Darth Daddy's Customizing Corner featured Star Wars custom action figure artist Brandon Jackson in his latest post over at The Star Wars Underworld.
Although Brandon Jackson will tell you that he still considers himself to be a noob when it comes to customizing, everyone else will tell you that he's way too hard on himself. Truth is Brandon is super talented.
Brandon Jackson hails from Los Angeles California, and has been serving in the military for 18 and a half years. He has loved Star Wars as long as he can remember and he has collected Star Wars throughout most of his childhood. Although he stopped collecting for many years, he got back into collecting in 2012. He now has a pretty large Star Wars collection and 1:6 Scale figures are his main focus. At the point when he started customizing he pretty much owned almost every Sideshow Collectible 1:6 scale figure that they made. He got into 1:6 costumizing because there were so many characters from Star Wars he loved, but no company made in 1:6 scale.
He joined a group on Facebook called One Sixth Republic ran by the creator Mark OSR. There he saw so many people from all over the country, kitbashing and customizing figures, that it made him want to create some of his own figures. He had never done anything artistic before, but Brandon wanted to give it a try. So earlier this year he did his first custom, a 1:6 scale figure he called Agent 47 - Mandalorian Bounty Hunter. He used the Agent 47 headsculpt from the awesome videogame series Hitman and custom painted a 12 inch Hasbro Jango Fett. At the time, he felt like he had no idea what he was doing until he posted it up on Facebook, and everyone loved it.
Shortly after that he got into painting head sculpts. Brandon uses brushes to paint his figures, but he hopes to start airbrushing in the near future. As far as supplies go, he uses a variety of different paints, mainly acrylic paints, but he stresses the importance of using the right brushes. He'll admit that he was a little cheap when he first started painting, but he later invested in better equipment and supplies.
He also recommends using a head set magnifier with a light. It really helps when doing the eyes. Brandon says his two biggest challenges are painting the eyes and sewing. All customizing artists will tell you that the eyes are the most important and also the most challenging.
When it comes to sewing the soft goods, Brandon's lucky to have a wonderful and supportive wife that not only supports his hobby but she also sews very well and has been showing him how to make some really killer threads for his custom figures.
