Kozy's Customs Updated 9.13.10 Animated Fetts

[DarthKozy]

i wanted a complete set of VOTC style carded figs to complete the original 21. So I started by checking into what was available for each character and decided which ones were VOTC quality (or close enough) and which might need some customization. Surprisingly, out of the 8 characters that still need the VOTC treatment, only 3 of them needed some work.

for those of you who frequent other custom forums, please excuse my laziness for posting the exact same thing in a few places - if you've already seen this somewhere else, i'll save you a few minutes and let you know right up front that there's no difference between this post and the others!

Walrus Man was definately in need of some serious upgrading as was the Death Squad Commander, the rest are pretty good, at least good enough to be carded and hung with the others.







Walrus Man is made from:
POTF Pondu Baba
head - neck cut off and head hollowed to fit on ball joint neck post
vest - trimmed and cut to fit better
hands - added swivel wrist articulation

VTSC Greedo
arms & body

SAGA DS Gunner
legs & belt


Walrus Man has all the articulation you'd expect to find in a VOTC fig and is the main reason i started this project.




Death Squad Commander was farily easy, just a head swap with the POTF Death Star Trooper onto a General Veers body. I did hollow out the head to accomodate the ball joint neck post.








Death Star Droid - i had a few different ideas going into this one, at first i thought about swapping parts with a SAGA 3PO, then i thought I'd just get a POTF DS Droid and paint him silver, then i tried an
experiment that ended up working better than i had thought. I took a little non-acetone nail polish remover to the POTF DS Droid and was shocked to discover how easily the black paint came off and
even more shocked to find a bright silver undercoat. The only other modification made is to the legs, i didn't like the wide stance so i glued his inner thighs together to bring them in a little bit.






The following figures are the ones that I decided were as good as they are going to get...

R5-D4 - considering this guy just came out and is pretty much not going to get much better i left him as is.




The same can be said about Hammerhead and the GONK- although i did remove his collar






For the Jawa, even though the Saga/POTF versions aren't perfect they are pretty good, so i added a soft goods cape, cut to resemble the vintage style vinyl cape, kind of a mixed homage.






Finally Snaggletooth is a decent figure the way he is, so all I did was give him some definition in the face with a dry brush - really brought out the little wrinkles and other facial details.





For the card backs, i went with the same layout as the existing line and created my own from scratch - all of the photos used are original, the vintage shots are from my collection and the "product" shots
are of the actual figs in the packages.

i did two different versions, each showing 4 of the 8 characters, here's a look at 2 of them.






and here's the whole group together and in their clamshells...





all in all, i'm pretty happy with the way they all turned out. there's a few minor things that i might have done differently if i had the resources, but for what they are and how they'll be displayed
they'll work just fine, at least until they are officially replaced by Hasbro versions.

thanks for looking and making it this far down - any questions, comments or critiques are always appreciated!

[Paulskywalker]

Wow these are really cool, Love the Ponda Baba. The cards are great must take a lot of work.

[Clavius]

So you're telling me that the DS droid already has the chrome finish UNDERNEATH the black? Why in the hell didn't Hasbro just do what you did when they re issued it with the Sandcrawler? Yours looks a thousand times better!

I'm gonna bust out the nail polish on mine asap!

Love that Death Star Trooper too! Sometimes the simplest customs are the coolest!

[YAK_Chewie]

Yep, nail polish remover works wonders on the Death Star Droid - I did that too a while back. But unfortunately it doesn't work too well on other protocol droids (like the Freeze Frame 3PO - don't try it on him)!

But maybe it would work on the ROTS 3PO?

Great project by the way Darth Kozy, very professional looking. Ponda Baba is easily my favorite, that's just a great custom all by itself without the packaging even.

[DarthKozy]

hey thanks everyone - this was definately a fun & looong project. if i was to do it all over again, i'd try to add proper articulation to all of them, like elbows, knees, etc... but sometime you have to go with what you've got!

thanks for putting this on the homepage Chewie - it was a nice surprise to see it there this morning!

[Incom]

Kozy, that's an excellent project! Ponda Baba looks amazing, especially the repainted DS Gunner's legs. Very good.

The Death Star Droid is my favourite of this set, along with the Jawa. That droid looks simply amazing! And the cape on the Jawa is a beautiful flashback to the good ol' days

The Death Squad Commander doesn't seem quite right though. I'd remove the rank badge and paint him black. Unless you were aiming for an accurate VOTC copy of the vintage figure. Then removing the rank insignia will be fine.

Those cards look really, really nice. Beautiful work on them!

[DarthKozy]

thanks Incom! Walrus Man is my favorite too, and like i said, is the whole reason i started this project.

i hear what you are saying on the DS Commander, but i had to decide what i thought was most important about each figure, and when it came down to him, i wanted to keep the grey suit like in the vintage one. I just felt like it was more of a visual conection between the two (plus Hasbro already did one in a black suit). But you bring up a good point, at one time i was considering painting Hammerhead's shirt blue, and the Power Droid a dark blue with a white line - in the end i decided to let each figure speak for itself and a blue shirt Hammerhead would look funny, whereas a DS Commander in grey looks like he fits. as far as the insignia goes, the vintage fig has it too, so i'm OK with leaving it on.

also thanks for picking up on the Jawa cape - that was a last minute change right before i sealed him on the card. as you can see from the "production" shots on the card backs, he originally had a vintage Jawa cloth cape on, but it covered too much of his body. that's when i came up with the idea to give him the new cloth version cut in the vintage vinyl style.

[saddestwookiee]

DarthKozy. I really don't know what to say. Those are all amazing!! Ponda Baba is the best of the bunch to me, anyway! Do you plan to do any others?

[DeathStarDroid]

Yes, those are amazing! Nice work!

[Ripley]

these are amazing as others have said above Kozy.
i have to say that Walrusman & Death Star Droid are my faves.
the painting on walrusman is really well done & the articulation makes the figure head & shoulders above any other walrusman to date.
the cardbacks look very professional as well.

thanks for sharing your project with us

[DarthKozy]

thanks again everyone - alot of people have been asking me if i plan on doing anymore of these, and to be honest i'm at a loss for which figs to do.

if you look at what's already in the line, and what's already planned add to that figures that aren't necessarily VOTC/VTSC but are very good sculpts - there's really not a lot of choices - from a customizing standpoint anyway.

i was thinking it might be cool to have all of the bounty hunters, but it looks like we'll have all of them represented except for Dengar and Zukkus.

i'm sure there's ones i'm not thinking about, but if anyone has suggestions please feel free to post them!

[rvt_hanimal]

Very cool! I really like Ponda Baba - He's quite well executed - great work!

[outrider]

This is such a fantastic project that you have going here. I love that Walrus Man, Hasbro need look no further than your thread to see a great VOTC version. Also the Death star droid is awesome. Great look. Its as if it stepped right off of the set. Best DS droid custom I've ever seen.

The cards are spot on too. just really great to see so many custom skills converging for this project.

[YAK_Chewie]

Hope you don't mind, I merged this with your existing custom thread because we try and keep all customizers work in their own thread. It's easier on the server that way at least until we get moved over to the official Yak server.

i've been meaning to make this guy ever since I first saw them in Purge. I know it's not 100% accurate, especially in the torso area, but it's as close as I'm going to get without custom sculpting some armor.

Recipe:
Head - casted from Neyo clone
Torso - VTSC Biker Scout
Arms & Legs - #41 SA Clone

in the comic you can see that the back of these guys is more of a regular clone rather than the biker scout but i went for the overall look from the front and couldn't get the 2 different torsos to match up - so i left it with the scout's back.

questions & comments always welcomed!

[YAK_Chewie]

Looking at this custom more, I guess I never realize how much their armor has Scout Trooper parts. You did a great job blending them all together!

But how did you get the arms to swap out? If don't mind me asking, I'd really like to know this!