Odds and Ends and Super Glue

Brett and Paris won’t be too happy about this post, but I gotta make myself interesting Haha Here’s how you can build things from scratch. To me, Sculpting is the hardest part of toy customizing. Most of the time I’m working with existing toys, toy parts or 3D printed pieces, but sculpting is a great asset for customization. I once tried to sculpt a sword with nothing but epoxy clay and I didn’t even came close to obtain something barely acceptable. So here’s a path I’m exploring right now…

Here I reproduced this katana/sword I need for a project. Just like when you are drawing, sculpting requires you understand the geometry of the object you are trying to produce or reproduce. All I needed for this weapon was an old credit card and some plastic scraps from one of my kid’s toys (Since I’ve been doing customs more seriously, I’ve been keeping and organizing the bits and pieces of plastic I used to throw away). Once I had my 2 flat pieces for the blade and guard and my 2 cylinders for the hilt, I just super glued them together.

Here’s another example. This Custom « Bootleg » Shredder needed to gear up. Again, I’ve used a credit card for the blades. The hand guard, on which I glued the 2 blades, was cut out from a balloon holder.

Balloon holder…That’s the kind of stuff I used to throw away. But not anymore! Birthday partys are great sources of plastic stuff that would end up in the garbage. Look for all the tiny plastic pieces that hold toys in their packaging. I don’t always know right away what I’ll use them for, but I’m always glad to have them when I need them.

It may all seems a bit sketchy for the moment, but I’m pretty confident on how it’ll all turn out. Now that I got their general shape ready, I could refine them, sand them, add some 3D effects using epoxy clay…I will soon show how it progress and talk about sanding and the different tools you can use.