This week's custom is a
3 3/4" Senator Riyo Chuchi (The Clone Wars) by Elias
Here's the story behind it:
"
This is my first 100% sculpted action figure. I have been working on her for almost a year now, so it feels really good having her finally completed. When I first started, being only 13 years old, I was really concerned that I might not be able to pull off this custom of Riyo Chuchi. I just dove right in and persistence paid off. Perseverance went a long way when putting this figure together.
The base of the figure was a Star Trek Uhura action figure that was severely modified. I sculpted and sanded the torso to get it where I needed. the lower legs are from a Clone Wars Aayla Secura, and the arms were from a Clone Wars MicroSeries "Snow Bunny" Padme Amidala. The head, believe it or not, was from a modified Ahsoka Tano action figure that was sanded very heavily, and then, had hair sculpted to the top.
My Dad helped me fabricate the headdress from scratch using ProCreate to sculpt it with. I was worried about using ProCreate because of the quick dry time being a relatively new to sculpting. We made the headdress removable by placing saran wrap over the head before sculpting the piece onto the head. The crystal jewels on the back of the crown were glued to sewing thread before being sculpted into the accessory to maintain both strength and accuracy.
At first, I was very intimidated by the pattern on her dress, due to its intricacies. My dad suggested that in order to make the painting process simpler, I could map out my pattern using dots. I placed the dots on the dress, then used a fine detail paintbrush to connect these dots and added the three circles. The Porcelain Rose paint was too bright, so to darken the pattern, I used a wash of the color I used on the rest of her dress. To get the right color on the lips, I painted them white then applied a darker blue wash to make them pop.
Now that she is done, I couldn't be happier. I feel like now that I completed my first 100% sculpted I completed a rite of passage in the customizing community. It is a figure I couldn't have made when I first started out as a customizer 6 years ago. It took many years of building up my skill set to get me where I needed to be to pull it off. Now she is my favorite custom!
I hope when people think that they could never pull off making their own Star Wars custom action figure, that they look to me for inspiration, because if I can pull off a figure that looks this good at 13 years old, they can at least give customizing a try."
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