How To Make an Action Figure!!

For as long as I've been doing Highly Flammable Toys, people always ask how I do it, and I'm never sure how much detail to go into. Recently, through the forsight of a recent client, I took progress shots while making the Gena figure and I think they are so cool, I decided to make a page or two featuring those photos. All of the photos below can be clicked on to open up into in a new window with a larger version of the image. I will do my best to explain the process as we go along. If you have any questions about the process, please feel free to email me about it. So, without further ado, I present the very first Highly Flammable Toys Action Figure Tutorial!!

1)This first shot shows the beginning of the figure making process. In the background to the left you'll see a few photo collages I've made of Gena for sculpting reference. There are several photos of her face and hair, the items chosen as her accessories and a Photoshopped mock-up of what I think the figure should look like when done (in the grey pants). In the foreground are figures that I am considering using for base parts.

2)Here is my base body. It is made from two different figures from the "Buffy" line. The pelvis and legs were too wide to match the width of the shoulders from the other figure so I had to pull the legs off and shave off plastic from the top diagonally to get the correct angle. Then a few drops of super glue, a little pressure and Voila!! I glued my fingers together. Once I pryed them apart, I glued the figure together.

3) Here is the first head progression shot. I use Azbro wax for the heads and little metal beads for the eyes. To save time I usually use a casting of a older head to start from, in this case, Chad Smith's. Sculpting a head takes about a 8 hours but sculpting female heads is much much harder. On top of that, in this particular case, Gena has some great crazy, manga style hair that partially obscures her face. I was initally going to use Magic Sculpt for the hair which is why the head is bald.

4) While the wax is a great sculpting medium, it is not a finished, paintable substance. I need to first make a silicone mold of the head which I will then cast in a two part urethane plastic. Here I've glued the head to a small cut off piece of a ball point pen which is then glued to a piece of wood. This is the first step in making a mold of the head.

5) I discovered that for my purposes, I did not need to make a new mold box every time. I'm using a piece of 2" PVC piping glued around my wax head with hot glue. The wood base is actually an old, cut up piece of lamintated shelving which alloes me to glop on as much hot glue around the base of the pipe to prevent the silicone from leaking out, but will still peel off easily when it is dry.

6) This is my pressure pot set-up. The mold is in the foreground waiting to be mixed and poured. When it is available I use Plat-Sil 71-20. It's a 1:1 weight/volume ratio. It is easy to measure, very firm and durable and extremely tear resistant. Once my silicone is mixed, I place it in the pressure pot and suck out all of the air with a vacuum pump. This eliminates most air bubbles that are created when the two parts are mixed. After two minutes I remove the mixed silicone from the pot and pour it into my PVC mold. To prevent any unwanted air pockets I will aim the pour just to the side of the wax head and let the silicone rise up slowly instead of pouring it directly onto the wax.

7) This is the degassing in action! The silicone will bubble up rather quickly once all of the air has been evacuated so you must make sure your silicone is in a container at least twice as tall as the silicone in it. My dad actually rigged up this pressure pot for me. He made the lid from a very thick plexiglass, added a rubber gasket and the proper gauges and fittings. When not used for degassing, I use the pressure pot for it's intended purposes (sort of). It has a heavy iron lid that gets clamped down tight with the screw clamps you see. I use that for casting the plastic.

8) Not a whole lot to explain here. That is the mold with the cured silicone in it and the left over in the cup next to it. Always mark the back of your mold before hand if you do it this way. You don't want to have to repair a plastic seam running through the front of a face.

9) Here is the completed mold and the relatively unharmed wax original.

10) And here is my first casting in plastic. Notice the hole near the left earlobe. That was caused by an air bubble getting caught in the mold while the plastic was curing. To solve this I will repour the plastic into the mold and then very quickly place it in my pressure pot, screw the lid down, attach an air compressor and pump in 20-22 psi of air. That will literally push the liquid plastic into all of the nooks and crannies of the mold giving me a perfect casting nearly every time. Also, a tip I learned was to lightly dust the inside of the silicone mold with baby powder to give your casting a more easily paintable matte finish.

11) This is the first fitting of the head on the body. Over the years I've rejiggered the way I do neck joints. For a long time I sculpted the neck as part of the head and wasn't too concerned if the neck was actually in proportion with the body I was putting it on. In those days, I was far more concerned with whether or not the sculpt could pass as the person. Within the last year or so, I've really liked the ball and socket neck joints that I see on real figures and have tried to duplicate it as best as I could. at the very least it has helped my sculpts regain their chins.

12) A big leap here. The areas pointed out are built up with Magic Sculpt, my medium of choice for most bodies and clothing. Magic Sculpt is a 2 part, air hardening compound that is smoothable with water, sandable, paintable, drillable and workable for 40 minutes or so. And it takes patterns and indentations great! I've used it to delineate where the top of the pants are, where the bottom of the shirt is, adding some pockets and wrinkles and to do a preliminary sculpt of Gena's hair. I realized early on that her hair was going to be several pieces to allow me to paint the face with some accuracy.

13) After discussing the sculpt with my wife, who has a great eye for these things, she convinced me that the head needed a little tweaking. I adjusted the chin and cheeks, brought out the brow a bit more and raised the forehead. That sounds like a lot but consider that really only means adding the smallest amount of wax to those areas. As you can see, I sculpt the heads actual size so even the littlest adjustment takes forever to do and makes a huge difference. Here, I also decided to sculpt the back portion of her hair and head band from wax because it takes detail better than the Magic Sculpt. I rarely go back and resculpt details but as I wrote earlier, female heads are very difficult and I didn't want to let my client down. So resculpt...remold...and recast.

14) While my second mold was curing I went back to the body and added a second layer of Magic Sculpt to make her studded belt and cargo pockets. Since I'm not very good ad website coding and I think the next image is a little to close, I need to add some space here with text. Did you know that female opossums have thirteen nipples? Yeah, really. Twelve in a circle and one in the middle. Oh, and if you haven't played Rock Band yet, go out and get it now!! It is soooo much fun!! And go see Juno, it's fantastic! Ok, back to the tutorial. Again, let me know if you have any questions about the materials I use, where to get them or how I do certain things. Nothing is a secret!

15) The calm before the storm. The body is done and ready to be primed. I've made a few good castings of the head and selected the best one to use. I sculpted a backpack from Casteline, made a mold and cast that in plastic a few times as well. I found a cat that will work best for her accessory from my graveyard o' plastic pets. In the background are three head molds and my tray of wax that I use for sculpting.

16) Painting. I try and only use acrylic paints and do multiple layers. Painting the head usually takes about 3 hours, again, this head took longer because of the earrings and the multi part hair pieces. The eyes have always been and continue to be very difficult and time consuming to paint because everything is just so darn small. I've developed a technique that involve dabbing on thin layers of paint with the cut end of a small plastic rod until it's built up some depth and then pressing it down wit a spherical stylus tip to make the pupil perfectly round.

17) While I don't prime the head, I do prime the body with krylon white primer. It makes the paint stick easier and makes the colors pop. You'll notice that the feet are separate from the body here. Even though those are the feet from that particular figure body, I wanted the paint job to be as clean as possible. This helps prevent me from getting any grey paint on the legs.

18) This is the paint progression of the body. The one thing you can't see (and I stupidly did not take a photo of) is that Gena has a tattoo of a sun peeking up on her back just above the line of the shirt. I used to paint on tattoos but now I've discovered water decals. If the client can get me a good enough photo of the desired tatoo, I can shrink it to the appropriate size, print it on a water decal and that will lay perfectly flat on any surface and conform to any curve or texture. It looks great!

19) And this is the finaly figure. Once everything is glued together I spray all figures with Dull-Cote to give them an even luster and to help prevent the paint from nicking off. Once the figure and all accessories are created and painted, I then look for a blister box that might accomodate the pieces, cut it to fit if necessary and then glue all the whole kit and kaboodle to the backing card. Where's the packaging tutorial you say? Another time my friends. Another time.