I don’t know if anyone is interested but I thought it would be nice to have a little record of my processes customising/repainting Marvel legends figures. It’s something I hope to do more of in the future as a hobby. 

I am very aware that I am only a beginner and that this particular project is a very simple one in comparison to the many custom figures I have seen but just in case this helps someone or they’d like to see my process here it is. 

Here is a picture of the somewhat finished project. The only thing Not So Tiny Winter Soldier is lacking is his belt glued together and a spray sealant.

I had to nick a picture of the figure’s original face from http://marvellegends.net/Figures/InfiniteCaptainAmerica/Bucky_0.htm as I never took a photo of him before I removed some of his eye makeup. To be honest I was really put off buying this figure simply because… it doesn’t really look anything like it should. It’s a shame that the paint on the figure is so wrong because the sculpt of the figure is actually really nice. I hated his sooty face makeup so much I only displayed him with his mask on most of the time. I was slightly mollified when I altered the black makeup to not cover half his face. 

After the Civil War figure appeared with such an improved face sculpt and paint job I reach peak dissatisfaction. I had planned on simply finding an extra head and replacing it entirely but I felt like I would be wasting by just getting rid of it so I decided to paint it. 

Looking up close on the head sculpt I realized they’d also put a lot of fine wrinkles on the face which aged the face somewhat and the face jutted out in weird places so I sanded a lot of the face smoother and also sanded the jaw down a slight amount. I used a cotton swab with some nail polish remover on it to remove the paint as I hadn’t had a chance to actually buy acetone yet. 

Acetone can melt the plastic if left for too long. You can use this to your advantage to smooth parts that are still a bit fuzzy after sanding but it’s best to be cautious. 

And here is my first attempt at painting and my first fuck up. I had been intensely studying some online customizing tutorials in particular http://www.angelfire.com/mech/jinsaotome/PaintingTips.html and I had gone out and purchased some model specific acrylic paint. I tried so hard to find Model Master Acrylic paint as the tutorial suggested but they apparently no longer sell them in Australia (which I only found out after physically visiting three art stores on a hot summer day) and I didn’t like the colour range of P3.

I ended up getting Tamiya Acrylic paint as it was what was available to me and had many pretty colours. I still couldn’t find a skin tone in bottle that I liked so I ended up mixing Flat White, Flat Yellow, Flat Flesh and Flat Deck Tan. I made up a small bottle of it so the flesh colour would be consistent. 

As a warning Tamiya paints are weird which I only discovered after buying six bottles so it was too late to go back. They hate being mixed with other acrylics because they are a weird alcohol mix. They dry very, very fast and stick to plastic very well but I learned that I would need to go an extra step to get it to work well for me. 

So after all that I just wanted to get stuck into painting. I tested it on some spare plastic containers I had and I really liked the finish so I ignored what most of the tutorials were saying when they suggested watering down the paint and applying thin layers. I didn’t and you can see that the paint not only applied very thickly but it wouldn’t dry smoothly because by the time I would move the brush around the face it had already begun drying so I would disturb bits of the paint and it would get dents in it. Disaster.  

I did more research and tried thinning the paint with water and/or alcohol. Neither result was satisfactory so I purchased the Tamiya paint thinner and the result was much improved. Not only did the paint dry flatter and allow the details of the sculpt to stand out but it also slowed drying time so I had a bit more leeway. If you make a mistake with acrylic you have a small window of time to use water and a toothpick to remove paint and the thinner gave me more of that time. 

To get the finer details of the eyes I ended up buying the finest Tamiya paintbrush I could find (yes I am now a devout Tamiya fan but it is also one of the few brands I can find locally) and following this tutorial http://www.figurerealm.com/customtutorial?action=view&id=98

I used a very small dot to mark the iris so I wouldn’t make him cross eyed which can be a very common factory mistake. 

I painted the iris shape in using Flat Black and filled it in with Flat Blue. I then decided to add a bit of Metallic Blue for sparkle as the Civil War Winter Soldier figure has a metallic paint for his irises. 

I then tried to imitate the subtle stubble the Civil War figure has. I hated how it looked so I painted over it but not very thoroughly to let some of the stubble remain. I painted in the eyebrows and repainted the hair. In future I would tape off the hair to prevent it being painted before it was incredibly annoying and fiddly to repaint the corners near the face. I also added a little bit of red, white and black to the flesh colour and painted the lips. 

I had originally wanted the face to just look like it would fit in with the current, better painted Marvel Legends figures but the face looked a bit lifeless and after all the effort I felt unsatisfied with the result. The face sculpt of the figure I was painting lacked the shape of the eyes and the mouth that made the newer sculpt a much better likeness for the actor. 

I ended up very sparingly dry brushing some grey onto the face for very subtle stubble. To give the illusion of eye bags I used thinned down Flat black around the eyes. I added a little more Flat Blue and Metallic Blue to the eye before painting in a very tiny pupil and an even tinier white highlight in the eye. I also extended the lip colour to the sides to make the mouth appear bigger. 

I did worry that I’d ended up making him a bit too pretty but I liked the way it looked so I was satisfied. 

I painted over the whole of the hair with Flat Black because I felt the flat brown colour was not true to the picture I had. 

I decided the hair was too dark so I dry brushed some brown over the hair and thought it looked much better. I did end up painting the mask to be more grey instead of brown but I forgot to take a photo. 

That’s the whole process I did for the face. For such a small thing it did take a lot of time, effort and money but I was pleased with the result. Hopefully I will have better photos of the finished figure soon and perhaps a part two on painting the body.