Customs for the Kid

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

CLONEHEAD ADDED TO "CUSTOMS I WISH I OWNED"

Clint Conrad, known as Clonehead at imperialshipyards.net, has been a Star Wars custom maker for about 5-6 years now. He got into doing Star Wars customs when trying to promote his ebay store, he noticed how much hype and traffic that other seller's Star Wars custom figures and vehicles were getting. Being a lover of plastic modeling in his youth, especially of military armor models, clint figured that he could put his painting and building skills to the test and try to make a custom figure to sell on ebay. Well, the experiment worked and within a year he had made and sold at least 100 customs "some with dioramas" to buyers in at least 30 different countries. 4-5 years ago, a buyer directed clint to a star wars collecting and custom forum where he posted alot of work and met the admin of the future imperialshipyards where he was invited to form and moderate the customs and diorama boards when the site was created.

Sometime before the Imperial Shipyards site was born, Clint was having a hard time finding some of the parts from hard to find figures that he wanted to incorporate into his customs so, having a little knowledge of molding and casting from his military modeling days, Clint started making parts to use on his custom figures. It wasn't too long after that Clint decided to start selling his castings to the other custom makers and has ever since. You can find auctions for these parts in his ebay store and now at his resin parts for sale thread at imperialshipyards.net

CLONEHEAD

Clint has posted custom work at several sites but as moderator, considers himself at home at the shipyards where he has placed pics and wip commentary in his custom figures reloaded thread, his Clonehead's custom figures #2 thread, and in his Clonehead's dioramas thread, all at imperialshipyards.net.

Monday, February 28, 2011

DAD'S CUSTOM UNHOODED JAWA & VADER'S CLONE WERE POSTED ON THE FRONT PAGE OF IMPERIAL SHIPYARDS ON THE SAME DAY

Dad's WIP Darth Vader Clone and Unhooded Jawa both got the front page treatment on Imperial Shipyards today. Go Dad!!

Sunday, February 27, 2011

THE UNHOODED JAWA

When Dad saw this image of the unhooded Jawa, he knew he wanted to add one to my collection.

THE UNHOODED JAWA
created by Darth Daddy

Work In Progress

Dad's unhooded Jawa custom action figure was made from the POTF Jawa so Dad could still keep the yellow glow of the eyes in his action figure and sculpted the face around the eyes by hand with a thumbtack using Apoxie Sculpt from Aves.

To order Apoxie Sculpt, go here:

http://www.avesstudio.com/index.php?page=shop.browse&category_id=7&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1
(They ship to every country via USPS)

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Custom Con XXVIII

CustomCon 28

What is CustomCon, you ask? CustomCon is a special semi-annual presentation of new custom toy creations by customizers around the globe. A decade in the running, it's still going strong. Inspired by the presentations of new product by legitimate manufacturers at Toy Fair and other trade shows, CustomCon is a "fake" convention, whereby customizers present their latest creations and recipes as if unveiling a new line of real toys to retailers. It's always a lot of fun, for both the viewers and the participants.

If this is your first exposure to a CustomCon, click here to see what's been offered over the past 27 CustomCons.

EVENT DATES:

CustomCon 28 will run from April 4 to 8, 2011.

ENTRY DEADLINE:

The deadline will be Monday, March 7, 2011. No entries will be accepted after this date.

ENTRY GUIDELINES:

So how can you participate? Well, the key is to make several custom action figures that would be in the same toy line, and send in photos of them. You could make your own new wave of DC Direct figures (a current series), a new wave of Star Trek figures (a previous series). You can also make a line of Super-Duper Creep Busting figures! (That would be your own unique line.) You could make figures based on characters from Comics, Movies, TV Shows, Books, Sports, Sci-Fi... The sky's the limit!

1. Just make sure each group of figures shares a common theme. You should come up with a name for your line of figures if it's an original line, and give some sort of description of the action figure line.

2. Custom packaging is, of course, an option, but it is certainly not required.

3. If possible, we would ask that you photograph the figures so that it looks like they are on display at a convention. If you have custom packaging, it's best to have pictures both loose and in the packages.

4. There's no limit on how few customs you have to submit for a line. 4 or more would be appreciated, but any number is fine. So, YES if you only have 1 or 2 good figures, send them in!

5. The whole point of CustomCon is to show off your NEW custom creations, so please, no entries of pieces previously seen on websites, forums or in any sort of public gallery.

Ready to Submit your ENTRY?

Send your submissions to casimir@toymania.com. Please e-mail the following:

- Your first and last name, or just the nickname you go by online. Your preference.
- Your email address.
- Your custom figure website address, if you have one.
- The name of your figure line.
- Any custom logos you wish to use for your toyline. (OPTIONAL)
- E-mail me pictures of your figures. JPGs are preferred, scaled for screen. (7 inches high at 72 dpi is a good standard, or around 100 kb). Please make sure your images are ATTACHED to the email, NOT embedded. Remember to name your image files appropriately. You may know every X-Man ever created by sight, but we might not.
- A description of what they were made from (your toy recipe). Describe what figures you used to make your custom. Please type, or "copy & paste" this into an e-mail.
- A Description of the action figure line (convention write-up report).
- Write up your own "Press release" or "Toy Show Commentary" to describe your toyline. Please type, or "copy & paste" this into an e-mail.

We appreciate you helping to spread the word about CustomCon. Would you like to link to CustomCon 28 on your web site?

Here is a logo you can use. (For bandwidth reasons, images hosted on our server won't show up on any web site other than RTM. Please "right click" on the image and then choose from the menu to save the image to your hard drive and then upload it to your site's server.)

http://www.toymania.com/customcorner/cc28/

CUSTOMIZER SPOTLIGHT #13: PARASITE COLLECTIBLES

We saw the "Mandalorian Renegade Traveler" created by Parasite Collectibles on Ebay recently and we really liked the paint scheme and parts mix. Once we saw the opening helmet and the blue sunken eyes underneath, we knew we wanted to bid on him. Thankfully, we were also the winning bidders on the item and this figure now rests among my other cool custom action figures.

Wayne J. Bunce Jr. (a.k.a. Parasite Collectibles) has unique designs, mixing parts from different toy lines to create his custom action figures. Wayne says he prefers making Mandalorians over Jedi or any other Star Wars character and says he is constantly striving to improve his skills so he can sell a better product.

Mandalorian Renegade Traveler