He inserted a push on/off swtch, which allows for the head to pop up and down and filled the cavity with hot glue, which also has the ball joint sockets embedded.

[jkaris]

Entry #1

reccoom kaboom - GetterRobo









As was to be expected by Jeff, this thing is articulated just about everywhere.
Getter Robo comes with a pair of each hands shown. He can do his Dianna Ross "Stop! In the name of love!" impersonation, or switch both hands to the hatchets and he can go scalp something.

[jkaris]

Entry #2

reccoom kaboom - Ghost Rider













Where do I start. Okay, first off, this figure was the unpictued chase figure in Reccoom's capsule inserts. He is totally articulated, even down to the bendy fingers. His neck has no articulation, due to it itting on his shoulders via hot glue, BUT that was by design, since when lit up (by inserting the watch battery into the ontacts on his back), the area underneath his head and the sculpted hot glue on top look like flames. He comes with a chain, but sadly no motorcycle.


Lastly, he has a TON of spikes embedded in his costume. I know those must have been a bee-eye-itch to set.

[jkaris]

Entry #3
Reccoom - Man At Arms (of He-man fame)









Super articulated, even to the fingers, painted to resemble Teela's dad, Man at Arms comes with a regular hand to replace the one with the sceptre, and a shield, which I couldn't figure out how to attach (sorry Jeff ).

[jkaris]

Entry # 4

Reccoom - Mazinger












Reccoom articulated (can we just coin the phrase, "He reccoom'd it" ). The only real draw back on this one was the fact that the silver decided to un-cure in the mail. It was still a little wet when I got it. I guess silver on MUSCLE plastic doesn't do well.
Fans of the old robots should go ape-poop over this one too. Very kewl concept, to use the older Japanese robots s a basis for a Micro AF. Very kewl indeed.

I almost expected to find a Optimus Prime when I opened the next capsule.

[jkaris]

Entry # 5

Reccoom - megaman









This was my son's favorite. He is a HUGE megaman fan. This one will go on his "don't touch" shelf after the contest end. Not a total "reccoom" but the fists serve him better than articulated fingers. Classic Megaman color scheme. Great figure! Made me want to bust out the old Megaman games for NES and SNES.

[jkaris]

Entry #6

Reccoom - Trap Jaw















Fully articulated and accessorized, Trap Jaw comes with a pick axe, gun, sawblade and robotic hand. Even a removeable green belt pays homage to the original MOTU figure. Only thing missing is the articulated jaw.

[jkaris]

I must say that all these entries just plain ROCKED!

There were a few that really stood out from among them all, and I am sure that they will be in the top 3. However, I have 4 other judges judging, so we will have to wait and see how they rank.

See you again in a few days when the other judges submit their decisions.

[matthewf1tz]

Here they come (in no particular order). I'll post brief descriptions, but I'll leave it t their creators to tell you how they made them.

FIRSTLY: HOLY CRAP that Ghost Rider is AMAZING!!!!! All your figures are great Jeff but damn.....that one is SWEEEET!!

SECONDLY: Jkaris - your camera is too good - it shows up to many flaws on my entries!!!!

Now the breakdown of how made I mine:

For the contest I chose two of my favourite figures, the first one being MUSCLE #153.

After seeing the great job Reccoom had already done articulating a claw I decided I would have to try something different. I’d really enjoyed some wire skeleton figures I’d had when I was younger so I decided this was a good opportunity to try my hand (or claw!) at it.

MUSCLE plastic was far too rigid to use for this and I didn’t have a Kinkeshi or bootleg to try out so I took a mould using FIMO (like sculpey).

I tried a few different materials to make the figure with; glue, bathroom sealant etc but none of them worked. Finally I tried a kind of rubber latex that is used for making moulds – it worked perfectly!



Once I had the two halves perfect (after about five attempts!) I stripped some electrical earth wire, cut it to size and pushed it into the rubber as pictured. I curled the ends of the wire into a loop for the top of the fingers so it wouldn’t push through so easily. I then put the two halves together using a flexible glue that would have some ‘give’ in it and allow for bending.

I coloured the figure using a mixture of permanent markers and model paint. It bends and holds position without any visible joints!



The second figure is MUSCLE #204.

I had a good look at the figure and realised it didn’t really have that much on there that could be articulated (no waist, no elbows, etc) without changing the original figure too much. To compensate for lack of jointing I decided make the joints more relevant to the figure.

First I hollowed out my original MUSCLE figure and cut away the pieces that would be jointed. I used map pin joints for the arms and then map pin joints to connect the legs to the body and hinge joints for the knees. I wasn’t sure if what I had planned for the head would work….

I would have to re-build the inside of the figure to attach all the various pieces, so I tested it out using blu-tac and it worked pretty well.

I made the inside of the figure from a flexible super-glue building it up in layers to allow room for the balls of the map pins and the bulk of the head connection – a push switch!



I coloured the figure using a mixture of permanent markers and model paint.

Here is the finished product – the head pops up and down just like a real turtle would retract it’s head into it’s shell (….well almost!)



And finally; why paint him blue?? To match my Gormiti, Tartantica of course!



I really enjoyed putting these figures together and I would reccomend that IF Jkaris runs this again PLEASE PLEASE enter - it's great fun!

oh, and here's the artwork I did for the packaging (EDIT: hahaha, just noticed the word 'hidden' in the image name):

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•  MAFartwork.jpg   91.45K   25 downloads

Edited by matthewf1tz, 12 August 2006 - 05:30 PM.

[Universal Ruler Supreme]

Wow Guys! Great work! I must say these were pretty nifty! I really liked Matt's Bendy Claw. That was original and must have taken some time to get right. And Jons pics do bring out alot of defects , but your pictures make it and tortle look awesome next to your gormtii! Being a huge Megaman fan, I also liked Recooms Megaman! The color scheme was perfect! I really enjoyed your Black Hole idea. It was cool to make most of them out of Black Hole figures. It adds a special little touch to them as a group.

Again great work. It makes me upset that I couldn't enter! Can't wait to see the winner! But no matter who wins, your all wieners in my book!


I know that was corny.....

[Reccoom Kaboom]

The concept with my figures was to use the same figure, and see him "impostinating" recognizable charachters from other genres. figure #224 was perfect for two reasons: first, he's pretty much a blank slate, and second, he's an extremely common figure in purple and flesh ( before this contest, I had 13 purples!!). Even ghost rider is a 224, with a skull bead for a head. I titled this series "Reccoom Kaboom Presents: The Impostinators".

Here's a shot of where I started:

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•  dark_harvest.jpg   100.08K   32 downloads

[Reccoom Kaboom]

the knees, most of the elboes, and the fingers are all bendy joints.

Getter robo is probably my favorite sculpt, because the custom carving turned out even better than I'd hoped, and the I'm really happy with the pinstriping on the legs. the open hands are goku's from a dbz figure line. I'ts dissapointing that his head spikes appear to have melted a bit in shipping. I'll get started on a replacement head right away.

Ghost rider was a bead with an led shoved in it and a 3v battery pushed between the posts. kept me motivated enough to get this figure done faster than any of the others. those pins did hurt tho

Man-at-arms is all done in sharpie oil paints, whereas most of the others were almost completely poster paint, "glazed" with modeling cement. he took many more coats, and had to wait longer between them, but I really love the way he turned out. The sheild's two pins go on either side of the pin for his wrist joint, btw.

Mega man was the second in the series to be built (the order was mazinger, mega man, trap-jaw, getter robo, man-at-arms, and ghost rider), and was supposed to have a matching figure, like the mazinger/getter or the manny/trappy combos, but I couldn't get the coloring right on ASTRO BOY, so he's stuck fighting ghost rider. Marvel Vs Capcom, maf style!

Mazinger's silver paint issue had been a problem in the beginning, but I thought I'd resolved that with the model cement seal. Guess not. I purposely made the bendies on his arms too long, so they could fold in half for the gun barrels in his elboes. He has 24 joints, my new standard in open-handed figures.

What can I say about trap-jaw? he really couldn't have turned out better for me.
If you look at his left arm, you'll notice he has the double-jointed elbow, and his right moves much more than 90 degrees at the elbow. the claws on the claw hand are the fins cut from the forearms of the other figures. the gun is a stikfas shotgun barrel, and the scythe is from a spawn battle axe. the skin tone was made by alternating blue and green poster paints, and swirling them in the glue, so the skin has a depth to it. The ring on his head works, too

Here's the art for the front of the figure wraps, showing rough concept art of all the figures ecept ghost rider (sillouet)

Attached Files

•  impostinators.jpg   77.14K   22 downloads

[Reccoom Kaboom]

At the beginning of this project, I saw these seven figures (minus Astro Boy) as series one in an ongoing line of #224 impostinators, until all the rediculus surplus of this figure in the muscle community is used up. The led "muscevation" in ghost rider gave me the idea of doing series two in a Marvel vs Capcom theme, with lights in the heads of cyclops, sentinel, thanos, akuma, blanka, and in the arm of mega man 2. Just a thought..


This was my banner that filled the backs of the figure wraps

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•  backer.jpg   18.77K   15 downloads

[Reccoom Kaboom]

the figure wraps were to also protect the figures in shipment, as I do not trust the postal service. The six capsules were shipped in a clear display box, so they wouldn't need to be dusted later. Good thing I cut Astro boy from the line, as there was no room for a seventh capsule in there.

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[matthewf1tz]

Wow Guys! Great work! I must say these were pretty nifty! I really liked Matt's Bendy Claw. That was original and must have taken some time to get right. And Jons pics do bring out alot of defects , but your pictures make it and tortle look awesome next to your gormtii!

thanks URS! Still looking forward to seeing your one once it's finished...

I think that the Claw did take a little bit longer than the Tortle, as finding the right material, right method and right type of wire took a few attempts.

The time taken up with the Tortle was hollowing it out and getting the spacing right for the head to pop up and down. Oh AND finding the mechanism - I'd initially planned to use a pen mechanism (like on a push biro) but couldn't find one small enough. I even ordered some switches from ebay but none of them were right. I was going to give up then I found the perfect one in my kitchen drawer!

Anyway, I was pretty pleased for a first attempt and was even more pleased that only ONE MUSCLE figure was 'harmed' in the making of these figures!!

[Reccoom Kaboom]

I also used only 1 figure in each. Great work on your two entries Matt! How did the staining work for you?

[matthewf1tz]

I also used only 1 figure in each. Great work on your two entries Matt! How did the staining work for you?

cheers mate - the one figure thing was to illustrate that you don't need a massive collection to enter....just gutted that more people didn't...

Yeah, the markers worked really well, and your tips were handy for that and the ball joints.

Still loving your glowing head Ghost Rider.....! I like the way you used the glue to make the flames!

[Reccoom Kaboom]

Thanks! I've found that the trick to having cooprative hot glue is to start building it up when its just starting to get runny. Once it gets too hot, it won't hold the shape very well. The skull is from a 300+ gross bag of skull beads i ordered a few halloweens ago. I've got plenty, if anyone else wants to take a crack at making one.