DARTH DADDY's CUSTOMIZING CORNER: DioramaWorkshop.com

Darth Daddy's Customizing Corner featured The Diorama Workshop in his latest post over at The Star Wars Underworld.

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With Celebration right around the corner, I can't help but get excited about one of Celebration's best attractions...The Diorama Workshop. The formal announcements have been made and The Diorama Workshop will be returning for Celebration Anaheim. The event has been a staple attraction at past Celebrations. The event lasts the entire duration of Celebration.  It's a giant team build for everyone who wants to participate.  Past builds were really amazing. Last Celebration a Jabba's Sail Barge was constructed.  All was built in the traditional 3 3/4" scale.  

The theme this time around is Bespin. The Diorama Workshop will be more ambitious then ever with THREE (3) full levels of Bespin hallways, reactor cores, and prison cells.  They will be addressing the set all the way to the peaks of the skyscrapers outside in the skyline. There will be something for beginners as well as advanced diorama masters.  The booth will be 60x60 feet of building space for the fans and 20 feet x 32 feet for tables used in the final display. For the first time EVER, The Diorama Workshop will be displayed INSIDE the actual HASBRO BOOTH !!! Giving the kids (and adults) creations even MORE exposure.

In ALL past Celebrations, fans have always been so generous and donated their unwanted or duplicate figures to The Diorama Workshop to use at the Diorama Workshops through the CIII - CIV - CV and CVI Figure Funds. Hasbro would then come on top and donate tons of toys from their warehouses to fill in the remaining gap so that ALL KIDS had at least ONE toy to go home with alongside their creation on the closing Sunday.

This year, they are again asking for your help !!. Especially with LESS THEN TWO (2) MONTHS till the show. Time is more precious then in years past. As you may also know, a diorama without any figures, as cool as the construction is, ONLY comes to LIFE with Hasbro TOYS. The loyal staff have gotten the ball rolling with 200+ figures, beasts and ships (purchased on ebay and from their own collections) but... that is just the beginning of what they need for final display. They have a page on their website with information on how to get involved.

Frank D'iorio the creator of DioramaWorkshop.com works in Movie Visual Effects as a freelance Digital Compositor. Frank has been building diorama playsets to display his Star Wars Collection and share his designs with the world since the creation of his website NiubNiubsUniverse.com in the summer of 2000. In 2011, Frank joined the 21st century with the creation of Frank D'iorio's Diorama Workshop where viewers can enjoy "FREE" decals, blueprints and step by step instructions that are great for individuals who want to build action figure dioramas in their own home for either display or as your kid's playsets.

After getting a Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design at the Université du Québec a Montréal in 1990, Frank started his career working at a big local television studio doing animation and design for TV openings and their corporate videos. After several years in TV, his true passion for film led him to BUZZ IMAGE where he worked on his first film feature The Red Violin.  In 2007, Frank's life long dream of working for George Lucas came true when he went to San Francisco's ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) to work on the film adaptation of Transformers. Since then Frank has continued to work at Lucasfilm in the winters and spends his summer months at local Montreal studios. Some of Frank's other film work includes: 300, Final Destination 3, Fantastic 4, and Terminator Salvation among others. You can see his work profile over at IMDB.com

Since 2002, Frank has been working along with Lucasfilm, designing and organizing all of the Diorama Workshops for all their Star Wars Celebration conventions. An opportunity that allows him to share his love for Star Wars and diorama building with kids of all ages.

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The Star Wars Underworld Makes a Visit to "Customs for the Kid"

Yesterday Chris Seekell from The Star Wars Underworld made a visit to our house. We gave him a tour of Customs for the Kid and took about a 1/2 hour of video showing all of our custom collection. We even talked a little about our customizing process. We'll post the video footage when the editing is complete. Hear Chris Seekell talk about the visit on The Star Wars Underworld Podcast!

Right click here and select "save link as" to Download MP3

www.starwarsunderworld.com

DARTH DADDY's CUSTOMIZING CORNER: Tyler Berry aka Spudtrooper or Spud

Darth Daddy's Customizing Corner featured Star Wars custom action figure artist Tyler Berry aka Spudtrooper or Spud in his latest post over at The Star Wars Underworld.

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Tyler Berry (aka Spudtrooper or Spud) is a native of Clovis, New Mexico and has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember. It all started when he was about 6 years old and his grandmother got him and his older brother the Power of the Force ROTJ Luke figure in their Easter baskets. From there he was hooked. His love for Star Wars grew over the years and so did his figure collection. When Hasbro held the collector's contest nationwide around the time of Episode II, Tyler’s collection won for the State of New Mexico and came very close to taking the main title of biggest collection in the U.S. of all the contest participants. 

After seeing Episode II, Tyler’s scope of collecting changed somewhat. He really liked the idea of the clones and the Clone Wars so he started army building. Collecting became easier due to the fact he was receiving free figures for the entire year after winning the Hasbro contest.  Hasbro, however, wasn’t putting out all the clones to his liking. That’s when he picked up the brush and started making his own customs. He started out with just painting the four different colors of the clone officer ranks. Looking back now, he’ll be the first one to tell you that he thinks they look like garbage, but you’ve got to start somewhere. 

When the Clone Wars series got into full swing, Tyler was always waiting for a new clone unit or commander to be introduced so he could make a custom of the character. This is the time when he says that he honed his painting skills that he would later take on to 1/6th scale. With the introduction of the 1/6 scale, 212th Attack Battalion Clone Trooper created by Sideshow Collectibles in 2007, Tyler was on his way to another massive collection. He’ll admit that he never thought he would amass the 1/6 collection he now possesses, saying that originally he was just going to stick to getting the clones. In a way that one Clone Trooper was like the Luke figure all those years ago and led him to getting the Jedi for each respective clone and then branching into the Original Trilogy figures as well. 

In March of 2014, while searching Google for reference images of the Clone Wars characters Fives and Echo in their ARC trooper armor, Tyler stumbled upon a reference image linking back to a forum called Sideshow Freaks. Within this forum he noticed they had a section dedicated to Star Wars customs but in 

the 1/6th scale which had never occurred to him. So he thought he’d give it a shot thinking that if he could do it on a 3 ¾” figure he could surely do it on a 12” one. It just so happened that around this time, Sideshow Collectibles had recently released its Clone Trooper Veteran figure which is a perfect starting base for any custom clone. So Spud put in an order for 5 of them that would soon become the 501st squad of Jesse, Hardcase, Kix, Tup, and Dogma from the Umbara story arc in the Clone Wars series. Needless to say this was inspired heavily by the announcement of a phase 2 Captain Rex coming in the future. After he received such praise and admiration from his fellow Freaks, Tyler decided he’d also do the Troopers of the Wolffe Pack: Sinker, Boost, and Comet. 

Once again, one thing was leading to another, and Tyler was cranking out custom 1/6 clones at a rather fast pace, improving on Sideshow’s designs whenever he could. He even went as far as to replace all the original phase 2 helmets on his clones with the newer phase 2 sculpt from the Veteran figure, painting the designs to match when necessary. So if you wonder who always is buying up all the Veteran buckets from eBay, Spud is to blame. 

Tyler says overall it was the Forum and its friendly members that has inspired him in the last year to be so productive in the realm of Star Wars customs. He says it’s a great community where you can bounce ideas off of people and get help in certain areas beyond your expertise. He credits his friends on Sideshow Freaks with helping him in the areas of sewing, sculpting and casting, painting (Tarkin), and even the construction of lightsabers. Spud says without meeting the awesome people on the boards that he has, he wouldn't have half of the customs completed that he does. 

Tyler is also a massive fan of Avatar and has created many figures using the original Mattel figures and has even created a Pandora diorama complete with glow in the dark paint to simulate Pandora’s bio-luminescence.

Link to Spud’s Customs on Sideshow Freaks:

http://www.sideshowcollectors.com/forums/star-wars-custom-figures-and-dioramas/142356-spuds-customs.html

DARTH DADDY's CUSTOMIZING CORNER: WILLROW HOOD

Darth Daddy's Customizing Corner featured Star Wars custom action figure artist Willrow Hood in his latest post over at The Star Wars Underworld.

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The Star Wars customs made at Mos Eisley Salvage and the ever present visage of Willrow Hood are the creative efforts of Gabriel Marc Xavier Nowlin. He is a real life "Space Cowboy" who grew up in the lonely desert country of West Texas. He currently lives on a ranch outside Fort Worth,Texas with his wife, who is a professional artist. They share their spread with two ranch dogs, a sketchy Pekingese, a 20 year old box turtle, livestock and an interloper cat. He has had a life long interest in Star Wars, robots, model building, art, surfing, aircraft, ships and science fiction.

The focus of Mos Eisley Salvage, as the name implies, is to take broken Star Wars toys of all kinds and then turn them into something new, unconventional and imaginative. The projects are limited to broken toys and discarded plastics. Nothing goes unused - a light saber handle, some Astromech domes from X-Wings and a laser cannon from Slave One become key pieces in an R2-D2 Battle Droid. Wings and cockpits from a mix of broken Tie Fighters become a star ship for the Red Baron.

Like Michael J. Fox and many others, Gabriel lives his life with the daily challenges of Young Onset Parkinson's Disease. To add to that, he also lost his right eye in an accident. He does not allow those things to limit him. He views them as further creative challenges to figure out. The customs he makes are not intended as "for sale" products. The process of making them doesn't lend itself to mass production. Rather, the goal is to produce something that people enjoy seeing. His current customs are a continuing series he calls "Rise of the Astromechs" in which Astromech Droids are the central characters for a host of vehicles, figures and dioramas.

WILLROW HOOD on FACEBOOK

DARTH DADDY's CUSTOMIZING CORNER: Ric Customs

Darth Daddy's Customizing Corner featured Star Wars custom action figure artist Ric Customs in his latest post over at The Star Wars Underworld.

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This week's featured artist is Ric Customs from Singapore. He's a big fan of Star Wars and Bruce Lee. His artwork is mainly custom Star Wars action figures. His work pays homage to the video games of Star Wars from The Old Republic to The Force: Unleashed.  He also finds inspiration from The Clone Wars animated series.    I really suggest using the links I provided below to see more of his work because this artist has been busy.  He has a vast body of work filled with material I haven't seen anywhere else. Ric Customs' Mandalorian action figures are must view material!

"Ric Customs" Photo Album

"Ric Customs" Store

"Ric Customs" on Facebook