I then drew and colored a quick sketch of the character that I wanted to make with the parts I chose. Once the figure and printed parts arrived, I dismembered the figure by submerging it in warm/hot water and I sanded down the imperfections on the printed pieces. Then, I primed all the parts with just regular white paint. I like to use The Army Painter brand, however any regular acrylic paint will work. After every piece was primed, I started painting the base colors, so orange on all of the skin, brown on the fur, and a cream color on all the cloth wrapped pieces. As with any paint, I needed to add many coats to make the color nice and opaque. I then added the secondary colors, still just blocking in the basic colors and touching up any mistakes. Once that was done, I started adding in details, like the face, necklace, and metal on the pauldrons. For faces, I like to add another color lightly blended on the cheeks, nose and ears ( pink or red for humans, and for other skin colors a lighter or warmer version of it, for example yellow for green or orange). This just helps to make the figure look a little more realistic, like there is blood flow or a bit more life, although it doesn’t always show up the best on some non-human skin tones. After everything was painted and all the details were added, I like to add a wash over it. A wash is just a bit of paint mixed with more water to around a 1:3 ratio, added over all of the parts, wiping away the excess with a paper towel. This just helps to make the figure look a bit dirty or like the character has been in battle. Once the wash is dry, I like to add a dry brush of a lighter color over top of each color ( a dry brush is just when you put a small amount of paint on your brush, and then wipe the majority of it off, only applying small amounts of color to highlight raised areas). Next, and maybe one of the most important steps, is to add a varnish over top of everything painted so that the paint doesn’t chip off. I suggest using anti-shine varnish, because the matte ones are almost never truly matte. I sometimes like to add a gloss varnish to the eyes and lips, although sometimes it can be distracting in photos. Lastly, I sanded the joints down to fit and re-assembled the parts. And that’s it!

Thanks to Dennis Derby and Leiland Oquendo for their support for this project !!

In our shop, we offer a couple of options to change the look of the Revelations Battle Cat. here, we’ll explain the process needed to replace the head.

With the help of very hot water, you need to split the original head in half through the middle.

Unlike other action figures, the Battle Cat doesn’t use a ball joint to connect the head to the rest of the body. If you do it correctly, the original head won’t be broken. Don’t worry, the plastic used to make these is resistant to very hot water. The goal is to release the pegs that hold both sides of the head together with the heat.

Once you’re able to remove the head, you’ll be able to see the neck joint. Our heads have been designed to fit directly over the peg with a slight push.

The head is held in place easily, but if you’d like to add extra strength you can add glue or blue-tack. If you have any questions or need extra help, please feel free to contact us :). Don’t forget to share your creations with us.

I also used chamois to make little treasure purses or bags. I gave to my friends or sold them to acquaintances at school. Those were the days! I had tons of little stones, old coins, bits of dried herbs… and I would stuff the little decorated bags full of these things and imagine stories for their magic.

As an aside, another random use I had for chamois was as a camping or gym towel. I cycled across Canada with a small chamois as my towel. It was great!

Now that I am an older and wiser adult, I have new more mature hobbies, like customizing Mythic Legions. For a long time I kept my chamois interests and action figure interests separate in time and space, but I have slowly started bringing them together. Chamois is great for action figures in my opinion, because it is:

• Easy to find
• Cheap compared to other leathers
• Thin and flexible, which makes it easy to scale down to action figure size
• Easy to work with

All this makes it easy for beginners. No need for awls, punching tools, or anything expensive for that matter. Just whatever you have lying around the house and in the craft bin!

I have started making capes and cloaks, belts, those front pieces for belts (cubre-pitos haha!), collars and pauldron pieces. My mom also surprised us lately with a box of sheepskins that she had put away and kept when I moved out, so our little dudes have some random wooly warmth this winter. Lucky them! They are better dressed than we are.

Here are some photos of cubre-pitos I made a couple of days ago. They are works in progress, still missing their fancy beads, chains, and embellishments.

I made sure they fit the little hole under their belts with Sculpy plugs. This is just the beginning, but I hope it is the beginning of something good and fun! I will make another post when I have some finished, embellished pieces to show.

Also… they might end up for sale in the store! If you have a project that needs real leather, let us know.

We can make something very cool just for your figure. Who wants plastic when you can have a real amethyst and metal chain on real leather?

Here’s why I chose to dye those figures before painting them : Like a lot of toy lines nowadays, figures have a lot of complex articulations. Painting those articulations is often fighting a losing battle. Friction will most likely rub off the paint no matter how many coats and touch ups you apply. I’ve heard that sanding down the right parts is an option as it will reduce friction, but I haven’t investigated that option yet. The other technique, the one I went with, is to dye the figure in order to get the desired base color…so those articulations won’t need to be painted.

In the picture above, you can see the figures after they were dyed, getting ready to be painted. For this project, I used a graphite colored dye just to get the figures darker (Always get the Rit DyMore Synthetic Fiber Dye!!! It is said that it’s the only one that works fine). I let them simmered for 3 hours in a mix of hot water and dye, stirring them once in a while. I also often bent and twisted the articulations to make sure the dye would get everywhere in those cracks and splits. Oh, and always make sure it’s not too hot so you don’t ruin your figures. Plastic can warped or melt and you don’t want that!

Dyeing is also great for accessories by the way. Accessories are often made of soft plastic that takes in the dye very well. And since accessories are often taken in and out of figure hands, it again solves the friction issue. But dye is not magic…you won’t be able to dye a dark plastic with a light colored dye…going darker is pretty much the only option I guess. Another downside, aside from being super messy, is that it is not cheap. So dyeing as much pieces as you can in one batch might be a good idea.

So, now that I had dark turtles, I just had to paint the lighter zones, leaving the articulations unpainted. The best way I found to get a good transition from a painted to an unpainted zone is to use the glazing and the dry brush techniques which I’ll be talking about in one of my next posts.

I hope this has been useful! Like always, feel free to comment, ask questions and share your positive and/or negative experiments!! See you soon!!!

That is the most ambitious project I’ve worked on so far. I think all the techniques I have acquired since I’ve started customizing were needed in this set. I even had to learn a couple of new tricks. Let’s keep it simple for now. Here’s a list of what I used. Of course you can go with your own goods and stuff, but always try to make some tests to guarantee a good result.

• Rit DyeMore – Synthetic Fiber Dye.
• Super Glue. There a many brands, but I trust LePage.
• Hot glue sticks. You will need only a little lenght. So if you don’t have some at home and you don’t plan on using it in the future, something else should be considered. We’ll come back to it later.
• Liquitex – Matte Medium.
• Acrylic Paint. I mostly use Liquitex, Pebeo and Demco. I suggest to buy those in art supply stores…Here’s a good one in my neck of the woods : Deserres.
  • Orange, red, purple and blue
  • 4 shades of green
  • 4 sahdes of yellow
  • 2 shades of Brown
  • Silver
  • Black
  • White
• Glow in the dark pigments (Optional).
• Mat varnish.
• Brushes.
• Utility Knife. I wouldn’t suggest anything…go with your needs.
• Needle Files. What will be done with the files can be done with a utility knife. Again, go with your needs.
• Medical tape. Bought mine at the drugstore. I wanted to see them to choose the right one.

I will try to be back real soon to continue this tutorial step by step…in the meantime you can go watch this awesome video about dyeing action figures : How To Dye an Action Figure video. Have fun!!!

Most of the sanding can be done with sanding paper. It’s easy to find, it’s cheap and if you don’t already have some at home, you might find it quite useful. But custom projects often mean working with small pieces and hard to access recesses. That’s when to needle file will come into play!

Unlike working with metal or hard materials, plastic is easy to work with so tools don’t need to be of the highest quality. I got myself this cheap set on Amazon and I love them :

As you can see on the picture above, they come in various sizes and shapes to fit your needs. I often carry my projects around so I like to keep my toolbox light, but these files are now following me everywhere!

And if you don’t want to buy those or you have a problem that needs to be fixed right away and you can’t wait for them to be delivered, you can always wrap some sanding paper around a rod of some kind or a sturdy wire or something or even just roll a piece of sanding paper onto itself. I did that a lot.

As always, your comments and questions are most welcome!

True to our name, we are planning an overnight sale (from sundown to sunup, or dusk ’till dawn) for the night of Sunday February 27th to Monday February 28th, 2022 (Eastern Standard Time / UTC -5). That’s tomorrow night already!

We are planning do have these sales periodically, offering different accessories at a 15% discount. We’ll announce them shortly before they start on our social media, and sometimes in our newsletter as well, so when you see the image above, you’ll know it’s coming! Tomorrow night only, all torsos will be on sale.

We look forward to seeing you there!