Novice questions about altering a "Thor" or viking helmet and other custom matters

[scott metzger]

Not familiar with the characters and not sure I'm looking at the right characters on Google, but a couple ideas.
Dwarves: Child's body is probably the best bet. You could bulk them up by padding parts if you need them more muscular/bulkier or building up the bodies with something more solid.
Caramon: If the character wears gloves or wristbands, you might be able to jury rig some other hands on the FTC muscle body and cover the new joint up. Might be some Marvel Legends hands from bigger figures with large enough hands.
Riverwind: Depends on how tall he is. If he's big enough, a 9.5" Flash Gordon/Maxx FX body might work (scaled with the 8" figures, that would put him a tad over 7 feet).
Gold face: Acrylic paint usually works okay on the Mego heads, but gold is going to be challenging. Lot's of the gold acrylic is thin and hard to get good, even coats with. Putting a primer coat of some neutral color can help with that to a degree, but it may take some trial and error, unless anyone knows a good brand offhand.

[MRP]

Thanks to everyone on their suggestions. There's a lot to consider, but I think I have a workable plan of action to start on the first figure. I'll likely start buying in the parts/materials I need once I get back form vacation after Labor Day There's likely to be a lot of trial and error and learning from failures, but I will try to put up progress pics and such as I move through the process.

-M

[scott metzger]

Thanks to everyone on their suggestions. There's a lot to consider, but I think I have a workable plan of action to start on the first figure. I'll likely start buying in the parts/materials I need once I get back form vacation after Labor Day There's likely to be a lot of trial and error and learning from failures, but I will try to put up progress pics and such as I move through the process.

-M

I love seeing said process as folks work on their customs.

[MRP]

I was talking with my wife about some options for creating armor as a means to pass the time on our long drive to and from Vermont earlier this week, and one of the options I was trying to figure out how to work with was using fun foam to make scale mail and breastplates, and she found this video on youtube featuring some techniques that could do just that (though for dolls of a larger size than the typical Mego), not sure if it would be helpful to others, but I thought I would share...

We hit several craft and fabric stores on the trip (as well as toy and comic shops) and started building up our stores of materials for customs (I got fabric to make Raistlin's robes, a nice fake leather fabric to make cloaks, some faux fur to add trip to those cloaks, velcro tabs to add to things to make them stay on the figures, some wooden dowels and craft popsicle sticks for making Raistlin's staff and Tas' hoopak staff/sling), some sculpee, a new Xacto knife, some Acetone, etc. My wife is excited to start her projects too and has been cruising youtube looking for tutorial and such (which is how she found this one and another for adding beards that may be of use to me when tacking Tanis-Half Elven as I haven't seen a readily available head I like to use as a base for him yet), and she will be giving me some crash courses on our sewing machine as I attempt to make some of the clothing (and offered to help me do it if my skills prove lacking). She also bought a ton of cheap 12 inch dolls on clearance at various stores to use as fodder for her project idea, so I hope I don;t need to take too much time away form her own projects as I move forward with this.

I also picked up 4 of the Mego-like skeleton figures from Big Lots mentioned in another thread that plan to custom into a D&D lich, Death Knight, and a pair of skeleton warriors before I start the Dragonlance stuff so I can experiment with some of the armor and weapon crafting techniques first to see how they come out and do a little trial and error if need be to get a better sense of how to approach some of the stuff I want to do with the Dragonlance stuff.

I still need to place an order with Doc and/or CVTV for some stuff before I can tackle all of the figures, but I have enough to get started on the skeleton trials and maybe start on some of the female figures I am using the new Mego ladies as bases for. So wish me luck, I should be starting some of this in a week or so.

-M

[MRP]

Welp, I placed orders with Doc Mego and with CVTV for some materials for these Dragonlance customs to add to the materials my wife and I got in the wild, so we'll see how it goes. Thanks to everyone for their input and encouragement so far. I am sure I will have a million other questions as I work through these.

-M