*ADULT SUPERVISION & PROPER SAFETY EQUIPMENT ARE REQUIRED WHEN UTILIZING THE TOOLS, PRODUCTS & TECHNIQUES DESCRIBED HERE ON OUR BLOG TO CREATE STAR WARS CUSTOMS.
This is my second version of Steela Gerrera. I made the first one a few years ago, and since then we started making our own 3D designed heads. With new technology on our side, I've been able to revisit several projects that I wasn't satisfied with. Steela was one of them, and I'm happy to say I feel like I can finally place her on the shelf to rest.
For a long time, Steela's face sculpt reminded me too much of the Aurra Sing which I had used as the base for her sculpt. For this version, I made a new headsculpt from scratch on Blender. I originally printed her without her hair or bandana. I then carefully removed the hair and bandana from the original head and secured them on the new printed one.
After assembling the new head, I took a holster from a Black Series 3.75" Jyn Erso for Steela's belt because of its slimmer design. Once I was happy with her new look, I hit her with a fresh coat of paint and she was camera ready!
You can make your own Steela as well! Her headcast is now available on the Rebel Kid Creations store, and can be purchased alone or in a bundle alongside headcasts for Saw Gerrera and Lux Bonteri.
So we're aware that it has been a long time since we have posted an easy custom that you can do at home in just a few minutes. That is the very reason for today's custom.
There are a subset of collectors that are unhappy that Hasbro never properly finished the Clone Wars action figure line. When Hasbro started releasing long desired figures from the Clone Wars television series in TVC with realistic sculpts these collectors were greatly disappointed feeling as though their collections would never feel complete. Well, we can't do much to push Hasbro in the right direction other than do our best to build the prototypes of what could have been and maybe provide you all with a few tips and tricks to help fill some of those gaps.
This is a custom action figure that could be thrown together in less than a minute provided your glue gun is already heated up, locked and loaded. All you need is the new TVC Darth Maul that was just released and one of the old animated Darth Maul heads from the old Clone Wars line. Just remove the head off TVC figure leaving the barbell neck joint attached to the body, squeeze a small amount of glue into the animated head, and place it onto the neck post until the glue dries. remove any unsightly glue that may have spilled out with an X-acto knife and the figure is complete. It is a great custom for beginners and a great way to fill out your animated Clone Wars collection.
Another year comes to a close. This year was a little quieter than previous years due to me wrapping up high school this Spring. Focus was more on school than the blog unfortunately. The silver lining was that for my Senior year, I did a Capstone Project exploring turning my custom action figure creative process into a full-blown business. I was also sure to include 3D design as part of my curriculum to add to my skillset. By the end of the school year, I had a few original digital designs under my belt and a fully functioning business model.
Senior Capstone Presentation (Audio quality could be better)
After graduating high school, I started to do commissions for full-time work and entered into business with Rebel Kid Creations the exclusive retailer for casts of my sculpts. It is mainly just a storefront full of resin casts and kits available to our readers so they can replicate some of our custom action figure projects for themselves in their own homes.
Click store logo to visit
To make it happen, most of the summer was spent molding our older sculpts for casting. To do so we added a pressure pot, air compressor, vacuum chamber and pump to our workshop. Thankfully we are now completely done with our mold making and going forward the store will be carrying all new never seen before designs.
As you can expect with such a heavy workload, making customs for the blog took a backseat, While we were still able to do a lot of fully sculpted figures this year, we also took the opportunity to introduce our readers to other Star Wars artists in the community who currently offer parts and kits to make your customizing projects a little easier and a lot less time consuming. The custom pieces we shared from these artists definitely helped us provide you all with new content every month without losing too much sleep making it happen. It was because of them, we were able to keep you all entertained and coming back for more.
That said, check out the video below for a slideshow of what we were able to add to our own collections as well as a few figures that we were commissioned to add to other people's collections. Here's to another year of Star Wars custom action figure art!
2021
STAR WARS
CUSTOMS
created by "Customs for the Kid"
Sadly, at the beginning of this year, we lost one of our most prolific customizers to the pandemic. Friends of Stanley Opiel IIknew him to be an incredibly gifted Star Wars custom action figure artist who breathed so much life into the Star Wars customizing community. His steadfast determination to bring the definitive versions of all the unreleased characters to fruition was truly admirable. He will be truly missed by his friends and Stan will forever stand as an inspiration to us all.
Customizers gathered from all over the world to pay their respects.
Dad put together a video to commemorate Stan's contributions to the artform.
This isn't the first Satine Kryze action figure in our collection, and it likely won't be the last one that we add to the collection either. The first was made by our friend Chad Peak aka Peak-OB1 Custom Creations that Dad bought for me as a gift. The Satine pictured below is the first custom action figure of the character made by Customs for the Kid.
To make her, I used a resin printed head we purchased from Moff Glidden's Customs. To make the body, we used the torso, upper arms and thighs of a Clone Wars Assaj Ventress action figure with the forearms and boots of a Clone Wars Aayla Secura action figure. Once the parts were assembled, the sculpt was completely modified with a Dremel and ProCreate sculpting putty to make the torn dress of the Duchess from her appearance in The Clone Wars episode "The Lawless". The action figure was specifically from when Darth Maul confronts Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mandalore in her presence. It was one the most memorable scenes from the entire show and making her ourselves was the only way we would see her represented in our collection at home.
It took about 24 hours to bring her to life from start to finish so it wasn't a quick and easy project, but well worth the time invested to make it happen. We couldn't be happier with the final result.
