Recently JediStyle, one of Dad's all-time favorite customizers, sent him a message, and asked Dad if he could commission him to make a custom Star Wars action figure. Since Dad was always such a huge fan of his work, Dad immediately asked if they could do a figure swap as payment.
Dad has long admired JediStyle's creative character creations, his ability to apply paint in such a way that the colors REALLY pop, and are expressed with such beautiful contrasts. JediStyle has a great eye for color and he's one of the best painters in the Star Wars custom action figure community.
I don't have a Star Wars custom created by JediStyle in my collection, and I can't tell you how happy I am that I will soon.
For the figure swap they both agreed to create either a bounty hunter or a Jedi for each other and mail it when they were finished.
Dad didn't feel like he had any good Jedi fodder, at least not at the level to reach his standards.
Which meant that Dad would be making a bounty hunter. As I saw Dad make this action figure, I kept trying to talk him into letting me have it. I tried to talk him into just starting a completely new figure for JediStyle. It didn't work.
At first Dad was going to try and create some crazy alien bounty hunter, but after seeing JediStyle's Mandalorian series, Dad noticed that there were no female Mandalorians on display. That's when Dad decided that instead of doing an alien bounty hunter, he was going to create a female Mandalorian bounty hunter.
Dad also wanted to make this his first attempt at creating a steam punk action figure. Dad used metallic paints and healthy amount of dark washes to add the steam punk touches. The rocket pack contributed well to the look as well. Dad wanted to keep the figure versatile by keeping the steam punk elements subtle and not too overt. To do this he made the headpiece removable; held in place with magnets when being used. We had recently watched Tank Girl with Lori Petty and Dad said the shapes of the headgear were influenced by the imagery of the movie. I love how Dad highlighted the femininity of the figure with the bright hot pink colored tones against the worn desert mud washed yellow.
I love female Star Wars action figures because they aren't produced as widely as the males. I know. Many would argue the the Star Wars action figure line has been the most generous toy line when it comes to creating toys featuring characters of both sexes. I would agree, but toy customization really brings out possibilities that would never come into realization at the mass production level. I definitely try to even things out in the street scenes of my play environments and to do that we have created a lot of female custom action figures in this house. This figure ended being one of my favorites of Dad's. I especially loved the sword with the Mandalorian symbol sculpted into the hilt.
As hard as she was to give up, it's cool to know that I have a JediStyle custom action figure coming my way. Definitely worth it! Look for the action figure that JediStyle created in December's Customizer Spotlight.
FEMME MANDO
created by Darth Daddy
