Is it possible to alter a face?

[Spooky]

Say I have a vinyl head and it has a smile, is it possible to somehow turn the corners of the smile down to make a slight frown?

Also, is it possible to lighten skin coloring on a vinyl head?

[jessica]

It's possible with Apoxie or an air dry clay. Haven't baked any Mego vinyl heads, but I've baked a lot of 1:6 scale vinyl heads and they have survived 260 degrees at 20 minutes in my oven to cure the Super Sculpey on top of them. If the Apoxie falls off after hardening, you can always superglue it down. To lighten the skin coloring you would need a repaint of it...besides you will need to paint over the Apoxie additions.

I don't know how brave you are, but you can always cut off the eyebrows and lips with an exacto and resculpt them.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

It's usually best to go with a resin repro if you're gonna do a lot of mods. I chopped down a Mego head for one of my first customs.... not worth the effort.

Don C.

[Bizarro Amy]

It's true, some toy parts can be baked in the oven, but there are some that give off fumes. I don't know if I'd want to even try baking a Mego head in the oven where I make my food! I would go with some thing that air-dries. Another thing you might want to try is boil-in-bag. I often use this on non-Mego customs where I add Sculpy parts. I seal them in a plastic baggie and place it in boiling water, in a pot large enough that the baggie can sit without touching the sides. The boiling time depends on how thick the piece is. For 6-7" figures, 10-15 minutes has always worked pretty well, unless you're curing almost an entire head or something. The heat cures the sculpy, and is safer than the oven. This trick has saved me from melting a lot of DC Direct customs.

[jessica]

Haven't tried the boiling method yet. I like the boil in bag method--going to have to try that someday. Sharry and I tried it but with some bendy type of sculpey and the results were not what we wanted.

[Spooky]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I was hoping I'd be able to alter the head without sculpting, mostly because I don't want to have to repaint the head. It's perfect the way it is now, it has great skin color, rooted hair, it even has glass eyes!

If only I could give it more of a frown, it would be 100%.

[sprytel]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I was hoping I'd be able to alter the head without sculpting, mostly because I don't want to have to repaint the head. It's perfect the way it is now, it has great skin color, rooted hair, it even has glass eyes!

If only I could give it more of a frown, it would be 100%.

Maybe tell it something sad

[Cosmicman]

I'd like to add...

With vinyl heads. If you want to add sculpty parts like glasses, hair or make the nose bigger, add a beard or whatever...

Take a regular vinyl head. Add the scupty. Take one of those long grill lighters and heat up the sculpty to basically bake it, without burning the vinyl head (this is tricky).

Once the sculpty hardens, break out the Mod Podge. Add several layers of it in thin coats on the Sculpty.
When it dries, paint it the color your need. Then add two more thin layers of Mod Podge after it dries.

Wait.

...and the sculpty will basically bond itself to the vinyl head. Don't squeeze the vinyl head for awhile and the sculpty will become apart of the head. It sometimes becomes mailable. It is amazing how the Mod Podge works when you combine it with paint.

This is what I do when I don't have money to chalk up for a rezin version of a vinyl head. I have done this to several CTVT's vinyl heads and it is still holding up after years.

[Spooky]

I'll keep that in mind, sounds like it works.

Here's another idea...what if I work some acetone into the area I want to change, and when the vinyl starts to go slightly "gooey", I take something like a screw driver and bend the corners down a tad, and then wash it down really good. Might that work?

[jessica]

Don't know if the vinyl is colored all the way through or if there's paint on top but there's a good possibility you could remove the paint. And acetone is pretty liquid--hard to contain--it will travel along the lipline and remove color there if there is color there.

[Bizarro Amy]

That way of applying acetone sounds like it would make quite the mess. I've never seen anyone use a method like Wrath is describing. I'd be careful.

[Captain]

Wow..lots of techniques out there.

I always stick with air dry clay/Sculpey when I add to an existing vinyl head.Its slower, but its easier, and I dont have to worry about ruining the head if something goes wrong. If I'm doing a mot of modifying I agree with ctc, and just use a resin head.....or I get somebody who really knows what they are doing to make me a unique head.

[Cosmicman]

I'll keep that in mind, sounds like it works.

Here's another idea...what if I work some acetone into the area I want to change, and when the vinyl starts to go slightly "gooey", I take something like a screw driver and bend the corners down a tad, and then wash it down really good. Might that work?

I tried to mess with Acetone with a vinyl head a few times. The one time I did it was an accident and it created a beautiful Robin head that shrunk down Titan size and the other two times was disaster.

Honestly, with my experience I found Acetone to be unpredictable with vinyl heads. No matter what you read or think you can do that stuff can work or it doesn't.....not sure if the vinyl heads very with what is in the head as far as chemical composition...who knows?

Try my idea on some cheap heads from CTVTs first. Maybe I am have a lucky time with my idea and CTVT's cheap stuff. I don't know.